In society today, and even among Catholics, the use of artificial contraception is common practice. Although reasons for its use vary widely, one of the main reasons is a new understanding of sexuality that has been developed since the middle of the 20th Century. Rather than seeing sex as primarily procreative in nature, it has now been more closely tied to an individual’s wants and desires. This is due to the evolution of an understanding of sexuality in modern society as something that is not simply a conjugal, or marital, activity. “Sex” must be addressed at a more basic level, taking into account one’s sex and gender, sexual orientation, sexual experiences, enjoyment, and even arousal.[1] Although this expansion of understanding has led to a greater appreciation for sexuality’s various facets, it has also given the activity itself a different teleological end. It has become simply a means of “feeling good” in order to satisfy the sexual appetite.[2] This is an effect of the culture that has been instrumental in the use of artificial contraception among Catholics today, which is based in the philosophical underpinnings of Western society and which culminated in the mid-20th Century with the resistance and rejection of Catholic moral teaching
For the average Catholic, “sex” is about the pleasure that is received and the attractiveness of another, be it physical or behavioral.[3] In fact, a recent study showed that reasoning for sexual intercourse among the general population usually fell into four main categories: physical, goal-based, emotional, and insecurity-based.[4] What all of these have in common is their focus on the self, where the question “What can I get from this?” seems to be the driving force. One can analyze this question in two ways. The first is by taking what is wanted, or desired, within the context of appetite. If one desires something, he or she desires it because a good in the desired thing is found. The second is by finding such a desire to be within or outside of an established moral code, labeling it as “moral” or “immoral,” and thereby linking the desire to morality. In so doing, one can reach the conclusion that the proposed question is indeed one of morality, regardless of the popular trend of avoiding “morality talk.”
Therefore, to understand the current morality regarding contraceptive use, it is helpful to begin by looking at the traditional understanding of what is called “natural law.” In his famous Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas posited an understanding of general law by beginning his discussion in Question 90 with this definition: “Law is a rule and measure of acts, whereby man is induced to act or is restrained from acting.”[5] Thomas continued by stating that all laws tend toward the perfection of their subjects and have universality of reach among them, both “ruler” and “ruled.”[6]
Natural law gives humanity a sense of reason, or rationality.[7] “The principles impressed on [reason] by nature are the general rules and measures of all things related to human conduct.”[8] Reason is what makes natural law particular to humanity, since humanity is the only rational animal known to exist.[9] This precludes any other type of created material things, and gives importance to the universality of human rationality governed by natural law.
Soon after the time of Aquinas, the Catholic Church began to use this approach in teaching doctrine within the context of Sacred Scripture and Tradition. The best examples of its current use can be seen in the newest edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It states:
The natural law is a participation in God’s wisdom and goodness by man formed in the image of his Creator. It expresses the dignity of the human person and forms the basis of his fundamental rights and duties.[10]
This paragraph from the Catechism reflects a growing trend during the 19th and 20th centuries by the Catholic Church to stress the teachings of popes and theologians concerning morality. This is found keenly in Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum, in which he discusses the growing misunderstanding and misuse of the term “liberty” in modern society. Regarding laws that limit the liberty of the individual, the encyclical states:
…law is the guide of man’s actions; it turns him toward good by its reward and deters him from evil by its punishments… Foremost in this office comes natural law, which is written and engraved in the mind of every man; and this is nothing but our reason, commanding us to do right and forbidding sin.[11]
Taken within the context of the entire encyclical, this statement concerning natural law gives insight into how Aquinas’ philosophy had been transcribed onto the teachings of the Catholic Church.
By the 20th Century, Catholic moral theologians began developing upon this theme in ways that further interpreted the implementation of natural law within the Church. Fr. Heribert Jone, in his book entitled simply Moral Theology, sought to make the link between natural law, eternal law and morality more evident:
The supreme objective norm of morality is the eternal law, i.e., God’s Divine Plan by which all created things are directed from all eternity to one supreme end and aim. God has in time made known His divine Will through the natural moral law and the positive divine law.[12]
A greater appreciation for the free choice of the individual to accept or reject the divine law for himself came with this understanding of the intertwining of morality and law, hence making a person either in congruence with or antagonistic to his own nature. As Monsignor Paul Glenn said in his work Apologetic: A Philosophic Defense and Explanation of the Catholic Religion:
Man, who has free choice, has understanding by which he is aware of an order in things that he is called upon to observe and forbidden to disturb; but man is not necessitated; in his free acts he is guided by suasion, but not forced… he is subject to the moral law as recognized by reason (conscience), and this law is called natural law… Man alone, among worldly creatures, is subject to the natural law.[13]
With this background of the use of natural law and its realization found in the moral stances taken by the Catholic Church laid out, it is easier to observe how, within the past century particularly, morality with regard to human generation has developed into such a divisive question that is faced by the Catholic faithful.
