Birth Control

BIRTH CONTROL. - A form of voluntary or coercive regulation that seeks to subordinate the procreation of individuals to social, hygienic, economic, or racial requirements.

Birth control, setting aside the reasons that may motivate it, is not in itself reprehensible, as though it were a shirking of the divine precept: Crescite et multiplicamini (Gen. 1:28); for this precept, even if it was a true precept of natural law or of positive divine law at the origin of humanity and as long as the human race did not have adequate propagation on earth, subsequently lost its individual obligatoriness, remaining only as a general precept directed to the community and not to the individual; as is clearly demonstrated by the same divine invitation to absolute chastity (Mt. 19:10 ff.; I Cor. 7) and by the particular esteem in which the Church has always held celibacy (v.), made even obligatory for particular categories of persons. The morality of birth control must not therefore be posed in an absolute sense, but relative to the intention and the means employed.

Historically the biblical Onan (Gen. 38:9) may be considered the progenitor of the limitationists; likewise Aristotle seems the first who wished to plan birth control with his limitationist concerns. But the true theoreticians of birth control are economists of much more recent epochs, whether one wishes to go back to Giammaria Ortes (Riflesioni sulla popolazione, Venice 1700) or to Adam Smith (An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of Nations, finished publication in 1770) or to Malthus (v.) for the first organized plan of concerns and methods of birth control. The limitationist movement takes on new momentum and a different direction in methods with Francis Place and his book (Diabolical hand bill: Illustrations and proofs of the principle of population (Manchester 1822-1823), giving rise to the movement of neo-Malthusianism.

The motives adduced in justification of birth control are various:

1. Demographic motivation

Malthus (v.) emphasized that the ratio "number of men-means of subsistence" shows itself gravely disproportionate, because while the second element grows in arithmetic proportion, the first instead grows in the same time in geometric progression. At present no one accepts any longer such a schematic framing of the ratio; nevertheless the limitationists of today remain always adherent, albeit generically, to the Malthusian concern of the human saturation of the world (W. Vost, A. P. Chew, F. Obsborn, R. Wietzsch). But the data furnished by statistics demonstrate that from 1800 onward the increase of population has not at all followed the law of Malthus, and has not increased even by 1%. One must therefore admit, besides repressive means (war, pestilences, birth control), other causes that retard the ascending curve of population increase. Even admitting therefore a gradual increase of the population of the globe, one may conclude that the progression is not such as to flow, in the near tomorrow, into the tragic conclusion predicted by Malthus and his disciples.

2. Economic motivation

There arises the other question, posed by Malthus and his followers, of the insufficiency and exhaustion of the means of subsistence furnished by the world, but this postulate too does not hold. Even taking into account only the present possibilities of exploitation of the goods of the earth, one may conclude that it is already today capable of sustaining from 8 (Penck) to 13.3 (Hollstein) to 22.4 (Ballod) billion men, according to the standard of living taken as a basis. Moreover, if one considers the difference in methods of exploiting the earth's patrimony between today and even only 100 years ago, one must conclude that it is erroneous to wish to measure the future subsistence potential of the earth by the yardstick of the expenditures of the past and present. One witnesses in fact a continuous increase in the percentage of lands destined to cultivation, in the progress of mechanical means and of systems of exploitation of the sea and the subsoil.

If such conclusions appear negative for a Malthusian worldwide framing of the equilibrium "demographic development-means of subsistence," one must admit, instead, that in reality there currently exists a clear and often very strong imbalance in the aforesaid ratio in determined areas (so-called "depressed" areas), national or regional or of social classes, or of family groups. Such a state of affairs is linked in general to a bad distribution of wealth; to a lack of good will, particularly on the international plane, whereby barriers of particular interests are maintained against the free passage of men from the denser zones to the more rarefied ones, against the free flow of the goods of the earth from the more endowed zones to the poorer ones, while the exchange of assistance and technical means between the peoples that have reached a greater perfection of means of exploitation and those more backward is hindered and slow.

3. Racial and national motivation

Peoples that are infatuated with a real or presumed superiority of their own, or that hold in the world a condition of privilege, are led to impose birth control on peoples considered of inferior race, or more prolific or starving, particularly if defeated in their attempts to expand by occupying others' areas that are less populated and economically more promising.

4. Eugenic motivation

Birth control assumes a eugenic motivation when it proposes to remove from the midst the morbid taints transmissible by heredity or attempts, in the course of some generations, to annul tainted lineages by means of a selection of matings. Apart from the immorality of such a procedure, it proves to be devoid of scientific foundation, fallacious and ineffective in practical implementation (v. EUGENICS).

5. Hygienic motivation

Particular importance, especially for individual persons, is assumed by the hygienic and medical motivation. The succession for the mother, almost uninterruptedly in the course of her sexual maturity, of pregnancies, childbirths, and nursing periods, although it can accord with excellent conditions of health and indeed, as experience teaches, can become, in particular cases, a means of physical flourishing and excellent psychic equilibrium, can ruin her health or even gather upon her the threat of death from obstetric causes or illnesses during or because of pregnancy (v. ABORTION). Moreover, numerous offspring require that they be guarded, cared for, and followed, particularly by the mother in the years of infancy and childhood, which often does not happen, in our present social conditions, in certain numerous families of the common people, in which the parents are taken up by outside work and the mother cannot permit herself the luxury of a person to help her, where the house is insufficient and inhospitable, and the street is the daily training ground of the children. Such a condition, however, is largely determined by other problems of a social nature, particularly by the egoism of those who possess more and oppose a more equitable distribution of goods, and represents a very harsh responsibility of present-day society; therefore, rightly, the remedies should press upon this second element. Although there are therefore no necessitating causes that drive ineluctably to birth control, there may be admitted, in particular cases, justifying causes.

But here the problem arises of the moral value of the means proposed for birth-control. These can be divided into two groups: a) means that in themselves attack the life of the individual (abortion and killing of the newborn) or intrinsically vitiate the essence of the conjugal act (interruption of the act, chemical or mechanical contraceptives, sterilization), proposed and propagated by the neo-Malthusians. These means are illicit (v. NEO-MALTHUSIANESIMO). b) Means that are represented by the prior abstention from the conjugal act forever (absolute continence) or for a determined time (temporary continence) or only periodically during the presumed periods of fecundity, according to the Ogino-Knaus method. These means, when they are accompanied by "sufficient and sure moral motives, make a regulation of offspring licit" (Pius XII, Discorso alle ostetriche of 29 Oct. 1951, in Civ. Catt., 1951, IV, p. 53 ff. and to the participants in the Convention of the "Fronte della Famiglia" of 25 Nov. 1951, ibid., p. 693 f.).

Another form of birth-control occurs when it is imposed by the authority. This form is always illicit, because it violates the attributes of the human person; indeed, no authority can deprive man of his natural rights, in this particular case of the potential right to procreation, whatever means may be used and whatever motive may be adduced.

Giuseppe De Ninnio