Human fecundity and the problem of sterility.

 

29. Human fecundity and the problem of sterility. Medically assisted procreation: typology, definition, criterion of artificiality, argumentation and morally differentiated evaluation with reference to the teaching of the Church.

Fecund and its synonyms "fruitful" and "fertile" all mean producing or capable of producing offspring or fruit-literally or figuratively. ... "Fertile" implies the power to reproduce ("a fertile woman") or the power to assist in reproduction, growth, or development ("fertile soil"; "a fertile climate for artists").They define fecundity as (1) the possibility of becoming pregnant or (2) the likelihood of exposure to being pregnant, which is essentially dependent on the sexual pattern and preventive measures being taken. In humans, the fecundity is reflective of the duration between female menarche and menopause.

Fecundity Definition

The meaning of fecundity is the reproductive rate (fecundity rate) or the performance of an individual or the population. In biology, what is the meaning of fecundity? Fecundity is the estimate of the number of gametes produced by an individual. In simpler terms, fecundity is the quantification of the number of individuals added to the population.

Fecundity (biology definition): In biology, the term fecundity is a measure of fertility. It may also pertain to the ability to produce offspring or to cause growth. In demography, it may be measured by counting the gametes,seed set, or asexual propagules. Etymology: from Latin fēcunditās , meaning “fertility”.

Sterility,

Impotence, otherwise known as erectile dysfunction (ED), refers to trouble getting or maintaining an erection. This can make it difficult or impossible to have intercourse. Sterility, also called infertility, refers to an inability to produce or release sperm.Sterility is the physiological inability to affect sexual reproduction in a living thing, members of whose kind have been produced sexually.

sterile, infertile imply incapability of producing offspring or fruit, as because of some disorder of the reproductive system; , barren, unfruitful are specifically applied to a sterile woman or to plants or soil; , impotent is specif. applied to a man who cannot engage in sexual intercourse because of an inability to have an erection.

What is an artificial method:“Method and devices are allowing people to have sex without having children as result. The deliberate use of artificial methods or other techniques to prevent pregnancy as a consequence of sexual intercourse are generally call artificial methods. During the sexual intercourse or before the couple are using many means to prevent the sperm to meet with the egg. Once again the artificial methods means without follow the natural planning of birth control using the material things for preventing the new life is call use of artificial methods of contraception.

According to Margaret Sanger; this is birth control, therefore, we can say that contraception is actively aimed at preventing conception in sexual intercourse or contraception. It purposefully tries to “block the possibility of a new life or destroys that life at its first moments of existence. Contraceptive methods of birth control however create an atmosphere of conditional love because the giving of our love in intercourse depends on us changing something about ourselves. Without the couple’s reflecting on it perhaps, sexual intercourse using contraceptives is conditional. We express our love sexually to our partner only if something is different about them, namely that their life-giving ability is altered. It does not signify unconditional love. for birth control purpose, using condoms, diaphragms, foams, pills, implants and any other physical or chemical contraceptive materials are against the marriage purpose, the procreative and Catholic morality. It is a method which permits intercourse between fertile partners without producing impregnation. It is a temporary measure, permitting the planning of pregnancy.

Criterion of artificiality:A. behavioral Methods B. Barrier Methods and spermicides Methods C. Hormonal and Surgical Methods. Descriptions are below-

A. Behavioral Methods: 1. periodic Abstinence 2.Withdrawal 3. Breastfeeding as Birth control

B. Barrier Methods and spermicides Methods: 1. Condom or Nirodh 2. Female condom 3.Male condom 4.diaphragm 5.Sponge 6. The Cervical Cap 7.Spermicides Jellies, foams, and Creams 8.Vaginal Ring (Nova Ring).

C. Hormonal and Surgical Methods

4.1: LU.D. or Loop- Intrauterine Device, 4.2: Sterilisation or Ligation, 4.2.1: Male- Vasectomy, 4.2.2 Female- Tubectomy,4.3: Abortion, 4.4: RU - 486, 4.5: Pill: Men and Women, 4.5.1: May Suppress Ovulation, 4.5.2: May Impede Sperm Migration, 4.5.3: May Inhibit Implantation, 4.6: The Patch, 4.7: Implants, 4.8: Injections, 4.9: Emergency Contraception, 4.10: Copper-T380 intrauterine device:

Scripture and Church teaching:

Modern birth control methods were unknown in the Bible. In the Genesis 1:28, 9:1.7: 35:11 "from the beginning, the Lord commands us to be fruitful ("fertile"") and multiply. A husband and wife fulfill God's plan for marriage in the bringing forth of new life, for God is life itself". Genesis 28:3 "Isaac's prayer over Jacob shows that fertility and procreation are considered blessings from God". The Scripture comes to condemning birth control is Genesis chapter 38, the account of Judah's sons Er and Onan. "The Onan account provides a powerful biblical basis for the traditional Christian teaching that unnatural forms of birth control are immoral. The Bible teaches us that sexual intercourse is a very special act, even a sacred act, that may be used only two people entered into the covenant of marriage and even in marriage there are some restrictions. St. Paul tells us about marital love in Ephesians chapter 5 and 1st Corinthians chapter 13."

In the Old Testament Gen 38: 8-11 says, Juda married an annanite woman who had three sons. His elder son Er married tamar but without having child Er died. So Judah said to Onan, "Go in to your brother wife and perform the duty of a brother in law to her; rise up offspring for your brother. But since O'nan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother's wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother. What he did was displeasing in the sight of Lord and He put him to death. So from this event we can say that God Himself also against of not using the artificial methods. There are many Bible verses comes to condemning birth control...

Gen. 28:3: Isaac's prayer over Jacob shows that fertility and procreation are considered blessings from God, Gen. 38:8-10:Onan is killed by God for practicing contraception (in this case, withdrawal) and spilling his semen on the ground. Deut. 25:7-10: the penalty for refusing to keep up a family lineage is not death, like Onan received. Onan was killed for wasting seed.Exodus 23:25-26; Deut. 7:13-14: God promises blessings which include no miscarriages or barrenness. Children are blessings from God, and married couples must always be open to God's plan for new life with every act of marital intimacy.Lev. 21:17, 20: Crushed testicles are called a defect and a blemish before God. God reveals that deliberate sterilization and any other methods which prevent conception are intrinsically evil.1 Chron. 25:5: God exalts His people by blessing them with many children. When married couples contracept, they are declaring "not your will God, but my will be done."Psalm 127:3-5: Children are a gift of favor from God and blessed is a full quiver. Married couples must always be open to God's precious gift of life. Contraception, which shows a disregard for human life, has lead to the great evils of abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide.Hosea 9:11; Jer. 18:21: God punishes Israel by preventing pregnancy. Contraception is a curse, and married couples who use contraception are putting themselves under the same curse.Mal. 2:15: What does God desire? Godly offspring. What is contraception? A deliberate act against God's will. With contraception, a couple declares, "God may want an eternal being created with our union, but we say no." Contraception is a grave act of selfishness.

In the N.T.: Matt. 19:5-6: Jesus said a husband and wife shall become one. They are no longer two, but one, just as God is three persons, yet one. The expression of authentic marital love reintegrates our bodies and souls to God, and restores us to our original virginal state (perfect integration of body and soul) before God.Acts 5:1-11: Ananias and Sapphira were slain because they withheld part of a gift. Fertility is a gift from God and cannot be withheld.Rom.1:26-27: A Sexual act without the possibility of procreation is sinful. Self-giving love is life-giving love, or the love is a lie. The unitive and procreative elements of marital love can never be divided, or the marital love is also divided, and God is left out of the marriage.1 Cor. 6:19-20: The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit: thus, we must glorify God in our bodies by being open to His will.Gal. 6:7-8: God is not mocked for what a man sows. If to the flesh, corruption. If to the Spirit, etemal life. Eph. 5:29-31; Phil. 3:2: Mutilating the flesh (e.g., surgery to prevent conception) is gravely sinful. Many Protestant churches reject this most basic moral truth. 1 Tim. 2:15: Childbearing is considered a "work" through which women may be saved by God's grace.

Teaching of the Catholic Church

Tradition:The biblical teaching that birth control is wrong is found even more openly among the Church Fathers, who recognized the biblical and natural law principles underlying the condemnation. The earliest reference to contraception and abortion is in the Didache, a document from the second half of the first century or early second century. Didache reads: "You shall not practice birth control; you shall not murder a child by abortion, nor kill what is begotten." Clement of Alexandria wrote, "Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be unsuccessfully ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted" (The Instructor of Children.St. Basil the Great wrote in his First Canonical Letter, "The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder." Augustine wrote in 419 I am supposing, then, although you are not lying with your wife for the sake of procreating offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by an evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel lust, comes to this, that they even procure poisons of sterility. Magisterium:The Church also, fulfilling the role given it by Christ as the identifier and interpreter of apostolic Scripture and apostolic tradition, has constantly condemned Contraception as gravely sinful.