It first must be stated that, initially, the Christian community was as a whole unanimously against any form of contraception aside from abstinence. The reasoning for this was primarily scriptural, citing Levitical law against “wasting seed,”[14] along with the biblical story of Onan in the book of Genesis, who withdrew from his wife prior to culmination and was killed by God.[15] It was this act found in the Bible that Christianity used as its starting point in understanding the depravity of contraception in light of marriage. “Frustrating” the natural power of the conjugal act was seen as an offence against God and His Law.[16]
The beginning of the 20th Century, however, saw the Church of England take a radically different stance regarding contraception. In the Lambeth Conference of 1930, a decennial gathering of all bishops of the Anglican Communion, the leaders of one of the most established and global Christian communities stated:
‘Where there is a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, complete abstinence is the primary and obvious method.’ But if there was a morally sound reasoning for avoiding abstinence, ‘the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of Christian principles’[17]
With this, the Church of England began to pave a way for artificial contraception to be seen as moral in light of Christian doctrine. Marital relations were more than simply a means of procreation. They “provided an essential way for a husband and wife to express and strengthen their love for each other.”[18] For the Anglican Communion, and subsequently other Christian denominations, the idea of marital love and procreative love became separable.
In response, Pope Pius XI wrote the encyclical Casti Connubii. The first of its kind to directly discuss contraception, the encyclical sought to strengthen the understanding of marriage as an institution of dignity and stability by linking it to God’s relation to a human ontology not subject to the whims of human legislation.[19]
One of the key insights of the encyclical is its linking the history of theology to human participation in Creation. Sighting St. Augustine, it describes the three-fold blessing of matrimony: offspring, conjugal faith and the sacrament.[20] Of these, offspring is seen as the first and foremost in importance and in blessing, and give the best witness to the end to which man aspires. By sharing this end with one’s children, parents give more people the ability to “become members of the Church of Christ.”[21] For, as Casti Connubii further states:
God wishes men to be born not only that they should live and fill the earth, but much more that they may be worshippers of God, that they may know Him and love Him and finally enjoy Him forever in heaven.[22]
It was not until after the Second Vatican Council, however, that a more specific encyclical would be produced that spoke directly concerning contraception’s effect on the Christian concept of relationship by meeting the people of the Church and the World on pastoral terms. Pope Paul VI’s now famous Humanae Vitae, released in the summer of 1968, was written to reiterate the previous teachings of the Church on marriage, while representing the official stance of the Church in light of new and specific problems regarding the natural end of sexual intercourse and modern justifications for avoiding that end.
In the second section of the encyclical, entitled “Doctrinal Principles,” Paul VI reaffirmed Pius XI’s statement regarding marriage:
Marriage… is in reality the wise and provident institution of God the Creator, whose purpose was to affect in man His loving design… [That by the] union of two persons in which they perfect one another, [they may] cooperat[e] with God in the generation and rearing of new lives.[23]
The encyclical then discusses what the conjugal act should entail, namely, that it is “above all fully human, a compound of sense and spirit.”[24] By this is implied that it is an act of the will of both individuals involved and is no mere expression of animal instinct or passion. Additionally, marital relations must be “fecund,” or fertile, so as to live out the Biblical command of procreation.[25]
Responsible parenthood is addressed as well. By this is meant that “the exercise of responsible parenthood requires that husband and wife, keeping a right order of priorities, recognize their own duties toward God, themselves, their families and human society.”[26] But the couple is not free to choose actions that inhibit the transmission of life. Instead, they are “bound to ensure that what they do correspond to the will of God the Creator.”[27]
This understanding of the conjugal act and responsible parenthood is not meant to reprove marital relations outside of fertility, however. Due to infertility independent of the will of the couple, be it for medical reasons or simply due to natural human cycles, the conjugal act is still seen as “the expression and strengthening of the union of husband and wife.”[28] These relations must, nonetheless, be open to the procreation of life if it is a possibility.
