Government Birth Control: Reply to Mr. Sirilla, S.J.

Government Birth Control: Reply to Mr. Sirilla, S.J. William B. Ball 0 0 Part of the Catholic Studies Commons, and the Family, Life Course, and Society Commons Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl Recommended Citation WILLIAM B. BALL* Background to a Controversy A s HAS BEEN NOTED, divergent views have been taken by Father Hanley and myself on the interesting subject of government birth control. It is gratifying to note that in some ways the divergence has decreased: the position expressed by Father Hanley in his May 6, 1966 statement before the National Conference on Family Planning' is closer in significant respects to my own position than was his original position on the subject, expressed in statements which he made August 9, 1965 before the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association 2 and August 24, 1965 before the Gruening Committee. 3 Those earlier statements are of importance in the present controversy over government birth control in both its political and legal aspects. Their political importance derives from the fact that the controversy has arisen mainly out of objections raised by Roman Catholic spokesmen. For decades, moreover, public disputes over birth control have largely centered upon questions raised by Catholics. Until very recently these disputes have concerned not sponsorship by government of birth control programs but instead statutes penalizing private birth control activity, whether by individuals or by private clinics. Connecticut was long an arena of the most bitter controversy over such statutes.4 Catholic support of the Connecticut statute making criminal the sale or use of contraceptives was based upon the Catholic moral doctrine that contraception was morally evil. It was about this pivotal point of Catholic moral teaching on contraception that the whole Catholic public objection swung. Later, when in Chicago, New York City and at the federal level, birth control activity by government began to appear, precisely the same basis of objection was voiced by Catholics. The entry of government into the field, however, was also defended by Catholics, and most notable was the defense presented by Father Hanley before the ABA. Father Hanley's ABA statement included a statement signed by fifty-seven Catholic laymen and clergymen which asserted it to be legitimate public policy for government to "give information and medical assistance concerning medically accepted forms of family planning." 5 What was arresting both about the statement of the fifty-seven Catholics, as well as about the text of Father Hanley in which it was quoted, was the fact that both the laymen and Father Hanleyprecisely like the aforementioned Catholic spokesmen on birth control legislation -saw the Catholic moral teaching on contraception as the sole issue involved. Neither of the two groups seemed able to resist the magnetic pull of this single point. This parochialism has dogged the government birth control question down 5Quoted by Hanley in Hearings on S. 1676 Before a Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 1273, 1275 (1965). to the present hour. Catholics upon both sides of the issue have seemed to be unable to think of it except in terms of the morality, under Catholic doctrine, of contraception. This narrow focus of concern upon a public issue, while understandable, scarcely comports with the spirit, now emerging in the Roman Catholic Church, of an increased interest in the common good going beyond the bounds of specifically Catholic doctrinal or institutional concerns. The statements of Father Hanley and the "57" indeed touched upon the problem of governmental coercion and of free choice, but they did so solely in terms of governmental coercion of the Catholic conscience, free choice for the Catholic. Father Hanley's ABA statement, for example, recites: The sticky point for many is in the fact that, in so encouraging research and setting up programs the Government gives information and materials on methods which are deemed by many to be morally objectionable." Again: While the people of the United States may have a legitimate right to set up • . . tax-supported programs for family planning, this does not mean that the program can be imposed willynilly on the public. There must be, for instance, a recognition of the rights of those who feel that certain practices are immoral.' The "57," on the subject of coercion and free choice, also limited themselves to considerations of the morality, under Catholic doctrine, of contraception. What is remarkable in all of this earlier careful comment upon government birth control is its failure to look beyond the moral 6 Ibid. (Emphasis added.) 7Id. at 1276. (Emphasis added.) position of the Roman Catholic who is on public assistance and to even so much as ask whether there might exist any other problem respecting government birth control f (...truncated)