The Linacre Quarterly

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What Is Right About the Contra-Life Argument

Against Contraception?

Robert Anderson

To cite this article: Robert Anderson (2010) What Is Right About the Contra-Life Argument Against
Contraception?, The Linacre Quarterly, 77:1, 63-80, DOI: 10.1179/002436310803888925

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1179/002436310803888925

Published online: 18 Jul 2013.

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 Article

What Is Right About the

Contra-Life Argument Against
Contraception?*

Robert D. Anderson, Ph.D.

Dr. Anderson is an associate professor in the Philosophy Department

of Saint Anselm College, Manchester, New Hampshire. He may be rea-
ched at randerso@anselm.edu.

Abstract
The contra-life argument against contraception by Germain Gri-
sez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and William May maintains that
contraception is always and everywhere morally wrong because it
involves a contra-life choice to impede new human life. This article
develops four problems that people might have with the contra-life
argument and then shows that none of those problems undercut the
argument. The most serious problem is that the contra-life argu-
ment seems to fail to show adequately what is wrong with impeding
new human life, and this article neutralizes that problem by show-
ing that choices to impede new human life are wrong because they
involve unreasonable self-preference. Finally, this article shows
that the moral character of contraceptive use for non-contraceptive
reasons is often difficult to determine.

I. Introduction
Most people are perceptive enough to detect the venom in sen-
timents such as “I wish that you had never existed” and “Your parents
should never have made you.” Though they recognize the genuine ill will
being conveyed, they do not take what they recognize to its logical conclu-

* A version of this article was originally presented at the conference “Ethical Is-
sues in Sex and Marriage,” sponsored by the Institute of Bioethics, Franciscan
University, Steubenville, OH, March 2008.

The Linacre Quarterly 77(1) (Feb. 2010): 63–80.

© 2010 by the Catholic Medical Association. All rights reserved.
0024-3639/2010/7701-0007 $.30/page.

February 2010 63
Impeding Life

sion in a condemnation of contraception precisely insofar as contracep-

tion involves a choice against a person’s coming into existence. In “Every
Marital Act Ought to Be Open to New Life: Toward a Clearer Understand-
ing,” Germain Grisez, Joseph Boyle, John Finnis, and William May draw
out this conclusion.1 There they defend the immorality of contraception
always and everywhere in terms of its being a contra-life choice, a choice
akin to homicide but significantly different from it as well.
The non-consequentialist, intention-based argument of Grisez,
Boyle, Finnis, and May goes as follows:
1) Contraception is by definition a contra-life intention, that
is, the intention to impede the coming-to-be of a human
person.
2) Human persons are instantiations of the basic good of hu-
man life.
3) So, the intention to impede the coming-to-be of a human
person is the intention to impede the instantiation of a ba-
sic good.
4) Intending to impede basic goods is always wrong.
5) So, contraception is always wrong.2
This argument against contraception, unlike others, locates the wrong-
ness of contraception in its relation to prospective new human life rather
than in its relation to other goods like marital love or virtuous human
sexual activity. But what should we make of the argument? Much.3 None-
theless, even people sympathetic to the new natural law theory of the
Grisez, Boyle, and Finnis and to their various applications of that theory
to concrete moral problems might find their contra-life argument against
contraception problematic for several reasons and thus could use help in
understanding its meaning and force.
II. Is the Contra-Life Argument Ad Hoc?
First, the contra-life argument might seem to be ad hoc, and thus it
might appear to be merely a desperate effort to defend a moribund moral
claim about something accepted, practiced, and regarded as unproblem-
atic by most everyone in the modern world.4 The contra-life argument
might appear to be ad hoc because it relies on an element in the moral
theory of Grisez, Boyle, and Finnis that looks suspiciously like it was in-
cluded merely to provide a reason to prohibit contraception. That ele-
ment is the claim that, besides harming (or acting against) fundamental
human goods by destroying or damaging them, a third way of harming
them is by impeding (or blocking or preventing) them.5
Though, perhaps Grisez, Boyle, and Finnis do not say as much as
desired about impeding basic goods, the charge that their contra-life ar-

64 Linacre Quarterly
 Anderson

gument is ad hoc because their moral theory is ad hoc certainly fails. The
wrongness of impeding goods is widely recognized. For example, it is
acknowledged in the famous refrain “justice delayed is justice denied.”
Again, it is embodied in legal protections of the negative rights to free-
dom of speech, press, assembly, and religion, protections that are more
that positive law formed by legislative decision and convention. Still
again, everyone is aware of the harm which parents do when they deny
their children the opportunity to form friendships beyond immediate
family members and which bureaucracies do when they require reams
of paperwork, a labyrinth of petty payoffs, or arbitrary hoop-jumping
before marriages or adoptions are allowed. The moral evil involved in
impeding goods is clearly the same as that involved in destroying and
damaging goods: genuine human fulfillment is thereby frustrated.
What counts as impeding? Many things would seem to. Whereas
destroying and damaging instantiations of goods harm what is, imped-
ing them harms what could be. Destroying and damaging are attacks on
what actually exists in some degree of perfection or other. Afterwards,
what was either no longer exists at all or survives only in a diminished
way. In contrast, impeding is an attack on what could be but is not yet.
Such attacks on what could be can take many forms. For example, a good
can be prevented from ever being instantiated in a specific person. Again,
its instantiation can be delayed. Similarly, its instantiation can be made
more difficult to accomplish by the addition of obstacles that must be
overcome first. So also, its instantiation in a higher degree of perfection
can be hindered so that a lower degree must be accepted. Finally, a good
that already exists and could be protected, developed, or perfected can be
blocked from that protection, development, or perfection.
What sort of impeding is contraception? In all likelihood, contra-
ception impedes human life in the first way by preventing permanently
a specific human person from ever coming to be. Every other proposal
is confusion or wishful thinking. For example, though people tell stories
about the transmigration of souls, no good reasons exist to think that
ready-made individual persons predate their conception. Nor are indi-
vidual people blueprints or types capable of being instantiated again and
again. Warren Buffett is a particular —a unique, spatiotemporal instance
of the blueprint human person. There can be no reruns of Warren Buf-
fett. Nor, at least in the normal and natural course of things,6 can the
possible person that is prevented from coming to be now come to be at
some future time. Though people can contracept now and postpone hav-
ing children until a later date, the resulting future children will not be the
same particular children that they would have had.
The last claim requires explanation. The primary reason why par-
ticular people are not, at least in the normal and natural course of things,
postponable is the result of two biological facts. First, at conception,
February 2010 65
Impeding Life

