June 18, 2010 | In: Natural Law, Truth, Worldviews
What if Natural Were Not Natural?
The Spring 2003 edition of Wilson Quarterly ran an article called, “What is Natural?” The author, Andrew Stark, was exploring the standards used by insurance companies to decide what treatments to cover and which ones not to cover. One of the standards that he explores is the classic standard of a true medication or treatment returning the human body to natural functioning. Of course, like a true modernist, Stark then asks the question what exactly is natural? One example that he gives is the question of covering Viagra but not birth control pills. The idea of returning to the body to natural functioning would seem to indicate that Viagra should be covered since it returns the natural procreative functioning of the male, and that contraception should not be covered because it works against the natural procreative functioning of female. Then Stark pulls the standard modernist trick “what if.”
But suppose we view “natural” sexuality in recreational, not procreative, terms. Since “most Viagra users are men aged 50–75, hardly peak biological years for procreation,” a writer in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer pointed out a few years ago, “the specter of ‘recreational’ use is hard to ignore.” Viagra users are not fulfilling their natural functioning but thumbing their noses at it. After all, as Robert Scheer wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Isn’t sexual impotence God’s gentle way of saying to a 75-year-old man, ‘You’ve had enough’?” Contraception, by contrast, enables a woman “to enjoy sex,” Paige Shipman of Wisconsin Planned Parenthood told me, precisely by “eliminating a direct threat to her natural functioning: the ravages on her body that would result from having to bear 12 to 15 children.”
So if sex is understood in procreative terms, Viagra promotes natural functioning and contraception thwarts it. If it’s understood in recreational terms, Viagra frequently mocks natural functioning and contraception protects it. [1. Stark, Andrew. "What's Natural?" Wilson Quarterly. Spring 2003. 55-56.]
This common modernist fallacy creates a false supposition on which to base an argument. The argument itself seems perfectly logical, but the very premise on which it is based is made up out of thin air. “Suppose we just change the rules.”
For what reason would we consider sexuality from a recreational viewpoint? It is obvious to human reason that the purpose of human sexuality is greater than pleasure alone. It is equally obvious that at least part of that purpose is procreative. While there are many things in human life that bring pleasure, there are very few for which pleasure is the ultimate purpose because pleasure is such a low good on the hierarchy of human needs.
Of course, once you start heading down a false trail of logic, it is easy to remain misled. Paige Shipman’s comment about contraception preserving a woman’s natural functioning from the ravages of her body that result from having 12 to 15 children is a completely spurious argument. First of all, chemical contraception ravages the body even more than natural pregnancy — artificially aging the cervix, making the body more susceptible to cancer, and causing infertility. On the other hand, the woman’s natural fertility functioning makes it unlikely that she will ever bear 12 to 15 children. The application of little human reasoning to her natural fertility cycling guarantees it. The woman can use natural family planning to limit the number of children she has without using chemicals that would further damage her body.
Modernists like the “what if” game. It allows them to create a logical-sounding argument that calls truth into question while at the same time it makes no real claim to truth itself. It’s a dangerous form of propaganda that can do real harm.
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