ception is mandated where the conception of children must be prevented. 4. Jewish law speaks of the evil of the destruction or improper emission of generative seed. The evil is in the self-defiling abuse of the generative faculties by improper auto-erotic, nonheterosexual semination. This element in Jewish tradition tends to render problematic the use of coitus interruptus or devices that are analogous in their effects. It does not rule out the use of semen for procreative purposes or medical tests to determine fertility. Contemporary Jewish religious leaders differ significantly with respect to the emphasis they would put upon the continuous duty to procreate. In actual practice a very high percent of Jews use contraceptives and, among the religious groups, they are the most frequent and most effective users of contraceptives. When asked about this apparent discrepancy between the duty to procreate, and the low fertility of Jews, rabbis seem agreed that most American Jews were neither self-consciously following Jewish law nor disobeying it. Their actions are in accordance with another part of Jewish tradition, with its concern for the education and total welfare of one's children and family. There are suggestions also that the stress of being in a minority group has been a factor in effective planning and low fertility as a means toward high socio-economic attainment. Protestantism As in Catholicism and Judaism, Protestant tradition recognizes both the procreative and relational aspects of marriage. In contemporary Protestant thought, there is a great deal of emphasis on the achievement of sexual fulfillment and a high degree of genuine companionship within marriage. Unlike Catholic tradition, where a childless vocation has meant celibacy, Protestants have accepted the legitimacy of intentionally childless marriages. Whereas this was very much a justifiable exception in the past, there is now a much more favorable attitude toward such a possibility. At the same time, however, Protestantism continues to stress the positive values and joys of parenthood and the fulfillment that comes through childbearing and especially child rearing. More than in the other religious groups, Protestant church leaders are explicitly calling upon individual couples to exercise restraint in fertility. Most Protestant teaching now views the choice of contraceptive methods as an aesthetic and not a moral one. Protestant thought stresses the right and the duty of individual couples to achieve harmony and fulfillment in line with their vision of the purposes of their own marriage. Church leaders in some major denominations have opposed restrictions on the availability of contraceptives for the unmarried and, in some instances, for minors as well. Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic views of marital love all share some important characteristics. There is, on the one hand, the uniform emphasis each religion places upon the health and welfare of women, children, and the total family unit. This includes an explicit focus on the importance of educating and securing the future of one's own children. There is, on the other hand, in the concept of loyalty to God, a concomitant concern for the welfare of all individuals and for mankind as such. No religious teachings would reduce considerations of welfare to an economic calculus, particularly in the context of an obligation to bear and rear children. Differential Response to Birth Control Methods Abortion is not considered to be simply one birth control method among others. National polls taken in 1969 show that 87 percent of Catholic women and 80 percent of Catholic men are opposed to abortion to prevent the birth of an unwanted child.17 Among non-Catholics, 79 percent of the women and 76 percent of the men disapprove of abortion under these circumstances. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that religious thought in all groups put moral constraints upon the resort to abortion. (Jewish attitudes deviate, however; 51 percent of the nation's Jews polled in 1967 favored abortion for the sake of preventing the birth of an unwanted child.)18 Catholic Views The dominant and the official papal view is that abortion is never licit in instances where, in an operation to save the life of a woman, abortion is an indirect effect. Despite this stringent view, Catholic officials and the majority of the United States Catholics have generally defended abortion laws that permit abortion when the health and welfare of the pregnant woman is gravely threatened. There are some Catholics who would argue that, while abortion is morally wrong except perhaps where the woman's life and health is gravely threatened, this should be seen as the view of a Catholic minority and should not be legislatively enforced. The official and dominant view among Catholics is that abortion is the taking of a human life. Generally, human life is seen as beginning at conception, although there are dissident voices on this point. Jewish Views Predominant Jewish thought is that abortion does not involve taking a human life because life begins after birth. There are, however, two strands of Jewish tradition and thought. One sees an abortion as an offense analagous to homicide because potential life is involved. The life of the mother takes precedence, however. This means that abortion is permissible where the welfare and health of the woman are threatened. A defective fetus, though, is not sufficient justification in itself for an abortion. A second strand in Jewish thought takes all of the above into account and adds as a working principle that the "pain of the woman comes first." The use of this principle has an obvious effect in the direction