when a particular ovum and a particular sperm unite, a new particular

this is formed. Different particular ova or sperm would result in a differ-
ent, new particular this. The new particular is an identifiable this and an
organically integrated whole. It is distinguishable from all other particu-
lars, unique in space and time, and continuous with the this that every-
body eventually will acknowledge is a particular person. So, even if all
human beings were not (as they are) genetically unique and instead were
identical impressions from the same mold or identical clones of the same
individual, they would still be different particular people. Second, ova
and sperm are short-lived—about twenty-four hours for ova after ovula-
tion, at most twenty-four hours for sperm without favorable conditions
in the female, and at most five days for sperm with favorable conditions
in the female. Given the facts about human individuality, the longevity of
human gametes, and the ability of modern contraceptives to restrict the
causal efficacy of ova or sperm, a person can only conclude that success-
ful contraception eliminates forevermore the possibility of some particu-
lar people ever coming to be.

III. Who Is Harmed by Contraception?

Even if somebody concedes the general point that willfully imped-
ing basic human goods is immoral, that concession immediately leads to
a second difficulty with the contra-life argument: the difference between
who is harmed by contraception and who is harmed by other harming
actions. Whereas other harms are against the goods of actually existing
people, to impede new life is not to act against the good of anyone. No
one is there yet.7
Try as people might to find in contraception harm to the not-yet-
conceived, none can be found. In fact, no harm will ever be found be-
cause harming the not-yet-conceived is as incoherent as benefiting the
not-yet-conceived. To benefit something is to improve it, to make it bet-
ter off than it was before. Since a person did not exist before she came
to exist, she cannot be benefited by being brought into existence. People
can only confer a benefit on someone that already exists.8 Similarly, peo-
ple cannot harm a person unless the person already exists, because to
harm something is to make it worse off than it was before. Since a person
did not exist before she came to exist, she cannot be harmed by not being
brought into existence.
So, if destroying, injuring, and impeding goods are wrong because
they are against the goods of flesh and blood human beings, why is con-
traception wrong even though it is not against the good of anyone? When
Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and May explicitly address this question about
wrong without victims, they make several interesting points. They point
out, for example, that contraception is like homicide inasmuch as both
the choice to impede life and the choice to destroy life are directed at the
66 Linacre Quarterly
 Anderson

future and never at the past or the present.9 Contraception, by definition,

aims to ensure that future possible people have no future life. But ho-
micide, too, denies existing people only their future life. Their past and
present life cannot be taken away since human agents can act neither
retroactively nor instantaneously. Again, they say, “the beginning of our
lives, which contraception perhaps could have prevented but did not, is
continuous with the life by which we are now alive.”10 Also, they main-
tain, “the possible person whose life is prevented is no mere abstraction
but an absolutely unique and unrepeatable individual who would exist if
he or she were welcomed rather than prevented.”11 Though all are inter-
esting points, none of them answers the crucial question: Why is contra-
ception wrong even though it is not against the good of anyone?
Ultimately, Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and May maintain that contra-
ception is wrong, even though it is not against the good of anyone, be-
cause the choice to contracept is a “nonrationally grounded, contra-life
will.”12 By this they mean the following: the inherent value of the good of
human life is a reason to pursue that good in new life, and since no com-
pensating reason exists to impede that good in new life, a person should
never choose to impede new life. Thus, the presence of a reason to pursue
new life and the absence of an adequate reason to impede new life are the
moral grounds that prohibit impeding.13 Though this argument may be
sound, so also the reverse argument may be sound. A person might argue
that since no one is harmed by contraception, no good reason exists to
prohibit contraception, and thus contraception is permissible. According
to this second line of argument, the absence of a reason to prohibit im-
peding new life becomes the moral reason to permit impeding new life.
The problem of contraception comes down to this: Do potential people
and their potential good of life count morally? Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and
May say, “yes.” But others will answer, “unclear” or even “no.”
Perhaps a closer reading of the Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and May con-
tra-life argument would show a way around this impasse. But whatever
that closer reading might reveal, an independent and convincing way to
show the wrongness of impeding new life is available.
Contraceptive choices belong to the unusual class of choices that
are victimless wrongs. Choices to conceive Derek Parfit’s misconceived
baby (a baby that could have been healthy but was conceived willfully
in a certain way so that it would be impaired) and choices to burden
not-yet-existing future generations with conditions severely hostile to
the pursuit of human fulfillment when those generations do exist (such
as ruined financial institutions, political chaos, social injustices, enslave-
ment, a spoiled environment, and the like) are also victimless, and they
are clearly recognized to be wrong. 14 Why, though, are choices to mis-
conceive a baby, burden future generations, or contracept wrong? Since
existing persons are not harmed, the prohibition against willfully harm-
February 2010 67
Impeding Life

