Sunday, February 28, 2016

Rape and Contraception

Is rape an exception?




Necessarily . . .











Warning: the following discussion may get slightly gross.


















But it's still dangerous.


By a pope.


  1. In your argument for the opposing side: “blocking conception is… intrinsically bad”
    I have denied this, and still deny it.

    “There is no principled difference between attempting to block the penetration of the rapist and attempting to block (say) the continued progress of his sperm.”
    This is right, and shows by example the reason I deny that blocking conception is intrinsically bad. At no point do you give a real reason to disbelieve this - you only suggest that the difference in time is morally relevant.

    “After a rape is completed, one may interrupt the rape.”
    You absolutely can, in the relevant sense. This is why when the wife uses the morning after pill, her sexual act the previous night is made contraceptive. The distance in time is an illusion; it’s not morally relevant.

    You repeat that “contraception is intrinsically evil” but what you seem to mean by “contraception” is really a set of physical facts: there is physically, a sex act, and then there is something which prevents generation. It LOOKS the same, physically, as a husband and wife sinfully contracepting. So you conlucde there can be no moral difference. But I say that’s a mistake. If the woman is not choosing any sexual behavior, then she cannot be choosing any disordered sexual behavior. And that’s the difference, it’s in the will, it’s purely moral difference.

  2. The “There is no principled difference between attempting to block the penetration of the rapist and attempting to block (say) the continued progress of his sperm" is my imagined opponent's argument, not mine. I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I just added an "(again, so goes the argument)" thing to it.

    1. Right, I understood that - I’m agreeing with your imagined opponent. I don't think you’ve shown a good reason that position of his is wrong.

  3. To your paragraphs:

    1. Then what IS intrinsically wrong, according to you?

    2. I don't think it is a difference in time per se. It is a difference in blocking the rape versus blocking something else (that may be a result of the rape but still).

    3. With respect, that's just silly. I'm sorry but it is. If a rape has occurred, you can't then interrupt it.

    4. I think I disagree. If elephants used condoms (without having any idea what they were doing, obviously) that would still be contraception. That would say little about their moral culpability (since they had no idea what they were doing) but it wouldn't change the fact. But you're right that intentions do matter. The woman in the example isn't choosing sexual activity, but she is choosing to frustrate the purpose of the sexual activity that has been forcibly initiated with her. As awful as it may sound to some, that's wrong. Or to put it another way with another example, if I am simply handed a baby (without asking for it) I still may not kill it.

    1. 1. Disordered sexual acts are intrinsically evil.

      2/3. The problem is the word “rape.” It is too narrow and too broad. I’m saying the rape (= the rapist’s sexual act) is interrupted in precisely the same sense that the wife interrupts the sexual act of her husband and herself by taking the morning-after pill afterwards.

      To say it again differently: In the same way that there is no moral difference between the wife convincing her husband to pull out, and the wife taking an emergency contraceptive the next day, there is likewise no moral difference between the woman forcing her rapist to pull out, and the raped woman taking an emergency contraceptive the next day.

      In the first case, either is contraception; either are evil. In the second case, neither is contraception; neither is evil.

      4. This whole discussion is about the moral act, the sin, of contraception. Animals are incapable of moral acts and sins. We can speak about the biological function of “contraception”—I have avoided this carefully because it confuses the discussion to use a second definition of the word—and in THAT SENSE, certainly any use of an emergency contraceptive is contraception. Even an ant could use contraception in this sense. So that’s very plainly not the definition relevant to the kind of moral judgment the Church rightly makes.

      But you’re equivocating freely between the two definitions. The biological function is not itself an act. Moral analysis doesn’t enter into it.

      You can have the sin without the biological function, say if you attempt to use the contraceptive but fail, or you use something you wrongly believe to be a contraceptive.

      The case of the woman forcing her rapist to pull out is certainly a case of the biological function of contraception. But it is just as certainly not the moral evil of contraception. It would be better if there were two different words.


      This is just nuts! You’re quite right, she’s frustrating the purpose—and that’s perfectly good to do! If her husband walks in and stops the rapist—is he guilty of contraception as well? He’s frustrated the natural purpose of the act!

    2. I said: “It would be better if there were two different words.”
      Earlier I was calling the biological function of contraception “preventing pregnancy.” That works well enough.

    3. Frustrating God's or the natural law's purpose, not the rapist's purpose. And of course you have the right to resist rape, as was clearly stated, but in doing so you're not intending to contracept, nor are you using contraception as a means to effect some other result.

      When you take a pill to prevent conception, you're intending contraception, or you're using contraception as a necessary means to effect something else. Calling it "self-defense" doesn't change that fact, just as calling abortion "self-defense," even after rape, doesn't make it permissible.

    4. This is not recognizable as a reply to my last comment. You’ve simply ignored the distinctions and arguments I made. I can only urge you to reread it.

    Beautiful little girl said by the mother herself to be the result of rape. Good comes of evil. God has His plans. Who are we to employ our hocus-pocus after the generative act is completed, even if it is not consensual?

    1. This is total foolishness. Of course God brings good from evil. No evil is ever permitted by God otherwise. To be consistent, you must also affirm that women should never resist rape at all—not before, during, or after. That in fact no one may ever resist any evil, whether against themselves or anyone else.

    2. It is a fact that under certain circumstances it would be in a woman's best interests NOT to resist rape. If she knows she risks a severe beating for example she may do her best to stay calm and not resist.

      This is not the same as resisting any evil. You are extrapolating the principle way out to an opposite pole.

