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BERNARDO M. VILLEGAS
July 2, 2010
Non-Religious Arguments Against Contraception
Those who favor the Reproductive Health Bill are spreading the error that arguments against artificial contraception are exclusively religious in nature. That is why, they keep onharping that the Catholic Bishops should mind their own business and keep their moral opinions to themselves. Firstly, this view is erroneous because religiousleaders of whatever faith have the right to make public pronouncements to their respective flocks about the morality of certain human behaviours. There is no such thing as a completelyprivate moral teaching. Human acts like sexual intercourse have moral dimensions and are, therefore, subject to pronouncements from religious leaders.
The second error was pointed out by a reader, Mr. Raul Nidoy, reacting to an editorial that appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which stated that the Catholic teaching on contraception is "only" a religious teaching (March 13, 2010). I know for a fact that Mr. Nidoy is thoroughly familiar with dozens of websites which are sources of general information. In reacting to the editorial, he refers to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website. Making it very clear that BBC is completely a secular outfit, he says that there are fifteen secular reasons BBC uses to attack the immorality of contraception. In his letter to the Editor, he writes: "BBC's Ethics Guide ( which covers differing angles, argues that contraception prevents potential human beings from being conceived. And people who might benefit humanity will be included among these. Aside from stressing that contraception leads to widespread immorality, the BBC also argues that contraception is unnatural. It explains that the natural consequence of sexual intercourse is conceiving a child, and contraception interferes with this natural purpose of sexual intercourse. For sure, one can glean from this sampling that there is nothing biblical nor magisterial in these arguments. Nothing religious, really, that a secular State cannot adopt."
Let me elaborate on why contraception goes against nature. Anyone who accepts the philosophical (not religious) truth that this world is the work of a Creator who had a purpose for everythingHe created can discover with reason alone that the two highest physical pleasures that man can enjoy--eating and copulating--are directly related to survival and sustainability. Once born,a human being (and for that matter most animals) would die of starvation if there were no pleasure in eating. In the same vein, the human race would soon be extinct if there were no pleasureto sexual intercourse which nature tied to the act of reproduction. Any thinking person would find it repulsive if a human being tries to disconnect the act of eating from nutrition. One does not haveto be an ascetic to condemn the bacchanalian act of self-induced vomiting in order to be able to enjoy the pleasures of eating again and again. Well, one does not have to be a "religious" tobe repelled by the cheating involved in enjoying the pleasure of sex without making it open to reproduction. Vomiting to enjoy eating and contracepting to enjoy copulatingbelong to the same category of cheating nature.
I find it strange that many of the same people who are aggressively promoting contraception raise a lot of noise about respecting the physical environment, protecting the laws of nature,preserving the ecology , etc. But they think nothing of prostituting the sexual act by decoupling it from the production of new life. As Mr. Nidoy points out and the very secular BBC supports,there are strong non-religious reasons to declare that contraception goes against nature and should be considered unethical. For comments, my email address is .