ing persons cannot be what makes the choices wrong. Instead, choices
to misconceive a baby, burden future generations, or contracept are
unreasonable (and thus wrong) for a different reason. They are unrea-
sonable because they violate the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you.” The Golden Rule is the ethical principle
that requires us to acknowledge that fundamentally other people are no
different from ourselves, which thus disallows unreasonable self-pref-
erence. Though the self-preference disallowed by the Golden Rule most
obviously extends to the harm and non-assistance of existing people, it
is not limited to what adversely affects existing people. None of us would
want ourselves or people dear to us to have been brought intentionally
into existence with severe impairments (mental retardation, blindness,
dwarfism, Tay-Sachs disease, and the like) or brought intentionally into
a world with conditions hostile to human flourishing. So, we should not
intentionally bring others into existence with such impairments or con-
ditions. Likewise, since we would not want ourselves or people dear to
us never to have existed, we should not intentionally attempt to prevent
others from coming into existence.
The moral problem with the choice to contracept lies precisely in
the choice against a fundamental human good by impeding that good;
and, as a choice to do just that, the moral norm prohibiting contraceptive
choices is exceptionless. Choices against fundamental human goods can
always be avoided by simply refraining to make those choices, and be-
cause choices against fundamental human goods are always instances of
“doing evil,” they always violate the exceptionless, general moral norm:
“we may not do evil that good may come of it.”15
Though the contra-life defense of the prohibition against contra-
ception presumes that human life is a fundamental good, nothing in that
defense entails that the dignity of new human life obligates anyone to
pursue as many new human lives as possible, several new human lives,
or even a single new human life. For human life is only one of the several
fundamental goods also worthy of human pursuit (such as, knowledge,
beauty, friendship, religion, and the like), and people can reasonably de-
vote a lifetime of effort to the realization and perfection of any one of
them or any combination of them. An important part of the construction
of who people are as moral agents lies precisely in their decisions to pur-
sue some fundamental goods but not others, to pursue them in this order
but not that, to pursue them in this many instantiations but not more, to
pursue them to one degree of perfection but not another, and so forth.

IV. How Wrong Is Contraception?

A third difficulty which a person might have with the contra-life
argument of Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and May is that, even if it shows that
contraceptive choices are immoral choices, it might seem to show little.
68 Linacre Quarterly
 Anderson

It might seem to show that, at most, such choices are immoral in a mi-
nor way. Most people probably adhere to an unexamined hierarchy of
moral offenses that puts destroying fundamental goods at the top as the
most serious, damaging fundamental goods at a distant second, and im-
peding fundamental goods at an even more distant third and perhaps
hardly worth mentioning. Accordingly, destroying human life is worse
than injuring it, and injuring it is worse than impeding it. However, it is
doubtful that this hierarchy of moral offenses will survive scrutiny when
human life is the good under attack.
What would make a will set on the erasure of an actual life worse
than one set against its coming to be in the first place? The goods at stake?
But they are the same. The goods at stake in prospective human life are
the same in kind and number as those at stake in actual human life. The
details just are unknown and unknowable. The what-might-have-beens
of people who could have existed but never came to exist are just like
the what-might-have-beens of people who could have not existed but did
come to exist. They are imponderables upon imponderables, and reason
has no access to either void.
However, an imaginative grasp of such imponderables is offered in
Frank Capra’s 1946 film classic It’s a Wonderful Life. After personal ca-
tastrophe drives the self-sacrificing George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) to
profound despair and his suicide try is thwarted, he says to his guardian
angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers), “I wish I’d never been born.”
In response, Clarence grants George his wish, and George is then “given
a great gift” of seeing an alternate reality, namely, what the world would
be like if he had never existed. The sight terrifies George. All the good
that George did is left undone, and all the evil that he kept in restraints
is unleashed. Toward the end of George’s glimpse into his non-existence,
Clarence sums up the experience with, “Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life
touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful
hole, doesn’t he?” The same “awful holes” result from successful con-
traception. Human beings just do not have eyes that can observe those
holes.
People might try in a second way to defend the claim that destroy-
ing and damaging human life are worse than impeding it, and they might
do so by maintaining the general claim that an attack on actual goods as
opposed to an attack on potential goods is what makes destroying and
damaging worse than impeding. However, this general claim seems to be
false. Reflection on what genuinely fulfills people shows that it lies both
in retaining goods already realized and in realizing new potential goods.
The genuine fulfillment that human beings want often is forward-looking
and lies in what might be but is not yet. People routinely do not rest with
the gains in contentment that they already have made but rather pursue
yet greater gains. They often even will sacrifice their todays in hopes of
February 2010 69
Impeding Life

