The debate on the population control bills is getting uglier. The proponents of the measures and their supporters continue to wear blinders and refuse to see the real issues. Or they purposely go around them to show the alleged fallacy of the Catholic Church stand even to the extent of sowing dissension between the clergy and the laity.
There is no quarrel that the Reproductive Health Bill does not legalize abortion. The Church does not oppose the bill because it supposedly legalizes abortion. The Church opposes the bill because it makes available the use of any and all forms of artificial contraceptives.
In its common connotation, contraceptive is any device or substance that inhibits or prevents fertilization or the fusion of the sperm or male cell with the female ovum to form a new individual. In essence it controls birth artificially or it interferes with the natural process of bringing human life into this world after a sexual intercourse between man and a woman. This is where the first moral issue arises.
The moral issue here is whether a man and a woman should engage in sexual intercourse merely for sexual pleasure or mainly for procreation which is the means of cooperating with God in creating another human being. The Church stand from my little knowledge of Catechism is that sexual intercourse is a marital act that has two functions: the biological or procreative function and the spiritual or unitive function. These two aspects of the marital act cannot be separated. If one deliberately nullifies the life oriented process of the conjugal act, one destroys its essential power to signify union.
Thus the Catechism states that “Sexual pleasure is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes” (2351). “Any act of contraception, be it by pills, condoms, withdrawal, or ligation is always wrong, and if this is done with full knowledge and full consent, it is always a mortal sin. Every marriage act must be open to the transmission of human life” (2366).
The more important moral issue which may even have legal implication is the connection between contraception and abortion. It has been repeatedly pointed out that the following contraceptives have already been medically proven to directly cause abortion: Depoprovera, RU 486, Intra-Uterine Device, Norplant and the Morning-After-Pill (Please see Project Abortifacients, Human Life International, June 1991). This is a claim that has never been denied or disproven by the proponents of the bill and their supporters. Yet the proposed bill will make them available to women. So it is quite clear that even if the bill still considers abortion as illegal and a punishable criminal act, it is nevertheless promoting abortion. In effect, the bill is promoting or abetting an act which it considers illegal. There is no free will or freedom of choice involved here. Such freedom definitely does extend to opting for something illegal.
The bigger truth is that this link between contraceptive and abortion is not limited to contraceptives that directly cause abortion but to all contraceptives, including condoms. If all kinds of contraceptives are easily available, men and women who still find a need to refrain from engaging in sexual intercourse for fear of having children is easily led to believe that there is no more such need since there are already adequate means that allow them to engage in the act without fear of having children. Hence when these contraceptives fail and the unwanted child comes, the only recourse is abortion.
This is not a theory or a mere assumption. It is happening in most countries that have legalized contraceptives. In Canada, the birth control pill was legalized in 1969. The following year, statistics reported 11,152 abortions. Today it is already 106,418 abortions: a tenfold increase in abortion since 1970 during a period of unprecedented contraceptive use (Natalie Hudson, The Contraception Misconception). In the US this reality is best described by its Supreme Court itself in the case of Planned Parenthood vs. Casey that upheld the ruling in Roe vs. Wade: “In some critical respects abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception. For two decades of economic and social development, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance of the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail”.
In the same article, Contraception Misconception, the following observation has been made: “Contraception has historically been promoted as a means of women’s emancipation, yet ironically it has led to a much greater objectification of women. Women’s bodies have become a testing ground for pharmaceutical companies to reap profits from the myth that the natural consequences of sex can be avoided; women are put out of touch with their bodies as their fertility cycles become chemically controlled; and contraception can also be used to hide the evidence of abuse that is sometimes perpetrated among young or marginalized women.”
In opposing these reproductive health bills the Church is therefore merely performing its duty of reminding the faithful about these doctrines of faith. Nobody is being deprived of their free will. Everybody is free to accept or reject these teachings. But those who reject them must also respect the moves of the Church and its clergy to safeguard the integrity of its tenets like taking a stand against these bills or issuing reminders on who may be denied the sacraments such as the Holy Eucharist or Matrimony.
Note: Books containing compilation of my articles on Labor Law and Criminal Law (Vols. I and II) are now available. Call tel. 7249445.
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E-mail at: jcson@pldtdsl.net