At the recent Prepcom 2 meeting for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), Azizah al-Hibri, D.D., Ph.D. redefined Islamic beliefs, Dan Maguire, S.T.D. redefined Catholic beliefs and Rev. James B. Martin-Schramm defined Protestant beliefs in order to incorporate population control technologies. PRI Review presents a response to Dan Maguire here. Ms. al- Hibri has not been forthcoming with her paper. An attempt will be made to respond to Rev. Martin- Schramm in a future edition.
Daniel Maguire made many assertions in his testimony which need to be challenged. He purports to speak for the Catholic moral tradition when claiming that today contraception and abortion are justified in developing countries like China and Mexico. This, he claims, accords well with Deuteronomy 30:11- 20. “Choose life therefore…”
Areas of agreement
Both the Catholic Church and Maguire agree upon the need for development within Third World countries. Both agree that limitation of births is not a simple panacea for our world’s crises, or a substitute for distributive, or social, justice. However, there are many areas of disagreement.
Areas of disagreement: ethics
Maguire claims that no one in the Catholic Church holds a privileged position in teaching morality. For him, one’s position depends entirely upon the validity of one’s arguments. Thus morality is a sophisticated guessing game, like economics and politics. He uses consequentialism and proportionalism for his moral reasoning. These allow no room for moral absolutes, but do allow for attacks upon any human good for alleged greater benefits. He is accustomed to juggling goods and bads so that “more good than harm results.”
But how can he claim to be a professor of Catholic moral theology if he refuses to accept the Church’s teaching on l) contraception; 2) abortion; 3) sterilization; 4) euthanasia and 5) homosexual acts? Only God determines what is right and what is wrong. These are expressed in moral principles, such as the Ten Commandments. God gave the authority to teach and interpret these principles only to the Magisterium, not to anyone else, least of all to dissenting theologians.
Maguire says that contraception and abortion are moral options for women in many circumstances, and may often be morally mandatory. The Magisterium teaches that these are never morally right or good, because they attack basic human goods. Both positions cannot be correct simultaneously.
Maguire places academics like himself on the same level as the Magisterium. That is like saying that a sergeant is on the same par as a four-star general, or a floor manager is equal to a Chief Executive Officer. In the latter two instances, acts of insubordination are dealt with quickly by firing.
Developing nations
Maguire makes the common mistake of thinking that more contraception will result in less abortion. Many studies prove the contrary. Even Alan Guttmacher, a former director of Planned Parenthood, has acknowledged this.
The greatest source of concern here is the contention that the world is already overpopulated, and that the Third World is suffering from having too many babies. All of this is highly questionable. We know that nine out of ten babies today are born in the developing countries. We know also that most countries — e.g., Australia, Africa, Latin America, the United States, Canada and Russia — are seriously underpopulated. Developing nations like the U.S. and all of Western Europe are now suffering from growing upper layers of old people with fewer young people entering the work force. This birth dearth is already manifesting itself in reduced social security payments, health care programs and pensions. In Japan, Germany and Italy foreign workers must be imported, and are often resented. Meanwhile, with few new families and babies there is less demand for consumer goods. First World countries are very aware that their prominence in the world diminishes simultaneously with their percentage of the world’s population. They are concerned that their privileges and lifestyles will be threatened by growing countries in the Third World. This accounts for much of the anti-population funding coming from the U.S., Japan, and Western Europe. Developing nations are also aware of this and resent having mandatory “family planning programs” attached to any foreign grants and loans. Maguire stands with the concerns of the First World.
He makes the mistake of claiming that one million women die each year from reproduction-related causes. In fact, data collection on women’s reproductive health in both Third World and First World countries is seriously deficient.
In Third World countries mortality and morbidity projections often rely on data from hospital studies, which are unavoidably biased since hospitals treat the sickest among the total population, rather than relying on scientific random samples. Josef Decosas of the Canadian International Development Agency explains problems with such data collection in one First World country, Canada: “We have no data [on women’s reproductive health] because collecting these data has not been a priority. This is a political decision which will only be changed through political action” (“Reproductive Tract Infections in Women in the Third World,” IWHC, 1991, 8). In the United States reporting of post-abortion health effects is voluntary rather than required. Since, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 87% of the abortions are performed in clinics, there is also a business interest to protect. Long term follow-up in these cases is conspicuously absent.
