reproductive ethics Quotes
This is one of the earliest Christian statements about the immorality of contraception. There was no official position of the Roman Catholic Church against contraception, until 1930 when Pope Pius XI issued his stricture. See {625105}. The reference to Onan is to the Old Testament. Onan however was not using contraception. He was masturbating. Augustine’s view was that everything sexual was designed by God for procreation. Therefore, any sexual function, not for the purpose of procreation, is inappropriate. Contraceptive techniques were used in Biblical times as well as later. The only difference was the technological sophistication and reliability of the different devices and methods.
This is a very important quotation because it is the official ban of the Roman Catholic Church against birth control of all forms. Prior to 1930, there was no official prohibition against birth control although individual Roman Catholics had argued that it was sinful. For example, see St. Augustine {625106}.
At the time the president made this quotation there were over 400,000 frozen embryos stored in fertility clinics across the country that were no longer necessary for the couples who had created them and for which no other couples could be found. Each costs about $2,000 a year to maintain in a viable state. Some are destroyed as no longer necessary and others are given to scientists for research. Most just stay in frozen storage with no prospect of ever being brought to term.
This is a very valuable historical quotation as it gives is a flavor of 19th century attitudes about birth control. Malthus was one of the first to warn about the danger of overpopulation. But even he repudiated birth control as a potential solution. Toynbee was giving a scholarly academic lecture and academics whenever they discussed birth control were expected by many to speak or write only in Latin—the “dead language.” Toynbee, a very young brilliant man—he died at only 31—was considered very daring as he actually discussed it in English. The assumption of all at the time, in that Protestant culture, was that birth control was immoral. The logic of it was that sex was pleasurable, but as children would likely result, the parents would have and accept responsibility. Pleasure without the concomitant responsibility might lead to sex for pure enjoyment and much time spent with pleasure. The production of children and the responsibility thereof was therefore a break and limitation on the amount of time that people would spend with sex. There was the Protestant work ethic and too much sex would detract from work, prayer, parenting, scholarship, and activities of social responsibility. In America there was a similar cultural view of birth control and even as late as 1963 the criminal law was used to restrict birth control. A Connecticut pharmacist was jailed for filling a doctors prescription for condoms for a married couple where the wife’s life was threatened if she bore another child. The Supreme Court overturned the conviction, but birth control and abortion were conflated. Even today, many of the so called “pro life” organizations not only oppose legal abortion, but they want the government to restrict birth control, though tactically they emphasize the abortion publicly. The English and American family planning advocates like Margaret Sanger were up against these attitudes on which there is stll some controversy into the 21st century.
He prefaced his remarks by stating that he was speaking for himself and not the Commission.
