Should birth control be illegal?

[tafan2]

I posted a link earlier to his Summa question where he makes this argument. The details seem to apply directly to this question.

 

[TechieGuy]

SMA is not that rare. But also it’s possibly not helpful to refer to someone’s grief and pain as a “fringe case”.

Hey now, what’s more important, real people or moral arguments?

 

[goout]

This is a question for people who are not only pro-life but think that abortion should be illegal. Do you also think birth control should be illegal? It is also a mortal sin, according to the Catholic Church. What about skipping a mass, also a mortal sin? Why can these things be legal but not abortion?

I know many people would say that abortion can be considered objectively evil, not just from a religious standpoint. But isn’t that true of all good theology/apologetics? I frequently hear Catholics say that truth can be arrived at through sound logic.

So, why should abortion be illegal and not everything else?

Should tire irons be illegal? My neighbor was killed by a man using one.
Morality evaluates human acts, not material objects. A hormone pill is just stuff, using that stuff to contracept is an act.

 

[JMMJ]

BC should never be outlawed. Not everyone believes what Catholics believe.

 

[Start]

You can’t be making the exception the rule so it’s important to classify it as such.

 

[woolycaterpillar]

Yes, you could be punished for walking away with a cheap item. Stores warn their customers that they will prosecute.

 

[recentrevert]

The purpose of civil government is to provide the material conditions that will enable people to lead lives pleasing to God and obtain salvation. Contraception destroys morality in society and should therefore, ideally, be illegal.

 

[JMMJ]

The purpose of civil government is to provide the material conditions that will enable people to lead lives pleasing to God and obtain salvation

That isn’t the purpose at all.

 

[Allegra]

Obviously, abortion has a direct victim involved whose life is permanently and irreversibly ended. It’s not even remotely in the same category as missing Mass, in which the Mass misser is the only one who suffers immediately consequences. While I don’t think all forms of birth control should be outlawed, since some of them have legitimate medicinal uses such as synthetic estrogen and others don’t result in the death of an innocent such as barrier methods, I think there are methods out there that should be outlawed or at least restricted, if for no other reason than they are unsafe for the woman using them.

 

[Allegra]

Not everyone believes it’s wrong to beat your wife either. There were many people who thought slavery was morally licit as well. That’s not a good enough reason.

 

[JMMJ]

If you are trying to equate wife-beating and slavery with birth control, that is a little silly.

 

[goout]

What does it mean to “make birth control illegal”?
Are you talking about a substance, or an action? And if you’re talking about substances, then by the same logic guns should be illegal.
If you are talking about outlawing an action, you have a near impossible standard of proof.

 

[Allegra]

You argue that because some people don’t think it’s immoral, that means it isn’t, or at the very least that it shouldn’t be made illegal. I’m pointing out that there are many cases that defy that argument. If people can manage to convince themselves that there is nothing wrong with a practice that causes obvious serious harm to innocent individuals, how easy would it be to convince oneself that there’s nothing immoral about a practice the only effects the person using it? In none of those case is that the case though.

 

[JMMJ]

Individuals decide what they believe is moral and what isnt. In turn, societies decide what is legal and what isn’t. That was my point. An overwhelming majority of the individuals in today’s free societies do not believe birth control to be immoral. Therefore, it should not (and will not) be outlawed.

 

[Allegra]

So, what about the times when the majority of people believed something, and it turned out they were wrong?

 

[JMMJ]

That can happen, too.

 

[Allegra]

And also, the times when many people changed their minds and laws changed.

 

[Allegra]

So, are you saying that if a majority of people believed that birth control was wrong, then it would be alright for it to be illegal?

 

[JMMJ]

Yes. That is the the way lawmaking in a free society is more or less supposed to work.

 

[Allegra]

Not really. There are lots of things that the vast majority of people believe are immoral, unhealthy, or not good for society, but they aren’t illegal. Adultery, for example. Laws usually require more than just a majority believing something is wrong. The “something” has to be other people’s business too. It has to be something that imposes direct harm to someone who is unable to or at a disadvantage to defend themselves against it. That is the standard that universal banning of birth control frequently doesn’t rise to. Now there are some issues regarding birth control that I think do rise to that. For example, the relentless marketing of birth control to minor children in public schools, using untruths and half truths, and to the exclusion of reasonable education about how women’s bodies actually work, based on the interest of population control. This is an issue that I think could stand some legal correction. IN addition, the approval of methods that have been proven unsafe and are banned in nearly every other developed country, could use some regulation.