Vatican Council II: Given this basis in Sacred Scripture, we hold marriage as a sacrament in our Catholic oeiel. Vatican Il's Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World (paragraph 47-52) spoke beautifully about marriage: Marriage is a partnership of life and love designed by God and endowed by Him with its own proper laws, with various benefits, and with various ends in view. Both husband and wife "surrender themselves to each other" and give their "irrevocable personal consent". Marriage involves a mutual giving of two persons, which entails total fidelity and permanence. Moreover, the love of husband and wife which binds them together as one overflows, and they may participate in creation, giving birth to children. Through the sacrament they live and the bountiful graces offered by our Lord, couples are fortified to fulfill their duties to each other and their family, As such, marriage is clearly the foundation of the family and the whole human race. The act of marital love also participates in God's creative love. The couple who has become a new creation by becoming husband and wife, one flesh, may also bring about the creation of new life in accord with God's will. Vatican II asserted, "By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory." The Council acknowledged that while not diminishing the importance of sacramental union symbolized in marital love, "it must be said that true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it is directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich His family from day to day."

The Vatican council also says about the use of artificial methods. In the document of 'Church in the modern world' 1469 paragraph says, "By using artificial methods we are destroying the divine love of the couples." Again in 1483 paragraph says, "What the church says regarding the birth control should be followed it." So finally we can say that the Vatican council also against of use of birth control.

Encyclical of Pope Paul VI (Humanae Vitae): On 25 July 1968 His Holiness Pope Paul VI promulgated a letter call "Human vitae". There he speaks many things regarding the birth control. In Human vitae or Human life he reemphasized the church's constant teaching that it is always intrinsically wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence. In number 8 says, "By means of the reciprocal personal gift of self, proper and exclusive to them, husband and wife tend towards the communion of their beings in view of mutual personal perfection, to collaborate with God in the generation and education of new lives." Also in number 11 says, "Each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. Contraception is wrong because it's a deliberate violation of the design God built into the human race, often referred to as "natural low". The natural law purpose of sex is procreation." Also in number 14 "We must once again declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun, and, above all, directly willed and procured abortion, even if for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as licit means of regulating birth. Equally to be excluded, as the teaching authority of the Church has frequently declared, is direct sterilization, whether perpetual or temporary, whether of the man or of the woman. Similarly excluded is every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible." Nevertheless, we have witnessed the proliferation of the use of artificial birth control in particular. As Pope John Paul II, as well as Pope Paul VI, has repeatedly warned, what has consequently evolved in society is a contraceptive mentality, the removal of conjugal love from the Sacrament of Marriage, and in many cases especially outside the context of marriage- the reduction of conjugal love to simply a sex act without genuine love. Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae (paragraph 9) offered a beautiful reflection on this conjugal love of marriage. The Holy Father said that marital love is a genuinely human love, because it embraces the good of the whole person and is rooted in a free willed, giving of one spouse to the other. This love endures through joy and pain, success and failure, happiness and sorrow, uniting the couple in both body and soul. This love is also total free of restriction, hesitation, or condition. This love is faithful and exclusive to both partners. In all, this love must be a mutually respectful action, a genuine expression of love. Unlike what is so often portrayed by the various media today, marital love is not some erotic action, rooted in selfishness, fleeting pleasure, or dominance. No, marital love is a sacred action which unites a couple with each other and God. The spirit of this teaching reflects what Jesus said at the Last Supper, "There is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13).

The immediate issue was around the use of artificial means of contraception. On July 25th, 1968, Pope Paul VI published his Encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life), which banned the use of artificial means of contraception, while allowing as acceptable in the eyes of the church the use by married couples of the So-called rhythm method as a means of regulating their fertility. It continued that "the church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles. And it pointed out that neither the church nor her doctrine is inconsistent when she considers it lawful for married people to take advantage of the infertile period but condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the latter practice may appear to be upright and serious.

 Given this understanding about the sacrament of marriage, Pope Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae stated, "Each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life." The Holy Father continued, "This particular doctrine, expounded on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage pact."

