Contraception Ethics 08

What is contraception on an ethical and a scientific point of view?

Scientific point of view:

• It is a voluntary prevention of pregnancy that can be used by both men and women.
• Through many methods, it gives us the possibility to choose between creating a family or not.
• Certains methods give the population a possibility to prevent ourselves from sexual diseases.
• It is an easy way to control population but is against procreative liberty. (ex: China, one child policy)

Ethical point of view:

• Contraception gave the women more rights over their body.
• Contraception gave women the power not to have an unwanted child wich is linked to the fact that women have more rights.
• However, it might be considered as an inhibition of life. Do we kill somebody before he has a chance to live? It leads us into the question of when does Life begin.
• It's a dilemna between reproductive rights : first for a woman to have the right to control her body and secondly the right for everyone to live (as seen in the articles of human rights).

Websites : http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/contraception/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_rights -

When does Life begin?

This is the big question of our chapter. How to define life? How does it begin ? At which step? Is it the shape of an embryo that allows us to call it a human being? Is it its capacity of thinking ? Or does Life begin at fertilization, the meeting of two living cells?

First, let us focus just on contraception by itself.

Certain methods of contraception (link: condom, blabla) block the way for egg cells to be fertilized. Here we are talking about haploid gametes that by themselves cannot induce the life cycle, which begins after their fusion. But these methods of contraception are a choice of cells: every cell that will be blocked by contraception looses its chance to create life. It is an intervention on the hasard/random of life. These are the Church's arguments against contraception.

mention the fact that contraception is specific for some particular cell type but it does NOT choose a particular embryo to destroy it: it is specific in a way... but not specific in the other. Some other contraceptive methods inhibit the embryo by itself. THis implicates the fact tha their action is made AFTER fertilization. For some people, Life with a big L begins AT fertilization

When is it a murder ?

Legislative

In Switzerland a woman has 12 weeks to decide if she wants to practice contraception. After that period of time she must consult a doctor who will examine her and decide if she is threatened about her pregnancy and if this the case she can

References

• Movie on Stemm cell: [1]

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