Personhood, Contraception and Population Control
There are two ways in which the contraceptive and population control movements devalue the person. First by destroying the integrity of the person and, as a result, the interpersonal relationship of marriage, and second, by their approach to the social problem of population. This paper will deal primarily with population control. The paper is not designed to give a comprehensive account of the population control movement but to highlight certain key aspects to show how both the values publicly promoted and the methods adopted to achieve their goals have diminished the person. According to a Christian personalist view of man, the person is a whole in himself and as such can never be treated simply as a part of society. Jacques Maritain has applied the philosophic distinction made by St. Thomas between individuality and personality to evaluate contemporary materialist philosophies. A social philosophy that ignores man's spirit leaves him with only material individuality and not true personality. Either anarchy tak~ uvt:r ur sUl:h a phiiosophy fWUU:S iht: pt:rson iu a mt:rt: numbt:r, all eOOIiOilUC statistic or a racial or ethnic entity.l John F. Crosby explains the difference in approach to the human being in terms of numbering. The quantitative relations oflarger and smaller are so merely because of comparison with other numbers. For example, 5 can become larger by hPino rnmn!lrpri tn ~ !Inri F. hPrnmp~ ~m!ll1pr whpn rllmn!lrPfl tn 1? If ~ vp.rv l~rQP'