better tomorrows. As people grow older and their tomorrows grow fewer,
they also are saddened by how much remains to be done and will have to
be left undone. In the end, destroying and damaging goods do not seem
to be worse than impeding them. Rather, the three seem to be different,
incommensurable, and unrankable ways of acting against goods.
Still again, to minimize the wrongness of contraception people
might appeal to the fruitless trajectory that most human gametes nat-
urally trace. Accordingly, since an overwhelming proportion of human
germ cells naturally do not develop into anything, the staggering major-
ity of possible people are never realized because of the very biology of hu-
man reproduction. But if most possible people inevitably will not come
to be, then, it might be argued, human prevention of the coming-to-be of
a few possible people would seem to be minimally wrong, if wrong at all.
But surely this argument is unsound. That every living person is doomed
to die some day, guaranteed to suffer in some fashion, and destined to
fall into moral error at some point does nothing to justify person P’s will-
fully killing person Q, causing person R’s suffering, or corrupting per-
son S. So also, that most human gametes are biologically dead ends does
nothing to justify a person’s choice to ensure that some human gametes
are dead ends. What matters morally is what a person chooses to bring
about, not what the world brings about or other people bring about. The
moral story of human agents is told in the first person and not the second
or third person, in what “I choose” and not in what “you do,” “they ac-
complish,” or “the world causes.”16
V. Is the Contra-Life Argument
Contra-Natural Family Planning?
A fourth difficulty with the contra-life argument is that it may seem
to argue too much, namely, not only is contraception wrong but so also
is natural family planning (NFP), the traditionally approved practice of
using various diagnostic techniques to determine female fertility cou-
pled with periodic abstinence in accord with that determination. Indeed,
since many people see no moral difference between avoiding possible
people by means of contraceptives and avoiding them by means of NFP,
the contra-life argument against the former would also seem to work
against the latter.
When Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and May explicitly address this objec-
tion at length,17 they concede that NFP can be chosen with contra-life in-
tent. But they also insist that it can be chosen without that intent, name-
ly, whenever something other than the non-being of a possible person is
the object of choice, such as the avoidance of the burdens that a new baby
would cause. No doubt, contraceptives can also be chosen to avoid the
same burdens, but insofar as the choice to use contraceptives is a choice
to avoid those burdens by means of impeding possible life, the choice is
70 Linacre Quarterly
 Anderson

contra-life. In contrast, in NFP the choice to avoid the burdens of new

life is carried out by abstaining from sex and thus by impeding nothing.
While Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and May convincingly demonstrate the
moral difference between contraception and NFP chosen without con-
tra-life intent, are they also correct when they maintain that NFP can be
chosen with contra-life intent? Their example of such a choice is a couple
that deliberates about various means of contraception, weighs their ad-
vantages and disadvantages, and then resolves on NFP as their preferred
method of contraception. Certainly, a person adequately ignorant and
confused could choose NFP as a contraceptive, just as historically peo-
ple adequately ignorant and confused have chosen to wear amulets or
to douche with Coca-Cola as means of contraception. When a person is
attentive to the precise behavioral character of NFP, however, choosing
it as a means of contraception does not seem to be possible. Abstinence
from sex at critical times is why NFP does not bring about new life, and
abstinence is an inaction. But inactions cannot be chosen as a means to
do anything, neither to destroy nor to injure nor to impede, since not-
doing is not doing. Thus, no one clearheaded on the matter can choose
abstinence from sex as a means of impeding new life.
No doubt, NFP can still be motivated badly and thus be immoral.
Perhaps the use of NFP by some people violates a positive obligation to
pursue new life. Or perhaps the use of NFP by some people is indefensible
because they have indefensible attitude toward the inherent dignity of hu-
man life, such as “people are a cancer on the earth” or “a baby begotten
with person R is a baby not worth having.” But even when NFP is badly
motivated, it still does not become a contra-life or contraceptive choice.
VI. Can Contraceptives Be Used
for Non-Contraceptive Purposes?
Although the contra-life argument is sound and captures the prima-
ry and essential wrongness of contraception,18 the morality of contracep-
tive use is not exhausted by this argument since contraceptives can be,
and regularly are, used with intentions other than contra-life intentions.
In such cases, the contraceptive consequence is unintended, and thus the
argument for the moral prohibition against the intention to contracept
does not apply. Instead, another line of argument is needed, a line that
sorts out a person’s responsibility for unintended effects (or side effects)
which result when carrying out what is intended. One line of argument
which can sort out this responsibility is the principle of double effect, a
principle with a long tradition in Catholic moral philosophy. However,
the appeal to the principle of double effect introduces several problems.
One problem lies in how to formulate the principle of double ef-
fect properly. Though the principle has been put differently by different

