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Life is always precious
I agree with the views of Damien McLeish in his letter “Pill: tell the truth” (November 11). We cannot pick and choose what we believe or accept as being Catholic teaching. We accept that the pope, as God’s vicar on earth, has God’s authority to guide us in religious truth.
Few may realise that until 1930 all Protestant denominations agreed with the Catholic Church’s teaching condemning contraception as sinful. At its 1930 Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Church, swayed by growing social pressure, announced that contraception would be allowed in some circumstances. Soon the Anglican Church allowed contraception across the board. Today, the Catholic Church alone proclaims the historic Christian position on contraception.
In 1968, Pope Paul VI’s landmark encyclical letter Humanae vitae re-emphasised the Church’s constant teaching that it is always intrinsically wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence. It is also Catholic teaching regarding abortion and other issues pertaining to human life.
Does the Church teach that the unnatural or artificial means of birth control are immoral and blameworthy? Yes. In Humanae Vitae, the first-named form of illicit or unnatural method of birth control is abortion (n. 14) [3]. Then, “equally to be excluded, as the teaching authority of the Church has frequently declared, is direct sterilisation, whether perpetual or temporary whether of the man or woman”. This condemns tubal ligations, vasectomies, and the Pill. Similarly excluded is “every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible”.
Are some forms of unnatural birth control worse than others? Yes. Those forms that act after conception has occurred to prevent the continuation of the pregnancy participate in the additional evil of abortion. “From the moment of its conception life must be guarded with greatest care, while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes” (Gaudium et Spes, 51).
Surgical abortion is the most obvious but not the only form. The intrauterine device (IUD) acts primarily as an early abortion agent by preventing implantation of the week-old human life. The birth control Pill makes the inner lining of the uterus very hostile to implantation. It is not known how often the Pill acts in this way, but it cannot be denied that the Pill may be acting as an early abortion agent in any woman.
Is using the pill tantamount to causing abortion? It seems it just might be.
Collette O’Sullivan, Cape Town
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