Van Vugt: Contraception - Why Not?

MY FELLOW columnist in Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro, Renato de Jesus, wrote a beautiful column on how human beings should love each other, especially the husband and the wife, when they make love to each other in the conjugal act of sexual intercourse. For the benefit of the readers of Sun.Star I would like to share also my opinion on this topic. Renato compares conjugal love with the way God loves us, and rightly so. When God loves, his love is total, a total giving of himself. In the same way husband and wife should love each other.

I can’t agree more with Renato on this point, but precisely only up to this point. Renato continues in his article: “And here, you can immediately see that contraception simply has no place in such a love.” I really disagree with him here. He quotes from a certain Cormac Burke the following sentence: “Couples who contracept in effect say: I don’t want all you offer me.” The word contraception is dropped here out of the blue sky.

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The crucial word is contraception. What do we really mean by contraception? In the strict sense we can say, as Renato does, contraception is: not allowing the seed of the man to reach the egg of the woman for fertilization. The Church teaches that the ideal way of family planning is using the natural way*that means to have sexual intercourse only during the period that the woman is infertile or cannot conceive, the so-called safe period. God has placed in nature this “safe period”. In other words, this is a natural way of contraception, and that is the only way God wants it, according to Renato de Jesus.

We must not forget that sexual intercourse of husband and wife is different from the way animals are mating. Animals are totally driven by their instinct, engaging sexual partners at the drop of a hat, as de Jesus says. But we human beings are rational beings and as such we should love each other, and also we should make love to each other as such. It is through science that we have discovered that the woman has her infertile periods and therefore cannot conceive during that time.

Through science also we have found out that there are artificial means of contraception. Why do we call the latter unnatural and the first natural? May we not presume that God has wanted it also that way?

I agree with the Church when it says that the ideal way of family planning is through the natural method. But we do not live in an ideal world.

Realistically speaking, we should look for other means to avoid pregnancy, provided there are good reasons for the woman not to get pregnant. There is nothing wrong with contraception, either in a natural way or in an artificial way. Another thing is when contraceptives are abortifacient, when they can cause an abortion. To use these contraceptives is immoral because abortion is immoral. But abortion can take place only after the seed has fertilized the egg and not before. And not all contraceptives are abortifacient.

This is the reason why the proposed Reproductive Health Bill promotes the use of contraceptives and intends to make contraceptives available to the people, especially the poor. Realistically speaking, it helps them in practicing responsible parenthood. Definitely, they are not anti-life, they are pro-quality of life. (For your comments email: arnvv@yahoo.com or call: 0926-3123366)