February 2010 71
Impeding Life

people, its formulation is best understood in terms of two conditions that

must be met for good actions19 with bad side effects to be permissible.
The first condition is that the bad side effects must be genuinely unin-
tended. A person can in no way intend the bad side effects as part of what
the person attempts to accomplish when the person acts. The bad side ef-
fects cannot be the desired end of an action or the means chosen to real-
ize the desired end. The second condition requires that accepting the bad
side effects is fully reasonable, that is, accepting them violates no other
moral norms. Though reason can recognize many moral norms that can
be violated when bad side effects are accepted, this second condition is
open-ended because room always exists for the discovery of moral norms
not yet identified. So, for example, though the deaths of people ejected
from overcrowded lifeboats can be unintended, their deaths are unrea-
sonable to accept when the method of selecting who to eject is unfair,
when a creative effort to minimize or to avoid altogether their deaths was
not made, when all survival efforts are futile because all people involved
are hopelessly fated to perish, when the people remaining in the lifeboats
assumed the risks inherent in sea voyages whereas the people ejected did
not, when the people remaining in the lifeboats are morally accountable
for the disaster that put people in lifeboats to begin with, and so forth.20
Another problem lies in how to justify the principle of double ef-
fect. First, the moral significance of the distinction between intended and
unintended consequences causes problems.21 Second, why accepting bad
side effects can ever be permissible is also unclear and needs defend-
ing.22 A person might think that perhaps the moral rule against willing
evil as an end or means should also extend to accepting bad side effects.
If the rule is extended thus, then bringing about bad side effects will also
be impermissible. A third problem lies in applying the principle of dou-
ble effect in concrete cases such as the present case of contraceptive use
without a contra-life intention. Consider three cases.
Case One
Case one is contraceptive use solely for medical treatment of vari-
ous ailments.23 The medical use of contraceptives is not morally prob-
lematic until something else is added like: “and the couple wants to con-
tinue to have sexual intercourse.” Call this case: sex contracepted for
medical purposes. Now, though the contraceptive use is motivated by
other-than-contra-life intentions, there exists the possibility of a contra-
ceptive effect as a side effect of the contraceptive use.
A person might think that, since abstinence from sex is permissible
and sex contracepted for medical purposes is similar to abstinence in
a couple of ways, sex contracepted for medical purposes is permissible
as well. Sex contracepted for medical purposes is similar to abstinence
with regard to the net result of either choice: some future possible people

72 Linacre Quarterly
 Anderson

never come to be. Both choices are also similar with regard to how the
net result is (or at least can be) an unintended consequence. However,
neither similarity suffices to make sex contracepted for medical purpos-
es permissible. Same net results are ultimately irrelevant in intention-
centered ethics, and this fact was pointed out earlier when the dead-end
path of most human gametes was examined. That we all ultimately end
up dead, for example, does not in any way lessen the moral importance
of whether some of us die naturally and others among us are murdered.
So also, that some consequences of actions and inactions (like absti-
nence) are unintended is not sufficient to make them permissible. Con-
sider Dirk, who is a beach lover, excellent swimmer, and dermatologist.
One weekend, Dirk decides to stay home in order to rest and recover from
a hard week at his practice. Had he gone to the beach instead, he could
and would have saved a neglected, small, Germanic child who drowned.
The non-rescue and death of the child is an unintended consequence of
his decision to stay home. On another weekend Dirk does decide to go
to the beach, and an opportunity arises to rescue a second, neglected,
small child from drowning. When the opportunity arises, however, Dirk
is on his cell phone counseling a female patient about a rash. He hears
the child calling for help, notices that it is merely a Hispanic child who is
in trouble, and decides to continue with his counseling. The death of this
second child is also an unintended consequence. But, whereas Dirk is
probably on good ground morally when the first child dies, he is seriously
morally compromised when the second child dies. The crucial difference
between the two scenarios is the reasonableness of Dirk’s accepting the
bad side effects. In the first scenario, the child’s death is reasonable to
accept because spending all his spare time on beaches in preparation for
children in need of a water rescue would be extremely burdensome for
Dirk. In the second scenario, though, Dirk’s actions are unreasonable for
several reasons. Rashes are trivial compared to death. Rashes are not ur-
gent problems, whereas drowning is. The limitation of rescues to people
whose ethnicity Dirk prefers is arbitrary and thus unfair.
Although the similarity between abstinence and sex contracepted
for medical purposes does not make the latter permissible, sex con-
tracepted for medical purposes is permissible if one can show that the
contraceptive side effect is fully reasonable to accept. The contraceptive
side effect probably is not reasonable to accept when a trivial aspect of
health, such as acne control, is the medical purpose for contraceptive
use. However, when a more serious health goal is sought such as treat-
ment of ovarian cysts, the reasonableness of contraceptive use that also
impedes new human life is more plausible. Whether that contraceptive
use is indeed reasonable depends on the answer to at least two difficult
questions. First, is a substantive good at stake in contracepted sex (as
opposed to the relatively trivial goods like physical pleasure and satisfac-

February 2010 73
Impeding Life

tion of sexual desire) comparable to the good of human life that is imped-
ed as a side effect? A person might propose as such a good, for example,
marital community, whose bonds sex might be thought to strengthen
based on evidence like firsthand accounts of the phenomenology of sex,
or physiological studies of the effects of oxytocin stimulated by orgasm
in forming and maintaining social attachments, or behavioral studies of
Bonobo apes whose peaceful ways seem to be linked to their sexual activ-
ity. However, if no substantive good can be identified, sex contracepted
for medical purposes is unreasonable and impermissible. An alternative
course of action is still available, though: contraceptive use coupled with
abstinence.24 Second, even if a substantive good can be found in con-
tracepted sex, are people who pursue that good by engaging in sex re-
quired nonetheless to forgo the use of contraceptives and to accept grave
burdens (like the complications of ovarian cysts) in order to avoid the
possible prevention of the coming-to-be of a new human life? Neither
question is easily answered.25
Case Two
Case two is contraceptive use in rape cases, not with the intention
of preventing prospective life, but rather with the intention of prevent-
ing the further invasion of the victim’s body (especially her ovum) by
the rapist’s bodily substances (his sperm).26 Call this case: contraceptive
use ot prevent the further invasion of the rape victim’s body. The prob-
lems with this case are twofold. First, just as in the previous case of sex
contracepted for medical purposes, the reasonableness of accepting the
contraceptive side effect of the use of contraceptives in rape cases is un-
clear. Perhaps accepting the contraceptive effect is not fully reasonable
either because it reveals an arbitrary preference for the rape victim’s own
psychological well-being over the possible instantiation of a new human
life or because it too violates the moral requirements of the Golden Rule.
Second, is the intention of preventing further invasion an accurate de-
scription of why a rape victim might use contraceptives after rape? That
anybody genuinely cares about microscopic invasions of bodily parts or
deposits of seminal fluid in body cavities, except to the extent that such
invasions and deposits threaten with diseases or unwanted pregnancies,
is doubtful. If people do not genuinely care about such invasions and
deposits except to the extent that health or prospective human life are at
stake, then the intention of preventing further invasion collapses into an
intention either to prevent disease or to contracept.
Case Three
Case three is the use of contraceptives when a person’s intention is
not directed at a separate non-contraceptive effect (medical treatment
or defense against continued bodily invasion) that contraceptives can
cause. Instead, intention is directed at preventing an aspect of a possible