Maguire assumes that the only way to plan families is by contraception and fool- proof abortion. For him the end justifies the means. Morally wrong forms of family planning are pressed into service to achieve his end. “Artificial contraception and abortion are not the final or main solution to our ills, but they are necessary options and their moral respectability must be forthrightly maintained and vigorously defended,” Maguire claims. Why not talk about natural fertility regulation? It is more reliable than any form of contraception short of sterilization, has no health side effects, and fosters greater love and respect for persons. Does Maguire think that periodic abstinence is impossible for the modem male and female?
Catholic theology on abortion
Maguire asserts that the first systematic theology on abortion was done in the 15th century. This ignores 14 centuries of previous teaching by the Church on the total wrongness of abortion. A few examples will suffice. From the Didache 2:1-2, AD 140, “The second commandment of the teaching states: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure on abortion, nor destroy a new-born child.
From Tertullian’s Apology 9:8, AD 197: In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other ports of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away o life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed.
From St. Basil’s Canonical Epistle to Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, 188:2,9; AD 374: A woman who has deliberately destroyed a fetus must pay the penalty for murder .… Those also who give drugs causing abortions are murderers themselves, as well as those who receive the poison which kills the fetus.
The Church holds that the life of the child can never be directly targeted by the medical act; that every effort possible will be taken to save the life of both the unborn baby and the mother. In cases where both lives cannot be saved and life is immanently imperiled, the life that can be saved, must be saved. Nevertheless, the intention of the medical action must be to save life, never for the purpose of taking life.
Maguire will find little support for easy or widespread abortions among the moralists of the 15th and following centuries. With regard to the opinion given by St. Thomas that ensoulment occurs 90 days after conception, we must understand that Thomas reflects the biology of his times (13th century). We should not blame the Church for the shortcomings of science.
Catholic radical feminists
Maguire cites Frances Kissling as a Catholic leader. Ms, Kissling delights in promoting abortion and contraception all over Latin America with her group called Catholics for a Free Choice, where the choice is to kill babies. Let us hear from Catholic women other than the radical feminists who are a small minority!
Where can coercive motherhood be found today? Most women love their families and babies. When the coercive methods of USAID, World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation and UNICEF, which are designed to lower birthrates, are exposed to native people in developing countries, they are shocked. Latin American women are asking their friends in the U.S. to tum off the funding for these highly offensive policies.
Maguire thinks that Catholic morality is sexist, since it is taught and written predominantly by men. By this token, Christ was sexist, since he founded His Church upon twelve men, and gave them authority to teach all that He had instructed the Apostles.
New magisteria
Maguire creates new categories and then calls them Catholic. He now claims there is a threefold magisteria composed of l) theologians, 2) laitv and 3) the hierarchy. This flies in the face of the Church’s official teaching as found in the Vatican II document, Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church:
The bishops are authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach the faith to the people assigned to them, the faith which is destined to inform their thinking and direct their conduct .… Bishops who teach in communion with the Roman Pontiff are to be revered by all as witnesses of divine and Catholic truth; the faithful, for their part, are obliged to submit to their bishop ‘s decision, made in the name of Christ, in matters of faith and morals, and to adhere to it with a ready and respectful allegiance of mind. This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given, in a special way, to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff even when he does not speak ex cathedra ( Lumen Gentium 25 ).
He praises Catholic social teaching for flexibility on social, economic and political structures. Then he scolds the Church for inflexibility on the moral absolute of abortion as always evil. There are equally unmalleable principles in Catholic social teaching, e.g., the dignity of the human person, the principle of subsidiarity, the right to private property, the common good, and the sanctity of all human life.
China
Maguire accepts forced sterilizations in India and mandatory abortion in China. Here he accepts the population myths of many population controllers. China has the same population density as France and Pennsylvania, 280 persons per square mile (1985). What distinguishes China is her extremely low level of development and productivity, One rate of comparison is the GNP per capita of Japan at $11,300; Taiwan at $2,663; Korea at $2,l50 and China at $310 (in 1985 dollars).
Killing babies solves nothing. It simply destroys the soul and character of a nation. Already there are more young men than women in China. Many young Chinese men will not find wives, thanks to government social engineering. Chinese people love children and grandchildren. It is a brutal crime of the Chinese government to make unborn babies the scapegoats for their own incompetence, mismanagement and flawed economic policies. Much better solutions to China’s problems are natural fertility regulation, economic development and entrepreneurship.
