BIRTH CONTROL (Birth-Control) of. — A form of voluntary or coercive regulation that seeks to subordinate the procreation of individuals to social, hygienic, economic, or racial exigencies.
Birth control, irrespective of 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 had not achieved 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 very divine invitation to absolute chastity (Mt. 19:10 ff.; 1 Cor. 7) and by the particular esteem in which the Church has always held celibacy (v.), even rendering it obligatory for particular categories of persons. The morality of birth control is therefore not to be considered in an absolute sense, but rather in relation to the intention and the means employed.
Historically, the biblical Onan (Gen. 38:9) may be considered the forefather of limitations; just as Aristotle seems to be the first to have planned 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 Gianmaria Ortes (*Riflessioni sulla popolazione*, Venice 1790) or to Adam Smith (*An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations*, completed in 1776) MALTHUS, THOMAS ROBERT (v.) for the first organized plan of concerns and methods of birth control. The limitationist movement gained new impetus and a different methodological direction with Francis Place and his book (*Diabolical hand bill*): *Illustrations and proofs of the principle of population* (Manchester 1822–1823), thus inaugurating the neo-Malthusian movement.
The motives adduced in justification of birth control are various:
1. **Demographic Motivation.** — MALTHUS, THOMAS ROBERT (v.) emphasized that the ratio “number of men—means of subsistence” appears gravely disproportionate, because while the latter grows in arithmetic progression, the former grows at the same time in geometric progression. At present, no one accepts such a schematic formulation of the ratio; nonetheless, contemporary limitations remain, albeit in a more generic way, tied to Malthus’s concern for the saturation of the world by human beings (W. Vogt, A. P. Chew, F. Osborn, R. Wietzch). But the data provided by statistics demonstrate that since 1800 the increase in population has not followed Malthus’s law at all, and has not even increased by 1%. One must therefore admit, in addition to repressive means (war, pestilence, birth control), other causes that retard the upward curve of population growth. Even granting a gradual increase in the world’s population, one may conclude that the rate of increase is not such as to lead, in the near future, to the tragic conclusion predicted by Malthus and his followers.
2. **Economic Motivation.** — Another issue arises, raised by Malthus and his followers, concerning the insufficiency or exhaustion of the means of subsistence provided by the world; but this postulate does not hold either. Even if one considers only the present possibilities of exploiting the earth’s resources, one may conclude that the earth is already capable of sustaining from 8 (Penck) to 13.3 (Hollstein) to 22.4 (Ballod) billion people, depending on the standard of living assumed. 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 measure the future subsistence potential of the earth by the standard of past and present yields. Indeed, one observes a continuous increase in the percentage of land devoted to cultivation, along with the progress of mechanical means and systems of exploiting the sea and the subsoil.
While such conclusions appear negative for a worldwide Malthusian imposition of the “demographic development—means of subsistence” equilibrium, one must admit instead that there currently exists a clear and often very strong imbalance in the aforementioned ratio in certain areas (the so-called “depressed” areas), whether national, regional, social classes, or family groups. Such a state of affairs is generally linked to a poor distribution of wealth; a lack of goodwill, particularly on the international level, which maintains barriers of particular interests against the free movement of people from more densely populated to more sparsely populated zones, against the free flow of the earth’s goods from better-endowed to poorer areas, while the exchange of assistance and technical means between peoples who have achieved greater perfection in exploitation and those more backward is hindered and slow.
3. **Racial and National Motivation.** — Peoples infatuated with their real or presumed superiority, or holding a privileged position in the world, are inclined to impose birth control on peoples considered of inferior race, or more prolific or hungry, particularly if they have been defeated in their attempts to expand by occupying other peoples’ less populated and economically more promising areas.
4. **Eugenic Motivation.** — Birth control assumes an eugenic motivation when it aims to eliminate morbid hereditary defects or attempts, within a few generations, to eliminate tainted lineages through a selection of couplings. Apart from the immorality of such a procedure, it is devoid of scientific foundation, fallacious, and ineffective in practical application (v. EUGENICS).
5. **Hygienic Motivation.** — Of particular importance, especially for individuals, is the hygienic and medical motivation. The succession, for the mother, of pregnancies, childbirths, and lactations almost uninterruptedly throughout her sexual maturity, while it may be compatible with excellent health conditions and may even, as experience teaches, in particular cases become a means of physical flourishing and excellent psychic equilibrium, can ruin health or even threaten her life through obstetric causes or diseases for each pregnancy (v. ABORTION). Moreover, a large number of children requires that they be guarded, cared for, and attended to, particularly by the mother in the years of infancy and childhood, which often does not happen under present social conditions in numerous working-class families, where parents are absorbed by external work and the mother cannot afford the luxury of a helper, where the home is insufficient and inhospitable, and the street becomes the children’s playground. Such a condition, however, is largely determined by other social problems, particularly by the selfishness of those who possess more and oppose a more equitable distribution of goods, and represents a grave responsibility of present-day society; therefore, remedies should rightly focus on this second element. Thus, while there are no necessary causes that ineluctably drive one to birth control, there may be, in particular cases, justifying causes.
Here arises the problem of the moral value of the means proposed for the regulation of births. These can be divided into two groups: a) means which in themselves violate the life of the individual (abortion and the killing of the newborn) or intrinsically vitiate the essence of the conjugal act (interruption of the act, chemical or mechanical antifertility measures, sterilization), proposed and propagated by neo-Malthusians. These means are illicit (v. NEO-MALTHUSIANISM). b) Means which consist in the first abstention from the conjugal act forever (absolute continence) or for a determined time (temporary continence) or only periodically during the presumed fertile periods, according to the Ogino-Knaus method. These means, when accompanied by sufficient and certain moral motives, render the regulation of offspring licit (Pius XII, Address to Midwives, 29 Oct. 1951, in Citt. Catt., 1951, IV, pp. 53 ff. and to participants in the Convention of the “Fronte della Famiglia,” 25 Nov. 1951, ibid., pp. 693 ff.).
Another form of regulation of births occurs when this is imposed by authority. This form is always illicit, because it is injurious to the attributes of the human person; no authority, in fact, can deprive man of his natural rights, in this particular case the potential right to procreation, whatever means are used and whatever motive is adduced.
demografica italiana, ibid., pp. 60-75; M. Berri, Un piano per il c. delle n. in Inghilterra, in Orizzonte medico, 6 (1951), 9-10; La scuola cattolica, 79 (1951), pp. 283-373. Giuseppe De Ninno.