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 Anderson

person, an aspect that is other than but joined with the possible person’s
very self. Can people honestly intend to use contraceptives, not insofar
as they prevent the coming-to-be of a possible person, but rather insofar
as they prevent the coming-to-be of something else undesirable, such as,
a health threatening pregnancy, an emotionally overwhelming situation,
financial problems, a major disruption of other worthwhile practical
projects, or the like? People apparently can. While what burden in these
situations is (or will be) a human person, people need not be directing
their will against the person’s coming-to-be either as an end in itself or
as a means to avoid what burdens. Rather, people can direct their will
immediately and only against the burdensomeness. Call this case: sex
contracepted to avoid burdens.
Many people, no doubt, will regard this sort of subtlety as mere
sophistry or rationalization.27 Distinguishing the intention to prevent
new life from the intention to avoid the burdens of new life might ap-
pear simply to be an unintelligible distinction, and such distinction mak-
ing might seem to be the flaw to which moral theories emphatic about
the importance of intentions are prone. In fact, though, the subtlety and
complexity of moral theory arises from and mirrors the subtlety and
complexity of human beings. If anyone thinks the workings of the hu-
man heart are not subtle and complex, then think again.
Indeed, part of moral maturity lies in recognizing that others can
be what we are not and others can intend what we cannot. Others can
be astoundingly stupid. Or they can be far more knowledgeable than us.
Or they can have beliefs different from our own. Or, even if they have
beliefs like our own, they can simply intend what we do not or even can-
not. Whereas modern male doctors can examine naked female patients
without exploitative purposes, male doctors in the Victorian Era were
not believed to be so capable. Again, whereas some (like the Vietnamese
Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc and the Iranian doctor Homa Darabi)
can immolate themselves in political protest and some (like the Chinese
artist Sheng Qi) can cut off their own fingers for the same reason, many
others can scarcely find such choices intelligible. Just how exactly, many
people might wonder, is self-immolation or self-mutilation supposed to
further a political cause? Still again, whereas some people willfully shoot
others in the head or willfully stop their beating hearts and breathing
lungs without intending death, other people do the same but do intend
death. In the end, that intentions are highly malleable, and can vary in
thin but morally relevant ways, cannot be denied.
Even worse, acknowledging the legitimacy of subtle intentions
might seem to open the floodgates of moral evil. After all, if contracep-
tives can be used with the intention to avoid what is burdensome about
possible people and not with the intention to impede their coming into
existence, then in consistency cannot we also kill already existing peo-
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Impeding Life

ple, not with the intention of ending their existence, but only with the
intention of ending their burdensomeness? Thus, for example, cannot
the disabled, the aged, and others who drain societal resources also be
killed in the name of relief from the hardships they cause? Indeed, some-
times we can and do justifiably treat people as burdens to be unloaded,
even when doing so means their certain doom. For instance, the example
mentioned earlier of ejecting some people from overcrowded lifeboats
so that other people can survive is precisely an instance of aiming to
end the burdensomeness of people while not aiming to end their lives.
Again, the abandonment of the injured, ill, weak, and unable during re-
treats, migrations, expeditions, and evacuations is also aimed at unload-
ing what burdens and not at anyone’s harm.28 In such cases, the victims’
doom need not be chosen as an end or means. Rather, it is accepted as a
side effect of what is chosen. But, that choosing to unload or to avoid the
burdensomeness of other people is sometimes justified does nothing to
show that it always, or even often, is justified. In fact, both relieving the
burdensomeness of actual people by doing what also entails their death
and preventing the coming-to-be of possible burdens by doing what also
entails preventing the coming-to-be of possible people must satisfy the
demanding second condition of the principle of double effect. Accepting
the bad side effect (other people’s death or the prevention of the com-
ing-to-be of possible people) must be fully reasonable to accept because
no other moral norms are violated when it is accepted. The same ques-
tions already raised regarding the reasonableness of sex contracepted for
medical purposes will also apply to sex contracepted to avoid burdens.