Encyclical of Pope John Paul II (Evangelium Vitae): Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase. Life in time, In fact, is the fundamental condition, the initial stage and an integral part of the enlireunitied process of human existence. It is a process which, unexpectedly and undeservedly, is enlightened by the promise and renewed by the gift of divine life, which will reach its full realization in eternity (I John 3:1-2).

In a special way, believers in Christ must de fend and promote this right, aware as they are of the wonderful truth recalled by the Second Vatican Council: "By his incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every human being". This saving event reveals to humanity not only the boundless love of God who "so loved the world that he gave his only Son" (John 3:16), but also the incomparable value of every human person.

Holy Father Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical The Gospel of Life, Reflected that Cod's own image and likeness is transmitted through the creation of an immortal soul directly by Him. Moreover a child is really the personification of the love of husband and wife in union with the creator. Therefore, "it is precisely in their role as co-workers with God who transmits His image to the new creature that we see the greatness of couples who are ready to cooperate with the love of the Creator and the savior who through them will enlarge and enrich his own family day by day" (The Gospel of life, Paragraph 43).

Catechism of Catholic Church: The Catechism of the Catholic Church also clearly said that use of any artificial methods is a sin. There are some paragraphs which are very much noticeable. These are 2370, " Every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means to render procreation impossible is intrinsically." Again in 2399, "The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do rot justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception)."

Teaching of CBCB: After nine years of the papal encyclical, Human Vitae, the Catholic Bis op of Bangladesh have issued on the 12h June, 1977, a Pastoral Letter on Christian Marriage and the Family. In this pastoral letter The Bishops mainly says about the church teaching on Family life by re-starting some moral Principles and recalling some of their traditional values. They also give importance on especially on the artificial methods for birth control, There they said, "Contraception is not a good itself that man should be attracted to." Regarding the sterilization the bishops say that no coercive measures such as compulsory sterilization should be allowed because it is against the dignity of the human person. Finally the bishop of Bangladesh says, "Every form of contraception either by natural methods or by artificial methods or sterilization involves certain evil" Regarding the artificial methods bishops have clearly said that, "l.e artificial means of birth control could be moral in certain cases. This is a position which goes beyond the Stand taken in some of the official documents of the Church and in some Episcopal conferences. Pastoral concern of the bishops for the local people is to be highly appreciated. Here it is clear that the means or method is not the primary element in the contraceptive act but the end of the values one realizes."

An overview on official teaching about methods: "The question on the lawfulness of the methods of b. th control had been taken up for a first time already by Pius XI in the encyclical CastiConnubii, 1930. It approves on the one hand of the newly discovered method of Ogino-Knaus, since it respects the laws inherent in nature, and rejects on the other, as not conforming to the demands of the laws of nature, the then existing artificial means of birth control." In Humanae Vitae, Paul VI picked up some of the very important values: "human dignity, the meaning of sexuality, conjugal love and responsible parenthood. He based his teaching on his understanding of sexual intercourse as a single act with two meanings, the unitive (mutual affection and the love-giving dimension of intercourse) and the procreative (the life-giving dimension). According to the encyclical, these two meanings cannot be separated. Therefore, artificial contraception, in cutting of the procreative meaning, is evil because it involves a positive action against the possibility of life.

Following the 1980 Synod of bishops, which focused on the family, John Paul II published a lengthy exhortation named FamiliarisConsortio about marriage and family. In this wider context, he described contraception as a denial of the inner truth of conjugal love: It contradicts the total self-giving of husband and wife.

The Catholic Bishops of Bangladesh put forward the guidelines and principles to all concerned about birth control methods. Human life is a gift of God. From the very moment of conception the dignity and value of human life is same as it is all time. So to protect this life in any cost is our sacred duty. "All the direct and indirect abortions or all medicines used for the purpose of induced abortions, sterilizations and other artificial means of contraception are intrinsically evil and therefore the use of these is wrong." The Church is always against all kinds of anti-life mentality and advises all to avoid them at any cost. The Church feels that those who are reluctant to transmit life due to their selfish mentality in fact neglect one of the fundamental responsibilities of their married life. The use of natural methods with this mentality is also against morality. The Church does not support the use of any artificial means on the ground that they are immoral and unlawful. Moreover, neither any individual nor any organization of the Church can cooperate in the distribution and use of these methods.