of a somewhat more permissive look. Among Jewish rabbis, there is a spectrum of thinking that ranges from those who would oppose any change in abortion laws that permit abortion only when the life and the health of the pregnant woman is gravely threatened, to those who favor and work for abortion on request. Protestant Views Because actual or potential human life is involved, Protestant church leaders and laymen generally do not view abortion as a birth control method. However, Protestant views range from those that favor abortion when the life and health of the mother is seriously threatened to those who favor abortion on request. Within the past 10 years, a number of the major denominations have become critical of currently prevailing United States laws on abortion. These impulses for change express a concern regarding illegal abortion and the rights of women. Suggestions for change range from the American Law Institute proposal, espoused, for example, by Southern Baptists and the Massachusetts Council of Churches, to abortion on request, espoused, for example, by the Methodists. Sterilization, like abortion, is not generally viewed as one birth control method among others. Official and dominant Roman Catholic thought sanctions sterilization only where it is a medical necessity. There is some evidence in the United States that medical necessity is very permissively defined to favor the general welfare of the woman and her family. The general thrust of Jewish tradition is in the direction of limiting sterilization to instances where questions of health are involved. The stringency of contemporary Jewish views is contingent upon the extent to which the continuous duty to procreate is stressed. As we have seen, contemporary Jewish thought varies in this regard. Protestants have roughly exhibited the same reservations about sterilization that we saw in Judaism and Catholicism. However, there is a growing tendency to see voluntary sterilization as an option that individual couples could justify for purposes of limiting their family. It is usual, however, to warn individuals of the irreversible nature of this step and to urge them to seek medical and spiritual counsel before taking such a step. It is important to note that there is a strong consensus among all religious groups that abortion and sterilization should not be involuntary. As to whether the government should encourage these practices, there is wide disagreement that runs through all groups. As we have noted, papal views restrict licit birth control methods to that of rhythm. However, as we have noted also, Roman Catholic practice is rapidly assimilating itself toward the dominant Protestant thought and practice, which is to view birth control methods, other than abortion and sterilization, as matters of individual conscience to be decided by reflection on how to achieve the purposes of fulfillment in marriage, both procreative and sexual. Jewish thought and practice regarding contraceptives has already been discussed. Attitudes Toward Population Growth, Human Welfare, and Government Intervention When it comes to the nature and extent of government involvement in policies that directly affect fertility behavior, there is widespread disagreement within and among religious groups. Religious leaders generally agree that the government has some legitimate role in this area. For example, the Catholic church believes that governments can facilitate the voluntary use of the rhythm method as well as support research to render it more exact. Roman Catholics in the United States are increasingly agreed that the church should change its stand on birth control to endorse contraceptives and programs that make them more readily available to everyone who wishes to use them. In 1965, 56 percent of the Roman Catholic membership in the United States thought that the church should change its stand on birth control; in 1967, 61 percent expressed this view. Religious teaching in all religious groups accepts and encourages governmental regulation of marital relations. Some religious leaders among all groups are especially concerned to see more government efforts in the direction of strengthening marital ties and improving the conditions of domestic security and harmony that enable couples more freely to plan the size and assure the welfare of their families. Racial justice is an important part of that concern. Although there is wide agreement on such general goals, some Protestant churches and church leaders are urging decreasing government regulation in areas such as homosexual behavior, divorce, and availability of contraceptives to minors and single people. Such policies may diminish rather than augment family stability. In 1967, 46 percent of the Roman Catholics in the United States and 53 percent of the non-Catholics favored a policy of making birth control information readily available to ny single adult person who wants it. Among all the religious groups, there is a strong consensus in favor of individual freedom of choice in procreative matters. While there is disagreement as to which methods for limiting or spacing children are norally acceptable, there is a strong consensus that couples ought to be free to choose the number of children they will have. There is also a strong consensus on the importance of distributive justice. Governments should provide for a better distribution of opportunities and goods, aid the general development of underdeveloped countries and pockets of poverty in the United States, and assist and improve agricultural development in order to provide needed food. Governments also have a distinct obligation to respond humanely and fairly to the needs of peoples, including those