I argue that contraception is morally wrong but that periodic abstinence (or natural family planning) is not. Further, I argue that altered nuclear transfer—a proposed technique for creating human stem cells without destroying human embryos—is morally wrong for the same reason that contraception is. Contrary to what readers might expect, my argument assumes nothing about the morality of cloning or abortion and requires no premises about God or natural teleology. Instead, I argue that contraception and altered nuclear transfer are morally (...) wrong because they fail to treat humanity as an inviolable end. (shrink)

This paper discusses the analogies that proponents of contralife arguments have used to distinguish contraception from periodic abstinence or natural family planning. I criticize these analogies and present a new analogy that better illustrates how contraception can be contralife when periodic abstinence are not.

The term ‘culture wars’ has been used to describe deep, apparently intractable, disagreements between groups for many years. In contemporary discourse, it refers to disputes regarding significant moral matters carried out in the public square and for which there appears to be no way to achieve consensus or compromise. One set of battle lines is drawn between those who hold traditional Christian commitments and those who do not. Christian bioethics is nested in a set of moral and metaphysical understandings that (...) collide with those of the dominant secular culture. The result is a gulf between a moral life and an approach to bioethics framed in the face of a transcendent God and a final judgment versus a moral life and an approach to bioethics framed as if the world were without ultimate meaning and as if death were the end of personal existence. These approaches are separated by a moral and metaphysical gulf that sustains incompatible life worlds and incompatible understandings of bioethics. Attempts to bridge the gulf with secular reason are ineffective because there is no shared conception of reason or standard of evidence. Efforts to use the state to enforce a particular set of metaphysical and moral commitments, whether secular or religious, lead to public disputes with a war-like character. (shrink)