Martin Rhonheimer - The Ethics of Procreation and the Defense of Human Life: Contraception, Artificial Fertilization, and Abortion

Ethics of Procreation

and the Defense of Human Life

Contraception, Artificial Fertilization, and Abortion

Martin Rhonheimer

Edited by William F. Murphy Jr.

The Catholic University of America Press

Washington, D.C.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 was originally published in The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 9, no. 3 (Fall 2009) and is reprinted by permission. An earlier and less-developed form of chapters 2 and 3 originally appeared as "Contraception, Sexual Behavior and Natural Law" in the Linacre Quarterly (1988). This original material was stylistically revised and integrated with material that had been later written by the author and originally published in German. This new material was translated by Joseph T. Papa, as were the essays that now appear as chapters 4, 5, and 6. Chapter 4 was originally published in the Josephinum Journal of Theology 14, no. 2 (August 2009) and is reprinted with permission. Chapter 7, which originally appeared in the American Journal of Jurisprudence, was translated by Paolo Carozza and is reprinted by permission. Acknowledgments regarding some of the additional texts are included in the author's introduction. Some of the translation and editing expenses for this volume were generously funded by the Cardinal Pio Laghi Chair of the Pontifical College Josephinum.

Editor's Preface

The present volume brings together, for English language readers, a collection of essays in which the Swiss philosopher Martin Rhonheimer addresses some of the most difficult and contested questions regarding the ethics of procreation. As indicated by the subtitle, the questions addressed range from that of contraceptionand special cases related to itto those of artificial fertilization and abortion. His treatment of the long-disputed question of contraception is unique and compelling, and few English-language scholars have shown familiarity with it. The present availability of it in extended form, following the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, therefore offers a valuable resource for those theologians and philosophers who still hope to move beyond the stalemate that has developed especially around this question, but extending more broadly. Such readers will also find this volume particularly helpful in considering related questions such as the use of contraceptives under threat of rape. Readers will also find that Rhonheimer's reading of Thomistic virtue ethics from the "perspective of the acting person" sheds surprising new light on the questions of artificial fertilization and abortion.

Moralists who want to rethink these and other difficult questions, while taking into account the lively ongoing debates regarding the retrieval of Thomistic moral theory in light of Veritatis Splendor, will be particularly interested in the present volume because of Rhonheimer's central role in these theoretical debates. They will therefore want to read the present volume in conjunction with the others that are available, or are becoming so, in English. These include his somewhat exploratory Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy, which was published in the year 2000, and the recently published The Perspective of the Acting Person: Essays in the Renewal of Thomistic Moral Philosophy, which includes many of his most important essays in moral theory, along with an introduction that outlines his broader body of work while locating it in light of alternative readings of Aquinas. Complementary works also include his applied work Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics: A Virtue Approach to Craniotomy and Tubal Pregnancies, published by the Catholic University of America Press in 2009, and his systematic ethical treatise The Perspective of Morality: Philosophical Foundations of Thomistic Ethics, forthcoming from CUA Press. It is my hope that readers will find the present volume a valuable contribution to the literature and that it will facilitate greater consensus on the particular questions it addresses and regarding moral theory in general.

I would like to offer special thanks to Martin Rhonheimer for his collaboration in this and other projects, to Dr. Joseph T. Papa for his careful work in translating and copyediting much of the present text, and to Damian X. Lenshek for his editorial assistance with several aspects of the project. Particular thanks are due to the staff of the Catholic University of America Press, especially James Kruggel and Beth Benevides, for their skilled facilitation of this project.

William F. Murphy Jr.

Pontifical College Josephinum

Introduction

Human Life

Between Protection and Threats

Never before in the course of history has such great importance been given to the protection of human life (and with such protection being realized in so broad and effective a manner) as in the modern liberal-democratic societies in which a large part of humanity lives. Notwithstanding wars, manifold forms of violence and criminality, and small- and large-scale catastrophes brought about by technology, the individual today possesses a degree of security, guaranteed by the state, that was never experienced in earlier historical epochs. Nevertheless, paradoxical as it may seem, this same contemporary civilizationguarantor of an almost complete security against every possible risk to lifehas created structures that lead to new threats against life and human dignity, even as these structures are frequently praised as progress.

Threats to life are certainly as old as humanity itself. Such threats have taken a variety of forms that clearly and indisputably merit condemnation (wars, murders, torture, exploitation of labor in ways threatening and harmful to life, etc.). As such, the ethical characterization of these actions has rarely raised questions of a fundamental nature, which is not to say that they are easily eliminated from the life of society. Other forms of threat against life have traditionally been similarly (or in even greater measure) stigmatized, yet in contemporary society they seem to receive a growing tolerance, if not even acceptance in principle. This is true above all regarding the practice of abortionthe killing of the fruit of the maternal womband regarding euthanasia.

These threats to human life, increasingly tolerated and accepted, are at the same time less and less considered to be precisely threats. Certainly, the majority of people in today's world would rule out abortion and euthanasia as behavioral possibilities for themselves. A great number of thoughtful people, however, are disposed to tolerate such behavior in others and to reject, as discriminatory and intolerant, a general proscription of such behavior by the society and the state.

Thus, an entirely new situation has arisen. "Tolerance" is no longer the tolerating of a practice concerning the evil of which there exists more-or-less common agreement, though the perpetrator is left in peace so as to not jeopardize higher values; rather, tolerance becomes in a certain sense the acceptance of modes of behavior that one would never consider for oneself, but that are to be allowed for others as legitimate alternatives for action. It is clear that such "tolerance"which in reality is much more than simple tolerancecannot fail to have significant consequences in juridical systems, as well as in people's thoughts and sensibilities, and thus with respect to the socio-psychological bases of entire societies, given that such an attitude is ultimately not tolerance, but recognition.