The Dignity of Man

    I wrote the following paper for health/religion during my senior year of high school.

    In the year 1916, Margaret Sanger opened the first "family planning clinic" in Brownsville, New York. Although the distribution of materials pertaining to birth control was illegal at the time, a series of court cases following the clinic's opening and Sanger's arrest led to physician-prescribed birth control being permitted by law in the state of New York. 1 This was the first act opening the way to the legalization of artificial contraception and its wide-spread use throughout the world. The Catholic Church, however, has always condemned the use of artificial birth control as immoral, with no exceptions. Despite this, Sanger's first clinic has grown to become Planned Parenthood International, Inc. whose affiliate, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is the largest provider of "reproductive health care" in the United States.2 On whose authority do these two major institutions in the world uphold their respective positions? Why? And which one shows true respect for the human person? 

Although Margaret Sanger's first birth control clinic was opened illegally, by the 1920s, contraception was becoming both legal and widely accepted.3 In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League. Its founding statement was: 

We hold that children should be (1) Conceived in love; (2) Born of the mother's conscious desire; (3) And only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of health. Therefore we hold that every woman must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception except when these conditions can be satisfied. 4 

History shows that these are not the principles that started Sanger as a birth control activist, however. Rather, she was looking to decrease the number of "human weeds", those in lower, poorer classes. Although previously advocating birth control as a way to ameliorate the condition of the poor, Sanger later took a different stand, desiring birth control so that "the healthier and more normal sections of the world" would not have to "shoulder the burden of the unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others."5 Later, she also wanted to have black ministers preach favorably about birth control. "The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."6 This clearly shows that purpose of Planned Parenthood and the birth control movement in general was not the "liberation" of women or "reproductive rights" (both of which seem to be widely accepted by society), but "cleansing" the world of the "unwanted": the poor, the less fit, or those of a minority, under a guise of it being for their good, a "peaceful genocide" founded on Sanger's own authority. This is unacceptable in a world where every human person has a right to life and dignity. 

Strongly and always opposed to Planned Parenthood and its teaching stand the Catholic Church. In the early 1960s, Pope John XXIII set up a commission to advise him on the issue of birth control. When he died in 1963, his successor, Pope Paul VI, took over and expanded the commission. When the members of the commission finished their work, a majority of them were in favor of the Church approving contraception. The records, intended to be confidential, were leaked in 1967. Those waiting for the Church 's official and definitive answer received it in July of 1968: Humanae Vitae (On Human Life).8 This encyclical clearly states the Church's position on contraception: 

Nor is it possible to justify deliberately depriving conjugal acts of their fertility by claiming one is choosing the lesser evil [as opposed to "interruption of the generative process already begun"]. It cannot be claimed that these acts deprived of fertility should be considered together as a whole with past and future fertile acts and thus that they [should be judged to] share in one and the same moral goodness of the fertile acts [of marriage] It is never permissible to do evil so that good might result, not even for the most serious reasons. That is, one should never willingly choose to do an act that by its very nature violates the moral order, for such acts are unworthy of man for this very reason. This is so even if one has acted with the intent to defend and advance some good either for individuals or for families or for society. Thus, it is a serious error to think that a conjugal act, deprived deliberately [ex industria] of its fertility, and which consequently is intrinsically wrong [intrinsece inhonestum], can be justified by being grouped together with the fertile acts of the whole marriage. 

The Church stands on the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ, her founder, guided by His vicar on earth, the pope. Her authority is that of a mother, a loving mother, who gives her children only what is good for them. She forbids the use of artificial contraception because it violates one of the two inseparable purposes of the marital act, namely, procreation. "The conjugal love of man and woman thus stands under the twofold obligation of fidelity and fecundity. The Church allows for the "regulation of procreation", but "for just reasons", and by natural means. 12 