    3. Thanks for the link, Sandpiper. I was not aware of that story. And I think you put the general argument well. Being against the "hocus-pocus" means that one is taking Catholic teaching seriously, not that one is against resisting rape or in favor of being passive in the face of evil or whatever.


    I think this is where Nicholas (and Janet Smith, by the way) have the best of the discussion.

    The intrinsic evil is the contradiction between the (willed) sex act and the contraceptive. The UN-willed sex act brings licit self-defense into the argument.

    1. correction:

      "The intrinsic evil is the contradiction between the (willed) sex act and ?USE OF the contraceptive."

    2. The result of contraception in cases of willed acts, and un-willed acts is the same. That sameness is what rules here - not the willing or unwilling of the act.

      Your argument can lead to the position that abortion is ok if it is the result of rape. What's the difference between stopping a pregnancy after rape by using something to prevent conception, and getting rid of the product of the conception later?

      Surely contraception is contraception in the ACT and the INTENT no matter what the circumstances. I do it (act of stopping conception) because (intent) I was raped and don't want to get pregnant. Pretty clear.

      When God made His laws, He perceived every single circumstance and excuse we could possibly encounter - yet He still made His laws. Is it possible that God did not foresee rape? Did He not foresee the development of drugs that might 'help' us out of these messes?

    3. 1) Remember that for an act to be immoral, INTENTION is required!

      2) Your argument can lead to the position that abortion is ok if it is the result of rape

      No it cannot.

  6. Oakes, I’m a big fan of your site, and I have been for some time, but I must disagree with you here. I think you’re imputing a moral value to sexual acts outside of wedlock that does not exist.
    Let us agree on the following Catholic teachings, which I summarize here in grossly over-simplified form – and forgive me if I, too, get “slightly gross”:

    1) God wills that married couples should perfect their union through acts of sexual intercourse that are fully open to new life. Where married couples engage in acts that thwart that openness (e.g., use of contraceptive devices, engagement in deliberately infertile activities), they sin.

    2) God wills that human beings should not be murdered, irrespective of how they were conceived. Actions that inflict such murder (e.g., surgical abortions; use of abortifacient drugs) are sinful.

    3) All consensual sexual contact outside of marriage is sinful.

    4) All non-consensual sexual contact is sinful.

    But you appear to be entertaining a fifth thought that sits well outside of Catholic thought. I summarize what I take to be your position thus:

    “Anytime a woman has any kind of sexual contact with a man – be it her husband or not, be it consensual or not – she must be fully open to new life. To close off such openness is to sin.”

    I disagree. God wills only that a woman be open to new life WITH HER HUSBAND. A woman (or, for that matter, a man!) is under no obligation at all to be open to the possibility of new life with anyone outside the marriage. Any sexual conduct with someone other than one’s spouse is inherently sinful (although in the case of rape, the sin in question is obviously not the victim’s), and thus it is meaningless to speak of whether anyone ought to be open to new life in such a circumstance. There is no “natural law purpose” to inherently sinful sexual acts. The very concept is an oxymoron. To hold otherwise is to embrace the absurd position that rape WITHOUT use of contraception is somehow less sinful than rape WITH use of contraception!

    Now, with that said, murder remains murder, and thus abortion is never licit except when necessary to save the life of the mother, etc. This is true even for children conceived under illicit circumstances. But we derive that rule from the dignity and ontology of the child, not from any sanctified status imputed to sexual acts outside of marriage. It may well be that a sinful sexual act brings forth good in the form of a human life, but as Nicolas Escalona wisely observed upthread, it is no defense to evil that good may come of it.

    I understand and respect your desire to put all contraception beyond the pale of Catholic thought. But I invite you to consider that the touchstone of Catholic reasoning here is openness to new life within marriages. Catholic rejection of contraception flows from that idea, not the other way around.

    1. Thanks for your reply, Lincoln. I might have put it slightly differently but I think you adequately sum up two of the possible opposed positions. But I think that far from being "outside the tradition of Catholic thought, "my" position is the longstanding philosophical position of the Church.

      I'm not going to argue for that here, but it probably deserves a separate post. Among other things, it relies upon distinctions between "sinful," "intrinsically sinful," "disordered," "intrinsically disordered," and so on.

      But to make one just one claim: yes, it is indeed the case that the Church believes that contraception is intrinsically evil both inside and outside of marriage. Obviously if it didn't believe that, then the rape case would be easy.

      I owe you some sources or citations. If I'm right, they shouldn't be difficult to find. :)

  7. I welcome any correction you would care to offer. My admittedly cursory review of the relevant materials (to include the CCC) indicates that Church teaching in this regard is always framed in terms of marital acts (or, if you prefer, "conjugal" acts) and the marital bond. To be sure, some church thinkers have articulated anthropological harms that may ensue from the widespread use of contraception, inside or outside of marriage. These arguments have obvious merit, but they do not really inform the question of whether contraception is an inherent evil with regard to non-marital acts. Moreover, the anthropological harms discussed do not really apply for the very limited purposes discussed here. It is hard to believe that a rape victim's (non-abortifacient) use of the morning after pill will lead to the dimunition of the "reverence due to a woman," as Paul VI might put it.

    And let me be clear: I agree that contraception is an intrinsic evil as it pertains to the acts of married couples. I understand myself to be arguing in favor of orthodoxy here, not against it.

    But I could be wrong. It happened once in 1989. Cite away!

  8. @A Daughter of Mary, impressive, plain, simple and common sense argument.