ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on the assumption that family planning by means of contraception is morally, medically and legally acceptable in modern society. The majority of family planning within marriage is more likely to be directed towards the good of the children, whose individual prospects must decline as the number of sibling’s increases. There is very little moral objection to contraception. The use of such contraceptive measures in non-consensual but bona fide medically controlled conditions may be less difficult to justify than is the case with sterilisation. The stronger argument would seem to be that contraceptive protection of the mentally handicapped is justified both by medico-legal necessity and by the moral doctrine of double effect. A displanting method of contraception – that is, one which is designed to remove an implanted embryo – is clearly a contradiction in terms; but so, also, is a displanting method of contragestation for the woman must have gestated for a short time.