Maguire is impressed with the small vegetable plots which Chinese families are allowed to cultivate, claiming the produce for themselves. In China, the land of collectivized farming, the most inefficient form of agriculture known to man, 30% of all produce comes from these small plots. In Russia it is 50% Maguire completely misreads the situation. “The Chinese are feeding themselves, but they are, in an ominous sign to the rest of us, skirting the limits.” That is the same population doomsday language used to describe India in the 1970s and 80s. Today, after the Green Revolution, India exports food out of its surplus.
Deuteronomy 30
Maguire distorts Scripture, making it serve his purposes. He quotes Dt 30:19: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then that you and your descendants may live .… He ignores the condition of all this as given in verses 15-16: Here then I have today set before you life and prosperity, death and doom. If you obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I enjoin on you today, loving him, and walking in his ways, and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees, you will live and grow numerous .…
Obviously, the God of our fathers is telling us to always choose life, choose the good, the true, the life-giving, the holy. Never turn against any of these goods which fulfill us as persons made to the image of God. Of old, Abraham could scarcely believe God’s promise that his posterity would be as numerous as the stars in the night sky. Today population controllers can scarcely believe that the God-Creator of the universe has absolutely no problem in providing for all the material needs of his 5.4 billion people and many more! Maguire has a very impoverished picture of God’s providence. What he needs to understand is that God’s bountifulness and the fruits of the good earth will not be lacking. All that is required is our resourcefulness, planning and human labor to make the earth provide amply for everyone’s basic needs. If people are starving today, it is due to man-made problems, which admit of man- made solutions.
We too encourage the people at the International Conference in Cairo in 1994 to “choose life, and to do so with integrity and courage.” But, we caution, take the words by what they traditionally mean, and do not change them to serve the political/economic agenda of population controllers.
Vatican paper, demographic trends:
The Vatican Paper presented to the European Population Conference held in Geneva, 23-26 March, made the following points:
- “The Vatican’s view of population questions is grounded in the conviction that the family is the basic unit of society: a community of love and solidarity which is uniquely suited to teach and transmit cultural, social, ethical, spiritual and religious values…the place where different generations meet and help one another harmonize the rights of individuals with the other demands of social life.
- “Decisions concerning the spacing of births and the number of children to be born belong to the spouses and not to any other authority.
- “[The Holy See] supports the use of natural methods for the regulation of fertility, not only for ethical reasons but because these methods respect the health of women and men by avoiding the possibility of dangerous side effects. [Also, these methods] enlist the full involvement and commitment of the man to understand and respect his spouse.
- “[The Vatican] is opposed to all forms of voluntary abortion .… Abortion should not be promoted as a means of family planning.
- “Heavily funded population and family planning programs over the past decades have often failed to achieve their desired aim because they ignored the development of the people and the nation for which programs have been designed.
- “In many cases, population control programs are not sufficiently sensitive to the cultural and religious traditions of the people and are thus perceived as foreign and unjustly imposed.
- “[Couples must be] free to make their responsible choice about family size [and] be exempt from coercion and other undue pressure from governments or other organizations.
- “The Holy See is concerned about the increasing use of sterilization as a means of population control, especially in developing countries. Sterilization is the family planning means most open to abuse on human rights grounds, especially among the poor or the illiterate. Sterilization because of its finality (or irreversibility) is also objectionable because it contradicts cultural attitudes regarding childbearing and leaves no opportunity for future changes in childbearing plans. The extremely high proportions of women in some developing countries who have been sterilized is a cause of very grave anxiety.
- “[The Vatican] urges transparency regarding the terms in which multilateral and bilateral international agreements concerning economic aid are elaborated, in order to avoid the imposition of targets for demographic growth or the conditioning of aid on acceptance of specific family planning programs.
- “At times out of concern at the increase in promiscuity among adolescents, governments and private organizations have advocated an ever wider diffusion of family planning services among youth. Cut off from all forms of moral education and without respect for the rights of parents, such campaigns have only contributed to the spread of sexual promiscuity among the young, without taking into consideration the resultant damage to their physical, psychological and moral health.
The paper also discusses issues related to population, age structure and international migration (“Ethical Implications of a People’s Changing Visage,” Vatican Paper/Demographic Trends).