It is at this point that Pope Paul VI coined one of the most important phrases in understanding the Catholic doctrine of the conjugal act:
…if each of these essential qualities, the unitive and the procreative [emphasis mine], is preserved, the use of marriage fully retains its sense of true mutual love and its ordination to the supreme responsibility of parenthood to which man is called.[29]
This statement makes clear that in order for true conjugal love to occur, there must be the intention of love that is dual in purpose. To be unitive, the love of married couples must be willing to bring each together so as to create one flesh and, thus, to foreshadow the Church’s destiny of being united intimately and completely with Christ, its head. To be procreative, the conjugal act must be open to allowing the married couple to participate in the creativity of God by acting as His instruments in bringing new life into the world.
Understanding love as unitive and procreative makes it easier to comprehend the Church’s position on contraceptive methods. Its permissive stance on the use of the natural cycle of the woman is not seen to be inconsistent with its otherwise firm position against avoiding conception because the couple is seen to respect the nature of the human organism:
…to experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source.[30]
This is, however, the only means seen as justifiable, according to Humanae Vitae. Other methods of willful contraception are seen as neither valid nor justifiable:
…the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary. Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation —whether as an end or as a means.[31]
This summary of the doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church on contraception by Pope Paul VI was intended to be made readily available to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Humanae Vitae has since become a touchstone for later Catholic generations regarding this crucial issue in today’s society.
An important question arises, then, as to why these seemingly proactive approaches by the Catholic Church regarding the use of artificial contraception among Catholics have been resisted, if not completely rejected in the Catholic community, much less the Christian community at large. It is a sincere question and concern; a question whose answer is rooted in the ideological understandings of the previous century and a concern whose treatment is far from certain.
Since the 1960’s, one rationalization used among Christians who utilize artificial contraception has been the idea of global overpopulation. Because of what are perceived as finite resources and imbalanced economic progress, many people have felt obligated to refrain from having children in order to “provide more benefits to more people at less cost.”[32] In an article written in 1999 expressing just such sentiment, John Guillebaud, professor of Family Planning and Public Health at the University College in London, stated that in order for a better understanding of the Christian obligation to plan and restrain parenthood, the use of the “IPAT” equation was essential:
I = P x A x T
· I -- is the impact on the environment of a given society/civilization
· P -- is population, the number of individuals in that society
· A -- is their per capita affluence (with consequential invariable 'effluence' = pollution and resource/energy consumption per capita)
· T -- is a composite factor accounting for the per capita impact of the technologies in use (lowered by 'greener' technologies, with lower energy use and maximum recycling)[33]
In his article, Guillebaud expressed that the “P” factor is overlooked by Western Christian culture, making an imbalance in this equation that could hold the answer to the world’s problems of poverty, specifically starvation, income, and the environment.[34] If population stability were achieved, what has become for him a “vicious cycle of population causing poverty and vice versa” could become a “virtuous upward spiral” where what he sees as the key components of social justice – “education, reproductive health care, and women’s empowerment” – could be reached.[35]
But this example simply magnifies the question of why contraception has come to be seen as a moral good. To really reach to the core of this subject, one has to look at the persuading philosophy that shaped the ideological, and hence moral, landscape of the 20th Century.
The Western philosophical ideology that has led to the acceptance artificial contraception can be traced to the materialistic and individualistic perspectives of the Enlightenment. Although it could be argued that this beginning could be seen to have its origins in thinkers going as far back as the 13th Century in John Duns Scotus and his nominalist understanding of the world,[36] it seems fitting to begin with the one who could be considered the most obvious historical contributor to modern materialism, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).
