Bioethics designates the ethical reflection on the treatment of human life, especially at its beginning and its end. It is not an abstract specialist field, but the place where it becomes evident whether a society actually respects the dignity of the person or merely claims to. The questions of bioethics — from abortion through surrogacy to euthanasia — are ultimately questions about personhood. To whom does it belong, and what follows from it?
From the standpoint of personalist ontology, bioethics cannot be pursued in a purely utilitarian or consequentialist manner. If the person is a someone and not a something, then the personalist norm forbids ever using her merely as a means. The embryo is a person from fertilization onward — not because it exhibits certain capacities, but because it is a substantial whole with a human nature. Bioethics thus becomes the touchstone for whether a society’s concept of person ties personhood to conditions or recognizes it as unconditional. Günther Pöltner has shown, in Die konsequenzialistische Begründung des Lebensschutzes (1993) and Ontologische Voraussetzungen der Debatte über den Embryonenschutz (2005), that every bioethical position tacitly presupposes an ontology of the person — the debate is, prior to the ethical question, an ontological one.
Abortifacient Contraceptive
An abortifacient contraceptive is a contraceptive that, alongside its contraceptive effect, can also prevent the implantation of an already fertilized ovum. It thereby acts potentially as an abortifacient. One example is the so-called morning-after pill.
Since the person exists from conception onward, in the case of abortifacient contraceptives the possible killing of the human person is added to the violation of the natural finality of the conjugal act. Every fertilized ovum is already an embryo with full ontological dignity and full personhood. The use of such means therefore presents a grave ethical problem that goes beyond the question of contraception.
Ontological classification: Genus: contraceptive
Contraception
Contraception designates the deliberate prevention of conception through artificial means or methods. In the Thomistic-personalist tradition that the dissertation follows, this action is qualified as an intrinsically evil act (cf. Bexten 2017, pp. 291 ff.).
The grounding lies in the language of the body. The bodily self-gift in conjugal union expresses the total, unreserved self-gift of the person. Artificial contraception introduces an inner contradiction into this language. The body says “totally,” while the will withholds an essential aspect. Karol Wojtyła shows that this constitutes a form of practical oblivion of the person. The person of the partner is not accepted in her full bodily-personal reality, but is instrumentally curtailed.
Contraceptive
A contraceptive is a utensil intended to prevent conception by artificially interrupting the natural finality of the conjugal act. As an object, the contraceptive is morally neutral — the moral evaluation concerns the act of contraception that employs it. This distinction between the means and the action is ontologically significant.
A particular problem arises with abortifacient contraceptives, which not only prevent conception but suppress the implantation of an already conceived embryo. Since the person exists from fertilization onward, this directly touches the dignity and the right to life of the human person. Spousal love, as the highest form of personal love between man and woman, essentially includes openness to new life.
Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.
Further sources:
- Wojtyła, Karol: Love and Responsibility, transl. H. T. Willetts (language of the body and the personalist norm in bioethics).
- Singer, Peter: Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (advocates a utilitarian bioethics — discussed critically in the dissertation).
- Spaemann, Robert: Persons: The Difference between “Someone” and “Something”, transl. Oliver O’Donovan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 (personhood from conception).
- Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 64 (the right to life and the prohibition of killing).
- Kant, Immanuel: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Academy Edition vol. IV, p. 429 (the formula of the end in itself: never treat the person merely as a means).