VII. Conclusion
Whether or not the contraceptive effect is fully reasonable to accept
as a side effect in the three cases examined (medical treatment, defense
against bodily invasion by a rapist’s sperm, and avoidance of what is bur-
densome about new people) has not, of course, been shown. The last sec-
tion does outline how the moral reasoning about these cases goes, and
it does show that moral clarity about these cases is not easily achieved.
In addition, the moral question about contraceptive uses motivated by
non-contraceptive purposes has shifted. The question is not, “Do those
uses violate an absolute prohibition against the intentional impeding of
a fundamental human good?” but rather, “Do those uses violate moral
norms for accepting bad side effects?”
This shift in the moral reasoning about contraceptive use for non-
contraceptive purposes captures well the human experience. First, the
moral reasoning is complicated and difficult because life is the same way.
It is difficult to be a human being. Doing what one knows one should do
is one difficulty, and knowing what one should do is another difficulty.
Second, the moral reasoning makes use of subtle distinctions because

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 Anderson

people are subtle. How many Catholic (and perhaps some non-Catholic)
couples struggle with their sexuality and fertility is an example of human
subtlety. Many Catholic couples are deeply committed to the good of new
human life. They have had two, four, six, or eight children. But maybe
they are exhausted physically, psychically, financially, or in some other
way. Perhaps natural family planning has not worked for them, and its
failure has discouraged them and added to the stresses in their marriage.
Perhaps too often, when providing for their children, they have tasted
the disappointments and indignities of cheap bad food, secondhand
clothes and toys, dependence on others to meet simple needs, and doing
hurriedly and poorly most everything they do. However exactly many
Catholic couples’ struggles are described, their struggles are in many in-
stances with the burdensomeness of the many new lives which they have
already created and with the prospect of still more burdens if they create
more new lives. What the couples oppose when they contracept, if they
contracept, is an inseparable aspect of new human life and not the good
of new human life itself.
While the moral status of some contraceptive uses is unclear, the
moral status of other contraceptive uses is clear. The contra-life argu-
ment concludes that contraceptive use with contraceptive intentions is
impermissible, and the argument is sound and forceful. It shows that the
choice to prevent the coming-to-be of new human life is an unreasonable
choice and impermissible without exceptions.

References
1
In The Teaching of “Humanae Vitae”: A Defense (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1988), 35–116, reprinted from The Thomist 52 (1988): 365–426. All cita-
tions here are to the former edition. See also Joseph Boyle, “Contraception and
Natural Family Planning,” in Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader, ed.
Janet Smith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993) , 407–417, and which first
appeared in International Review of Natural Family Planning 44 (1980): 309–
315; Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 2, Living a Christian Life
(Quincy, IL: Franciscan Press, 1993), 506–519; and John Finnis, Moral Abso-
lutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic Univer-
sity of America Press, 1991), ch. 4.
2
For an interesting examination of the heuristic analogies that have been used
in contra-life arguments, see Lawrence Masek, “Improving the Analogies in
Contralife Arguments: The Consistency of Catholic Teachings about Regulating
Births,” The Heythrop Journal 49 (2008): 442–452.
3
For the opposite answer of “not much,” see Steven Long, “The False Theory
Undergirding Condomitic Exceptionalism: A Response to William F. Murphy
Jr. and Rev. Martin Rhonheimer,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly
8 (2008): 709–731; Janet Smith, Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later (Wash-
February 2010 77
Impeding Life

ington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), app. IV, 340–370;
Martin Rhonheimer, “Contraception, Sexual Behavior, and Natural Law: Philo-
sophical Foundation of the Norm of Humanae Vitae,” Linacre Quarterly 56.2
(May 1989): 20–57; R. A. Connor, “Contraception and the Contralife Will,” Lin-
acre Quarterly 57.4 (November 1990): 78–93; and Kevin Rickert, “Is Contra-
ception Contralife? A Critique of Grisez et al.,” Lyceum 4 (Spring 1992): 19–37.
4
For statistics and analysis of contraceptive use in the United States, see Jennifer
Ohlendorf and Richard Fehring, “The Influence of Religiosity on Contraceptive
Use among Roman Catholic Women in the United States,” Linacre Quarterly 74
(2007): 135–144; and Richard Fehring and Andrea Matovina Schlidt, “Trends in
Contraceptive Use among Catholics in the United States: 1988–1995,” Linacre
Quarterly 68 (2001): 170–185.
5
John Finnis, Joseph Boyle Jr., and Germain Grisez, Nuclear Deterrence, Mo-
rality and Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 286. See also Ger-
main Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles (Chi-
cago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), ch. 8, questions G and H, 215–222; and
John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980),
118–125.
6
That is, apart from laboratories, technicians, cryopreservation, and the like.
7
Of course, the two having sex are there, and contraception might be against the
good of one, either, or both of them. But any argument against contraception
that locates its wrongness in harm done to interpersonal love, virtuous sexual
conduct, or something else about the couple is not a contra-life argument, and
the contra-life argument is being critically analyzed here.
8
Joseph Spoerl has convincingly argued this point as an essential premise in
his argument against in vitro fertilization in “Making Laws on Making Babies:
Ethics, Public Policy, and Reproductive Technology,” The American Journal of
Jurisprudence 45 (2000): 94–107. Compare with Derek Parfit, Reasons and
Persons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), app. G.
9
Grisez et al., “Every Marital Act,” 61.
10
Ibid., 66.
11
Ibid.
12
Ibid., 62, 65–68.
13
See ibid., 47–60.
“On Doing the Best for Our Children,” in Ethics and Population, ed. Michael D.
14

Bayles (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Co., 1976), 100–115.