According to Hobbes, the best, and really only way to view the existence of a human being is as an individual who is completely distinct and separate from relation to other individuals except by means of preserving a civilization.[37] This theory does not deny the efficacy of inter-political relationships, but rather seeks to make them subservient to the overarching relationship of society at large. Examples of this, found in religion, the family unit and even within the individual, should not have their own goals in mind, but instead the overarching “Goal” of the political individual manifested in the state.[38] Taking this to its natural conclusion, these inter-political relationships obtain “rights” toward which they aim. This makes what they do only relevant to the state if it causes harm to the preservation of that state. This leads further to confining “truth” to “facts” that are the best theory that can be utilized to promote self-interest. “Objective truth” becomes “subjective truths” that conform to the aesthetic or secular ethic of an individual that is deprived of relational depth; a depth that lacks a reciprocity necessary to foster promotion of the common welfare. Hobbes’ intentions, nicely depicted in his famous work Leviathan, would suggest an attempt to justify and promote a certain social atmosphere that would secure peace by establishing a definition of social structure that is rooted in centralized power with the ability, through fear, to maintain peace.[39]
This philosophical development came to be of great importance to the Western World, particularly the United States, in the works of John Locke (1632-1704). Although Locke disagreed with Hobbes concerning an individual’s obligation to society at large, he expounded on the idea that man’s existence was independent of community. For a person to exist in a true state of nature, he must have the freedom to order his own actions and possessions without interference. He is not bound to other men by artificial governmental authority, but is completely equal in every internal respect to people of any demographic. This can only change if God’s Will confers authority over one individual to another.[40] All that communal law is truly useful for is self-preservation. Law preserves oneself and, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of personal preservation, requires a person to help those who share in his humanity. The things that are most worthy of preservation are: “life … liberty … and goods [property].”[41]
It is obvious, then, that John Locke approached the idea of natural law in a markedly different manner than that of the Catholic Church. While Catholic philosophers had adopted the idea of natural law as that by which a created being interacts and participates in the eternal law, Locke looked at “the law of nature” as simply the obligation and obedience of the created in order to avoid punishment, which comes about when one does not fulfill his obligations to the Divine Will. [42] This stance is rooted in Locke’s understanding of reason, which he saw as merely a part of the process of knowing what “the law of nature” consists, and making the will, namely God’s Will, the only basis of law.[43]
This voluntaristic shift began to change the way in which an individual related to community in Western culture. As the West moved away from the Catholic positions on natural law, it placed individual preservation and the common good at odds. As Dr. Jude Dougherty, Dean Emeritus of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America stated in an article entitled Keeping the Common Good in Mind:
The vocabulary employed in talking about the individual and the common good shifted in the 17th century from ‘liberty’ and ‘obligation’ to ‘rights’ and due.’ On the [Catholic] side of the watershed, emphasis is placed on freedoms and benefits essential for the maintenance of life, and on the security, development, and dignity of the individual; whereas, on the modern side, the vocabulary of ‘rights’ introduces a way of talking about the just from the viewpoint of the individual, from the viewpoint of him to whom something is due and who would be wronged if denied that due. The shift in meaning is drastic…, because it carries the right-holder and the right altogether outside the juridical relationship which is fixed by law.[44]
The idea of “individual rights” had subsequently shaped nearly every facet of understanding in Western culture by the mid-20th Century, among them the idea of the legitimacy of “reproductive choice.”[45] Because of the individualization of society, formerly communal organizations, and particularly religion, came to be seen not as a means of connecting to a deity or even to other people, but as a way of “understanding man… as one who refers back to himself.”[46] Personal apprehension of God and scientifically procured knowledge of the world were the best starting points for examining the beginnings of human life, hence reopening one of the fundamental questions concerning the nature of human life.[47] “Choice” had become the focus of the discussion regarding procreation, while the prohibitions on limiting or ending pregnancy became nothing but arbitrary laws with “man-made external penalties.”[48]
