Contraception and Consequentialism/Maggie Gallagher

Jenny, Cristina, feel free to ignore these remarks, or not as you please. I don't want to spoil a good debate!

I'm not sure a lot of light is being shed yet,as one of the commenters noted you guys seem to be mostly addressing different things. (Jennifer, feel free to comment on child care if you like but it does seem sort of off topic.) One feature of the debate does strike me: For Cristina it is self evident that contraception will reduce the abortion rate and the out of wedlock birth rate. If you are against these things, you must advocate for more government contraception programs as the solution.

I'm struck by this form of argument because it is so very common in America today. If you are going to claim a causal link for anything remotely traditional (say: marriage is good for children and society), you must amass mountains of social science evidence. This evidence will be fought tooth and nail (Did you know correlation is not causation?) in every conceivable way. Only after exhaustive debate will you finally be permitted to say the obvious. ("children do best with their own married mom and dad") and only so long as this statement does not contradict some other more urgent liberalist moral imperative (like, say "there are no rational arguments against gay marriage.")

Whereas when you say something dubbed "progressive" you don't need much evidence. Or sometimes any evidence at all.

The question of whether and what kind of contraception promotion would reduce abortion or illegitimacy is an empirical one. And the answer is not as simple and obvious as Cristina makes it. Certainly the widespread introduction of reliable contraception, including its promotion in schools, was empirically associated with increases in both abortion and illegitimacy. Correlation is not causation. But you do sort of have to grapple in some way with this historic fact.

European countries have lower fertility generally; They have lower abortion rates generally, too. they no longer clearly have lower illegitimacy rates. (countries vary but the clear trend is up up up). It's of course hard to know what they are doing in Europe (and each country does things differently) that we are not doing, as we have government funded contraceptive programs in schools, etc. and a right to abortion up to the 9th month. Legally contraception is a Constitutional right. Culturally, contraception is widely and generally accepted here and available in every drug store. Many insurance plans cover it. Those of us with moral objections are a tiny minority, even among church-going Catholics.

I do think Cristina, if you are going to make dogmatic statements about identity groups to which you do not belong (such as 'prolifers must support more aggressive contraception campaigns or else they aren't really prolife')you ought show more interest in whether and how and what would actually work, rather than merely asserting as dogma that it does.

And is "what works" really the question for you? Would you support an education campaign in schools delivering a powerful antiabortion message if it involved the use of contraceptives as the means to reduce abortion? (And let's say, pilot programs showed a big reduction in the abortion rate as a result?) Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but it seems to me "what works" to reduce abortion isn't a very important value for you, so maybe your very strong judgments about what prolifers should believe in order to avoid the horror of being dubbed a "hypocrite" or a "professional prolifer" by you isn't, you know very persuasive or very intellectually threatening either.

On the other hand, Jennifer, I've grown less clearly persuaded by consequentialists arguments against contraception, for several reasons. More on that in another post.
posted by maggie at 9:32 AM | link

2 Comments:

At 4/26/2006 12:56 PM,  Anonymous said...

It seems an odd thing to separate sex from child rearing...kind of like separating eating from calorie absorbsion...separating sex from marriage...separating sex from love...separating parenting from marriage...separating conception from sex...separating children from biological parents.

Wow...is this working?

Maybe others can think of similar disections of human activities due to hyperindividualism and reductionism. Science breaks down larger systems in order to better understand them...but doesn't seem able to reassemble them later, into better systems. This is especially true of the social sciences.

Hopefull in another 25 years we will all realize, and longterm, less reductionstic studies will prove, that for an important period of time liberal democracies succumbed to deconstructionism, but thankfully returned to cohesion and community.

David Blakeslee

 

At 4/26/2006 2:16 PM,  Anonymous said...

I just have a few comments on some of Cristina Page's assertions. Number one: "I think sex is a natural expression of intimacy." She's absolutely right--which is precisely why contraception is morally, emotionally, and spiritually unacceptable (legality is a separate, though related issue). Intimacy is about closeness to the other, unity with the other, unconditional self-gift and receiving the self-gift of the other person. Contraception in any of its forms is an attack on intimacy because it involves the rejection of part of the other person involved.

Our bodies are good and beautiful, and fertility is a natural part of our bodies. I love my husband, body and soul, and having sex with him is an expression of our love and intimacy. If I use contraception, I am either holding back a part of myself and not giving it to him (as in the case of using the Pill, I refuse him the gift of my whole femininity, which includes my fertility); or else I am rejecting part of him (as in the case of the use of a condom)--his sperm and his fertility are part of his body, and therefore part of who he is as a person. A truly intimate sexual encounter embraces each partner as a whole person, not just the parts of them convenient at the time.

Okay, on to point Number two. I'm not sure where Ms. Page gets her numbers on the failure rate of NFP. There are many different methods of NFP, as there are many methods of artificial contraception (for example, to impugn the reliability of the Pill using data on the reliability of condoms wouldn't be fair). I have used CM-BBT (Cervical Mucus--Basal Body Temperature method) for the four and a half years of my marriage, and have had no complaints to make. The method has a 97% reliability rate when used correctly.

An additional point to consider about NFP failure rates, however, is the attitudes of NFP users towards conception. Nearly all users of NFP, I would imagine, are orthodox Catholics. Conception, even when inconvenient, is usually viewed as a gift from God amongst this group of people. Fear of fertility and conception is considerably less than that of the general population. This is going to influence the decisions of NFP users regarding engaging in sex even when they are unsure if they are fertile or not. Thus, a higher "failure" rate, may not indicate any problem with the method(s) involved, merely the aims of those making use of the method(s).

Okay, final point. I do not consider myself a feminist (certainly not a mainstream modern one), but I have to say that as a woman, I find it offensive that my fertility is viewed as something to be medicated away. NFP on the other hand gives me knowledge of myself, based on scientific facts about how hormones influence my body. NFP gives me the power to choose when to have sex--when I am fertile or not. And, Ms. Page, intimacy and happiness in marriage are not a matter of sex alone--though good sex helps.

I would suggest that Ms. Page read "Love and Responsibility" by the late Pope John Paul II. If she is really as intelligent and open-minded as she claims to be, she should be able to handle it.

I could say more--and might later this week--but this comment is long enough as it is.

Elizabeth Butina

 

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