generated by population growth. Whereas compulsory regulation of fertility is uniformly rejected in contemporary religious thought, some Protestant churchmen and church groups are considering the possibility of government use of tax penalties to induce lower birth rates. But, strong opposition to such inducements exists within all religious groups. Some religious leaders among all the groups would go further and reject all government efforts to persuade people to set particular fertility norms or to use particular birth control methods. Generally, the dissemination of factual demographic information would not be opposed but welcomed; information about birth control is, as we have seen, rather controversial within all religious groups, but with a growing tendency to favor it. Religious groups and leaders vary considerably in their opinions as to how serious a problem is posed by population growth in the United States. Some consider population control much more dangerous than population growth. Others, within all religious groups, consider population growth a crisis of major proportions. In 1967, 52 percent of the Roman Catholics and 55 percent of the non-Catholics in the United States considered population growth a serious problem for the United States. Everything considered, religious thought and practice in the United States is sensitive and flexible enough to respond to genuinely perceptible and significant human needs. A great reservoir of voluntary cooperation exists within all religious groups wherever the government can give clear and precise information about how individual reproductive behavior in the United States relates to the public interest. CRITERIA FOR ETHICAL DECISION- The foregoing sections have been essentially descriptive. They provided analyses of a number of key Western and American values, tried to show their place in the American society and its legal tradition, and concluded with the results of our findings concerning the values and interests of some key American interest and professional groups. That material constitutes, in our judgment, the main ingredients which should go into a determination of "the various means appropriate to the ethical values and principles of this society by which our Nation can achieve a population level properly suited for its environmental, natural resources, and other needs."19 But a listing of ingredients does not tell the policy-maker or anyone else how they should be mixed, in general or in particular. Toward that end it is necessary to have at hand some formal criteria, in this instance ethical tests, by which policies and policy proposals can be evaluated. In the nature of the case, however, the criteria can neither be definitive in their scope nor self-evidently obligatory in their specific applications. The fact of the matter is that ethical judgments, even with a tradition as relatively valueoriented as the American, come into play in concrete situations, where even the slightest change in the facts or circumstances of judgments can have a profound impact on the nature of the ethical issues at stake. If this is true even where there is a long historical legacy of individuals and society attempting to deal with ethical dilemmas, it is all the more true in the area of population policy. There is no clear Western ethical tradition bearing directly on population matters, no American ethical tradition at all, and a striking absence of significant court and legislative precedents. The maxim that "the life of the law is experience" has its counterpart in ethics, even if in the latter the place of formal principles and rules occupies a high place. Since, in the past, there was no need for the United States to formulate a set of ethical norms for dealing with population problems, there has been no occasion to put any norms to the test of time and experience. With these caveats in mind, criteria will be offered in the form of a series of guidelines which relate the key values discussed above to population policy. These guidelines all presuppose that a critical test of a policy's ethical acceptability will be its advancement of, or compatability with, those values which have been crucial in shaping the traditions, values, and principles of American society. The difficult question of how con flicts among the values can be reconciled, or how choices are to be made when they cannot be, will be discussed below, followed by an application of the criteria to a variety of current population proposals, and then by a discussion of how different interpretations of the "population problem" could have a significant impact on the evaluation of specific programs. Criteria Freedom A population program would contribute to, or be consonant with, freedom if: every person has access to full information and materials for the planning of his or her family size, implemented where necessary by government assistance. it helps the individual understand the options for choice in the area of fertility behavior, including their social and personal consequences. it directly or indirectly teaches the individual to take responsibility for his own actions and to control his destiny. it reduces anxiety, guilt, fears of pregnancy, and related unpleasant emotional states. no person is prohibited from bearing some children and all are given an opportunity to bear some. people's choices on the quality and conditions. of life are not restricted by population pres sures. freedom for future generations to make choices is preserved by government policy. opportunities for travel and migration are preserved and facilitated. opportunities for immigration to the United States are preserved. A population program could reduce freedom if: ⚫ it