 Sanger's ideas also show no respect for the human person. She advocated "voluntary association" over marriage, saying, "The marriage bed is the most degenerating influence in the social order." She thought that "marriages that were not sexually satisfying for the woman should end in divorce, since physical love was a higher imperative than mere law." This changes "the lowest common denominator of society from the family unit to individual sexual gratification", 13 and not only divorces the marital act from both of its purposes (fidelity and fecundity), but from marriage itself. It reduces man to a mere animal, looking only for pleasure and gratification. There is no reason, no intelligence, no commitment to raise man to a higher level. Humanity is dragged down, people are made disposable objects, nothing great is expected of man. Contraception allows a person to engage in the marital act without any responsibility, making no commitment, just as animals do by instinct. There is no dignity due the human person as a child of God in this viewpoint. While today Planned Parenthood's mission statement says, "We believe that [reproductive] self—determination will contribute to an enhancement of the quality of life and strong family relationships",14 facts show that this is false (couples who use contraception are shown to have a higher divorce rate than those that don't 15), and human reason tells us that reducing ourselves to an animal state does not enhance anything. 

Where Sanger's thought is deprived of respect for humanity, the Church not only shows respect in her teaching, but believes man capable of living with dignity, on a higher plane than the rest of nature. "Endowed with 'a spiritual and immortal' soul, the human person is 'the only creature on earth that God willed for its own sake.' From his conception, he is destined for eternal beatitude."16 The Church expects man to rise above his animal instincts, believing that man is capable of, indeed, is destined, for greatness. Not what the world considers greatness, perhaps, but great virtue. In the case of contraception, she ultimately expects one thing of man: self-mastery. Not mere self—control, the ability to control one's actions, but self—mastery, the ability to control and govern one's passions, the main component in the virtue of chastity.17 Animals cannot be chaste because they cannot reason. They live by instinct, seeking only to survive. Reason is a capacity exclusive to man, as Pope St. John Paul II said before he became pope: 

The fact that a person is an individual of a rational nature — or an individual of whose nature reason is a property — makes the person the only subject of its kind in the whole world of entities, a subject totally different from other such other subjects as, for instance, the animals... 18 

Man is endowed with the ability to think and choose rationally, to know when controlling his passions will bring about greater good than giving into them. This capacity is not always used by all men, but it is there, inborn in every man. The Church refuses to allow her children to reduce themselves to the state of the animals when they have been created for something so much greater. 

Contraception is often spoken of as a way for women to control their own bodies.19 But it is the woman with the power to live chastely who truly has control of the body God has given her, a body given as a gift that her soul might attain heaven. While society continues to fall further and further from God, the Church, His bride, will continue as a beacon of truth, upholding man's intrinsic dignity to the end of time. 

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1 <https://en.wikipedia.org/.wiki/Birth_control_movement_in_the4Jnited=States> (January 8, 

2018) 

2. 2<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned*arenthood> (January 8, 2018) 

3. 3<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiWBirth > (January 8, 

2018) 

4. 4 ibid. 

5. 5 Elasah Drogin, Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society (New Hope, Kentucky: Catholics 

United for Life, 1989), 9 

6. 6 ibid., 25 

7. 7 ibid., 14 

8. 8 Janet E. Smith, introduction to Humanae Vitae: A Challenge to Love, by Pope Paul VI (New 

Hope, Kentucky: New Hope Publications, 1991), 3-4 

9. 9 ibid., 35-36 

10. 10 The Catechism ofthe Catholic Church (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 

Inc. — Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 2363 

11 ibid., 2368 

 

12 ibid., 2370 

13 Drogin, 7 

14 <https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/mission> (January 8, 2018) 

15 <https://onemoresoul.com/featured/the-contraception-divorce-connection.hfinl> (January 8, 2018) 

16 Catechism, 1702 

17 ibid., 2339 

18 Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 22 

19 < https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/our-history> (January 8, 2018) 

 

Bibliography 

Catechism of the Catholic Church. Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference,

      Inc.— Libreria  Editrice Vaticana, 1997. 

Drogin, Elasah. Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society. New Hope, Kentucky:             Catholics United for Life, 1989. 

<https://onemoresoul.com/featured/the-contraception-divorce 

      connection.html> Accessed January 8, 2018. 

< https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/our-history> Accessed January 8, 2018. 

<https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/mission> Accessed January 8, 2018. 

Smith, Janet E. Introduction to Humanae Vitae: A Challenge to Love, by Pope Paul VI.       New Hope, Kentucky: New Hope Publications, 1991. 

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth control_movement in thea United States> Accessed January 8, 2018. 

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood> Accessed January 8, 2018 

Wojtyla, Karol. Love and Responsibility. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.