Population Managment Part III: Contraception

An objection one often hears against condoms and chemical contraceptives is that it makes promiscuity permissible. Quite apart from the fact that promiscuity has always existed whereas contraceptives are a relatively new phenomenon, I find the spirit of this objection questionable. In my opinion, the rules surrounding sex are today a source of great trouble for many people, and if not for the feelings of shame, dirtiness, and sin surrounding the act, it would be possible for anyone to indulge in his or her sexuality as innocently as one indulges one’s appetite for food. The argument from promiscuity in any case neglects the fact that married people are just as capable of using contraceptives as unmarried people. When the consequences of unsafe sex—disease and population growth—are seen as social considerations, conservative efforts to dictate the character of every individual citizen seem laughable. It seems rather better to educate the citizenry on the entirety of the issue—the options for safe sex, how they work, STDs, the urgent need for population management, reproductive health—and let each of us decide how best to act ethically given these important considerations.

Understand I have no objections to those who wish to practice abstinence; it’s not any of my business. I do object to you imposing your cultural and religious taboos upon government policy. I object to the censorship and obscurantism that prudery has imposed upon sex education and health-care workers in places like Manila (during Atienza’s term) and all those that followed suit.

There is another consideration to contraceptives that I think does not receive enough attention. Contraceptives are meant to prevent the egg from ever reaching the sperm, however, in cases where the contraceptives fail to do this, the hormones they release also prevent a fertilized embryo from implanting. Now, I cannot see that we should call an embryo possessed of human DNA as anything other than a member of the human species, and I will leave the debate as to whether a member of the human species is the same as a human being to sharper intellects more suited to splitting such fine hairs. For the sake of argument, I will assume momentarily that the embryo may as well be an actual human.

In my article on abortion I made the point that in most cases where an abortion was sought, it was sought out of necessity. I do not believe that this argument applies to contraceptives. Most women that use contraceptives are not in financially or socially impossible situations.

In that same article, I also broach the idea of a communal burden of responsibility. I think this same issue still holds true to the contraception debate. If you accept the fact that over population places too heavy a load on the environment, economy, and on society in general, then you may as well say that over population leads directly to human suffering and death—not just in the present, but as a lasting legacy. And it doesn’t even matter where you are economically; every human being produces waste and represents a tangible environmental cost.

Can we trade that cost against the termination of embryos that will be required to stem population growth? If we are talking about something that could mean the abolition of civilization as we know it, can we stomach contraception? If over population could mean the eventual extinction of our species, is it worth using contraception then? Those terms may be extreme, ridiculous even; how far can they be reduced before contraception becomes UNACCEPTABLE?

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