15
See, for example, Finnis, Moral Absolutes, 54–55.
16
For more on the first-person perspective in morality, see Christopher Tollef-
sen, “Is a Purely First Person Account of Human Action Defensible?” Ethical
Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2006): 441–660.
17
Grisez et al., “Every Marital Act,” 81–92.
18
Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and May’s second argument against contra-life choices
(ibid., 62–63), namely, that any baby which comes about because of unsuccess-
ful contraception would always come about unwanted and thus unjustly, would
seem to be defeated so long as a person had the appropriate, and apparently co-
78 Linacre Quarterly
 Anderson

herent, conditional intention: “though I do not want the children that contracep-
tion prevents, I do want and welcome any that are brought about if contracep-
tion fails.” Such a conditional intention is different from the intention to prevent
all possible babies from coming to be and to accept those that nonetheless do
come to be, and the former conditional intention is not susceptible to their criti-
cism of the latter intention.
19
That is, actions that are morally good prior to consideration of their bad side
effects but that might turn out to be morally bad when their bad side effects are
taken into consideration.
20
See my own “Boyle and the Principle of Double Effect,” The American Journal
of Jurisprudence 52 (2007): 259–272, and the literature cited therein for how
to formulate the principle of double effect properly and for moral norms which
determine the reasonableness or unreasonableness of accepting unintended
consequences. See also: Joseph Boyle, “The Moral Meaning and Justification of
the Doctrine of Double Effect: A Response to Robert Anderson,” The American
Journal of Jurisprudence 53 (2008): 69–84.
21
For a persuasive defense of the moral significance of this distinction, see: Gri-
sez, Boyle, and Finnis, “Direct and Indirect: A Reply to Critics of Our Action
Theory,” The Thomist 65 (2001): 1–44, esp. sec. I; or Finnis, Boyle, and Grisez,
Nuclear Deterrence, 288–294.
22
See my own “The Moral Permissibility of Accepting Bad Side Effects,” Ameri-
can Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 83 ( 2009): 255–266, and the literature
cited therein for how to make this defense.
23
Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and May refer to this use of contraceptives at Grisez et
al., “Every Marital Act,” 40–41.
24
Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and May discuss the merits and shortcomings of absti-
nence at ibid., 69–80.
25
When contraceptives (condoms) are used to avoid the spread of disease, a
third question arises: Is sexual intercourse that employs condoms even sexual
intercourse? If not, the sexual behavior might be morally impermissible on still
other grounds. See Germain Grisez, “Moral Questions on Condoms and Disease
Prevention,” The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 8 (2008): 471–476;
and Janet Smith, “The Morality of Condom Use by HIV-Infected Spouses,” The
Thomist 70 (2006): 27–69.
26
For Grisez, Boyle, Finnis, and May’s defense of this case, see Grisez et al., “Ev-
ery Marital Act,” 68–69.
27
This is one of the three common, but unconvincing, criticisms leveled at the
new natural law theory’s insistence that intentionality is at the heart of moral
actions. The theory, according to the first criticism, allows the disingenuous re-
description of a person’s intentions in such a way that the person can say she is
“really doing” just about anything (see, for example, Steven Long, “The False
Theory,” 714 note 10 and 724). The second criticism claims that disingenuously
redescribed intentions lead to outrageous conclusions of the form “even such-
and-such would be permissible” (see, for example, ibid., 722 note 23, where Ste-
ven Long says it would be permissible even “to burn a human person to death
because one wishes to light up the darkness”). While some concrete conclusions

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Impeding Life

of the new natural law theory might indeed offend the sensibilities of critics,
what offends their sensibilities is not equivalent to the morally outrageous. The
new natural law theory has plenty of resources to condemn what truly is mor-
ally outrageous. However, critics are correct in pointing out that there are limits
to what people can intend. Critics just misidentify those limits, thinking that
intentions are necessarily limited by physical behavior, natural processes, causal
structures, outcomes, and the like. Limitations on the intentions of moral agents
include at least the following. First, no moral agent can intend to do what she
believes is impossible to do (unless perhaps she is confused about or forgetful of
her beliefs). I cannot intend to contracept by means of incantations when I be-
lieve that incantations are complete hooey. Second, no moral agent can intend to
do what she believes is impossible for her to do (unless perhaps she is confused
about or forgetful of her beliefs). I cannot intend to quit smoking if I believe that
quitting is impossible for me. Until I think there is some possibility of my quit-
ting and hope is rekindled, I cannot choose to quit. Third, every moral agent’s
intentions are limited by the demands of truthfulness. What she could intend
but does not, what she (or anyone else) says she intends, how she (or anyone
else) describes her intentions, or what others would be intending were they do-
ing the same thing physically that she is doing physically does not decide what
her true intentions are. What she is actually thinking and willing at the time of
action decides the truth of the matter. Fourth, every moral agent’s intentions
are limited by the demands of sanity. If she fails to meet those demands, she
is insane and fails to be a moral agent. For example, if I genuinely intend (not
just imagine, daydream, or wish) that the next k which I type brings about the
immediate reconstitution of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, I have
lost my grip on reality, am insane, and cease to be a moral agent. Fifth, the com-
plexity of some practical projects excludes the possibility that moral agents have
certain intentions and narrows tightly the range of possible intentions. No one,
for example, can build a space shuttle with the intention of building a toaster.
The space shuttle has millions of parts that interrelate in critical ways. The space
shuttle is the most complicated machine ever built. If someone builds a space
shuttle, then she was intending to build a space shuttle or something much like a
space shuttle. The third common criticism of the new natural law theory is that it
fails to agree adequately with the thought of Aquinas or the Thomistic tradition.
However, that criticism, even if true, is merely an appeal to authority, the weak-
est of philosophical reasons for anything.
28
Obviously, some people can be badly motivated and can intend the deaths of
the people ejected or abandoned. The point, though, is that other people do not
intend those deaths, and the principle of double effect applies to those people
and their choices.

80 Linacre Quarterly