Daniel Callahan, a current leading philosopher and bio-medical ethicist, gave an example of the philosophical mentality of modern individualists in the last half of the 20th Century, seeing reproductive choice as rooted in the “regnant individualism” of modern culture.[49] Bioethics, since the 1960’s, had moved toward an ethic of autonomy, asserting individual rights because of the use of the mentality found in the current culture.[50] Because of this, bioethics has now come to have a greater impact on the philosophical questions of the day, in this case the control of the bodily function of procreation. Callahan pointed out that contraception had been made acceptable because of a “fundamental shift … in the relationship of sexuality and procreation,” raising the questions of whether or not contraception could be seen as a conduit for a “morally and culturally good [happy] society,” and if it could be, if the individual was the source of this power. [51] As Callahan so poignantly stated in an article for the May-June ’94 issue of the Hastings Center Report:
“If it is thought that leads to action, and action that can do harm, does that not imply that the fountainhead of harm is how we think in the privacy of our own minds?”[52]
Concerning the Catholic Church’s contraception stance specifically, Callahan argued that Church teaching on sexuality has been seen by most to have a greater and more intimate impact on the lives of “individual Catholics,”[53] while the utilization of dogmatic teaching has come to be considered aloof and even an archaic obstacle to progress because of the focus by the Catholic Church on “Natural-law theory.”[54] For modern society, theology is subservient to sociology, not “inextricably intertwined.”[55]
Callahan pointed to the Catholic practice of contraception as evidence of what he viewed as the antiquated notion of reproductive rights in the Church. According to available surveys taken in 1955, approximately 57% of Catholic women had used some form of contraception, 30% of which used contraception contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church. By 1965, this had changed drastically – 77% percent of Catholic women had used contraception, and of that number, 53% used contraception contrary to Catholic teaching.[56] Callahan saw this as growing proof that the Catholic world was beginning to be shaped by the modernism and technological advances of the society it lived in, and a slow unification of the Catholic faithful with the rest of the world was best understood as simply inevitable.[57] .
Callahan went on to link ideological pluralism, within the context of reproductive choice, to a change in “biological conception” which allows for a natural development, justification, and dissemination of contraception. As Callahan further stated: “That self-conception and the view of procreation it engenders most decisively changes choice.”[58] Contraception, simply by its availability, shaped the understanding of “freedom of reproductive choice,” and so affected the moral viewpoint of its use.
So, in light of this, what is to come of the Catholic Church’s moral tradition regarding contraception, or really any facet of morality? Will the Church doggedly adhere to her teachings or will she cave to the pressure of the winds of modern sentiment? Will the dignity of the human person be considered in light of the individual or the common good? The answer to all of these questions and any others that can be brought to bear is that the Catholic Church will continue to maintain the Truth passed to her by her Founder. This is made manifest by the teaching authority of the Church, especially within the writings of recent pontiffs and theologians. As this paper has discussed, the 20th Century has seen an ethical framework set up in the form of encyclicals, but also in numerous writings of which have not been mentioned here. With this comes a realization of the task before the Catholic community: to bolster catechesis regarding the Church’s teachings on artificial contraception and, more fundamentally, on what it means to be human and why it is necessary to respect the dignity found in all of humanity by its being made in the image and likeness of God. Although this argument has been presented here primarily from an historical and philosophical perspective, it must be seen as rooted in the theological to grasp the true effect of contraceptive practice, and ultimately viewed as having eschatological consequences, both for the individual and the community.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
· Aquinas, Thomas. Anton Charlse Pegis, Ed. Basic writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1997).
· Bach, Gregory. Thomas Aquinas and John Lock on Natural Law (St. Meinrad: St. Meinrad, 1995).
· Buss, Martin. The Beginning of Human Life as an Ethical Problem, The Journal of Religion, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Jul. 1967).
· Callahan, Daniel. "Bioethics: Private Choice and Common Good." The Hastings Center Report 24, no. 3 (1994).
· Callahan, Daniel. "Contraception and Abortion: American Catholic Responses." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 387, no. Jan. 1970 (1970).
· Catechism of the Catholic Church – Second Edition (Washington: U.S.C.C.B., 2000).
· Cross, Richard. Duns Scotus on God (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Pub., 2005).
· Dougherty, Jude. The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas (Vatican: Libera, 1984).
· Glenn, Rt. Rev. Msgr. Paul. Apologetics: A Philosophic Defense and Explanation of the Catholic Religion (Rockford: TAN, 1980).
· Guillebaud, John. "Population Control: good stewardship?" Triple Helix Winter (1999).
· Hobbes, Thomas. De cive or the citizen (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1982).
· Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. (London: Penguin Books, 1985).
· Jone, Fr. Heribert. Moral Theology (Rockford: TAN, 1962).
