54
edits
Changes
m
no edit summary
:This is the ideal – perhaps there are grave circumstances in which dispensations can be given, but they would have to be examined on a case-by-case basis. I don’t know what you mean exactly by “trump all moral values”?
Let’s look at each of your cases:
::1. A married woman told by her doctor that a pregnancy would likely kill her: contraceptive techniques have failure rates, so that even sex with such contraceptives would involve putting the woman’s life in danger. The natural approach seems to be abstinence, or removing the defective/diseased organ which is putting her life in such danger (e.g. a deformed fallopian tube likely to result in ectopic pregnancies or a uterus with a weakened wall that is vulnerable to rupture).
::2. Extra-marital sex: Why would a person who is having extra-marital sex and thereby knowingly transgressing the Church’s moral standards want to follow the Church’s instruction on contraception? Are we concerned that people who don’t subscribe to the Church’s standard that sex should only be inside marriage might accidentally just subscribe to the Church’s standards on contraception? This would not seem to be a concern.
::3. Husband with accidental HIV: This case is similar to #1. While sex barrier contraception would reduce the risk of transmission, it would still involve putting his wife’s life in danger, given the risk of breakage. Ideally, this couple would abstain (I’m not sure what your aside about “thoughts of contraception” meant), or obtain treatment (which I understand is prohibitively expensive in some countries) that would so reduce the husband’s viral load that he became effectively unable to transmit the disease to his wife. "