increases anxiety or fear in the population affected. ⚫ it introduces changes in social structure or climate of opinion without the knowledge or consent of those affected (the problem of manipulation). ⚫ it creates enforcement structures and procedures resulting in a greater overall level of government surveillance and more frequent invasions of privacy. A population program would contribute to, or be consonant with, justice if: the amount of sacrifice arising from the control of population growth and distribution were distributed to all members of the society equally. it contributed, either directly or indirectly, to erasing unjustified distinctions based on race, sex, or economic status. it is integrated into the full range of needed social reforms in society. innocent children do not suffer from any population control policy (unless it has been shown that it is in their best interest, the burden of proof resting on the government). the de facto burden of the policy does not rest on either the poor or minority groups. people are not forced to remain in, or to migrate to, areas of the country in which they do not desire to live for lack of jobs, unacceptable conditions of crowding, or hazards to the quality of life. so far as possible, the possibility of immigration to the United States is not denied. those who have been victims of society-either as individuals or as members of a social groupare given adequate compensation for their losses. under conditions when population growth must be reduced, the goal is an average N-child family rather than a universal N-child family. A population program could reduce justice if: it tends to solidify existing unjustified social and political distinctions or to forestall, divert attention from, or nullify general social reforms in the society. ⚫ it tends to solve growth problems at the expense of distribution problems, or vice-versa. it reduces population growth by successfully appealing to those of good will who believe population size should be reduced to have fewer than their desired number of children while those of less good will who also believe population size should be reduced continue to have the number they desire. it does not take account of, and respond to, the needs and demands of minority groups. it restricts the right of resident citizens to bear children but did nothing to reduce immigration. A population program would gravely jeopardize or nullify justice if: the right to have children is given to couples with the greatest ability or natural endowments, with the rights of others denied or restricted. those who are deemed useful to society are rewarded by being given special privileges for childbearing, while those who are not deemed useful are placed in a position which makes it more difficult to bear children. government selectively directs family planning and population control measures toward those segments of the population it judges to be acting contrary to the common good. • the bearing of children is understood as a privilege rather than a right, which may only be exercised when the government determines it is compatible with the common good. The General Welfare A population program would contribute to, or be consonant with, the general welfare if it promoted simultaneously, through population-related policies and direct socio-economic programs, the following: population prevention, natural resource preservation, prevention of social breakdown, protection against global eco-catastrophe, promotion of healthy economic growth or healthy economic stabilization, provision of time for solving social problems, enhancement of the quality of life for individuals and families, and protection against major short-range deterioration in the gene pool if any could be shown to exist. (This list is to be understood as representative rather than definitive.) A population program could reduce the general welfare if it worked on the premise that the above list of goods should be promoted primarily by population programs and only secondarily by direct socio-economic programs. A population program would gravely jeopardize the general welfare if it resulted in an unjustified imbalance of elements of general welfare. Security/Survival A population program would contribute to, or be consonant with, security/survival if it is based upon a judicious understanding of the implications of the program for short- and long-term security/survival"judicious" being understood as not gambling or ignoring reasonable projections on the one hand, or as not acting precipitately, on the other hand. A population program would threaten a misuse of the value of security/survival if it used a far-distant threat to national security/survival to infringe upon the present values and rights of the living, even with due process of law. A population program would gravely misuse the value of security/survival if it used an immediate or near-distant threat to national security/survival as, in and of itself, sufficient grounds to infringe upon other rights and values without regard for due process of law. Other Values A population program would contribute to, or be consonant with, other important values present in American society if it: ⚫ is based on a commitment not to deceive citizens or keep relevant facts or motivations from them (the value of truthtelling). recognized, particularly with respect to minority groups, the high value which groups place upon their own self-definitions of their problems and needs (the value of self-determination). recognized the importance to racial and other minority groups of political respect and leverage in the society (the value of group power). recognized the human value of beauty (aesthetic values). |