· Locke, John. Second treatise of government (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1980).
· McInerny, Ralph, and Jude Dougherty. The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas (Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1984).
· Pardes, Bronwen. Doing it right (New York: Simon Pulse, 2007).
· Paul VI, Pope. Humanae Vitae (Vatican City: Holy See, 1968).
· Pius XI, Pope. Casti Conubii (Vatican City: Holy See, 1930).
· The Popes Against Modern Errors: 16 Famous Papal Documents (New Haven: St. Benedict, 1999).
· Provan, Charles. The Bible and birth control (Monongahela, PA.: Zimmer, 1989).
· http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201011/why-do-people-have-sex
· http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070731094119.htm
[1] Bronwen Pardes. Doing it right (New York: Simon Pulse, 2007) pgs 4-5.
[2] Ibid. pg 24.
[5] Summa Theologiae, Q. 90, Art. 12, Respondit.
[6] Ibid., Q. 90, Art. 2, Respondit.
[7] Jude Dougherty, The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas (Vatican: Libera, 1984) pg 194.
[8] Summa Theologiae, Q. 91, Art. 2, Reply Obj. 1.
[9] Ibid., Q. 94, Art. 1, Respondit.
[10] Catechism of the Catholic Church – Second Edition (Washington: U.S.C.C.B., 2000), para. 1978.
[11] The Popes Against Modern Errors: 16 Famous Papal Documents (New Haven: St. Benedict, 1999) pg. 86.
[12]Fr. Heribert Jone, Moral Theology (Rockford: TAN, 1962) pg. 18, para. 43.
[13]Rt. Rev. Msgr. Paul Glenn, Apologetics: A Philosophic Defense and Explanation of the Catholic Religion (Rockford: TAN, 1980) pg 95.
[14] Charles Provan, The Bible and birth control (Monongahela, PA.: Zimmer, 1989) pg 16.
[15] Ibid., pg 12.
[16] Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii. (Vatican City: Holy See, 1930) para. 56.
[17]http://web.archive.org/web/20060810021928/http://www.cofe.anglican.org/info/socialpublic/smte.html#contraception
[18] Casti Connubii, para. 5.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid., para., 10
[21] Ibid., para. 13
[22] Ibid., para. 12
[23] Paul VI, Pope. Humanae Vitae (Vatican City: Holy See, 1968) para. 8.
[24] Ibid., para. 9
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid., para. 10.
[27] Ibid., para. 10.
[28] Ibid., para. 11.
[29] Ibid., para. 12.
[30] Ibid. para. 13.
[31] Ibid., para. 14.
[32] Guillebaud, John. "Population Control: good stewardship?" Triple Helix Winter (1999): pg. 4.
[33] Ibid., pg 5
[34] Ibid., pg 4.
[35] Ibid., pg 6 .
[36] Cross, Richard. Duns Scotus on God (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Pub., 2005) pg. 104.
[37] Hobbes, Thomas. De cive or the citizen (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1982) chapt. VIII.
[38] Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan (London: Penguin Books, 1985), pg. 191.
[39] Ibid., pg 168.
[40] Locke, John. Second treatise of government (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 1980), pg 8.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Bach, Gregory. Thomas Aquinas and John Lock on Natural Law (St. Meinrad: St. Meinrad, 1995) pg. 12.
[44] McInerny, Ralph, and Jude Dougherty. The Ethics of St. Thomas Aquinas. Vatican City: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1984, pg. 188-189.
[45] Buss, Martin. The Beginning of Human Life as an Ethical Problem, The Journal of Religion, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Jul. 1967), pg 244.
[46] Ibid., pg 248.
[47] Ibid.
[48] Ibid., pg 252.
[49] Callahan, Daniel. "Bioethics: Private Choice and Common Good." The Hastings Center Report 24, no. 3 (1994): 28-31. ; pg 28.
[50] Ibid., pg 29
[51] Ibid.
[52] Ibid., pg 30.
[53] Callahan, Daniel. "Contraception and Abortion: American Catholic Responses." Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 387, no. Jan. 1970 (1970): 109-117.; pg 109.
[54] Ibid., pg 110.
[55] Ibid.
[56] Ibid., pg. 114.
[57] Ibid.
[58] Ibid.
