A lot of the opposition to emergency contraception (EC), also known as Plan B–which is being debated now in the PA House of Representatives–comes from the Catholic Church and other religious opponents of abortion.
Because I’ve taught a course on Just War Theory, and most of the leading contributors to that theory work in the Catholic tradition, I have some familiarity with Catholic moral thought. And I must say that there is a plausible argument from within that tradition for allowing EC.
Catholic just war theory teaches that it is permissible to do evil—that is, kill innocents—provided that one is doing so in a war of self-defense and provided that one is not aiming at the innocents. The doctrine of double effect says that so long as the death of innocents is not the intent of the military action but rather that one intends to strike at a legitimate military target such as a military base, then one is not morally culpable for the death of the innocent civilians who live near the base but are hit by bombs aimed at the base. My teacher, Michael Walzer, has argued that one must meet a further requirement and seek to minimize the deaths of innocents even if that means running greater risks oneself in war.
The Catholic argument against EC is that while it works in many cases by stopping the fertilization of an egg, in some cases, it works by stopping a fertilized egg from implanting itself in the wall of a woman’s uterus, thereby causing it day.
Now it seems to me that since we do not know in any particular case whether EC will stop fertilization or implantation of a fertilized egg, then a woman can take it with the intention of preventing a pregnancy without being morally culpable for the death of the fertilized egg, should that happen in a rare case. Contraception is surely a morally appropriate in the case of rape. Moreover, since EC is much more likely to act to prevent fertilization when it is taken soon after the rape, then there is a moral responsibility to make it available to women as quickly as possible.
And while I’m discussing religious thought, I can’t help but note that the Ross compromise looks suspiciously like the Orthodox Jewish practice of employing a gentile to do work that is prohibited to Orthodox Jews on the Sabbath, such as turning on or off electric lights. I always thought that was a peculiar practice in Jewish life but I’m happy to see it come in handy in this case. Who knew that our legislators could be so creative as to borrow the Jewish notion of a shabbos goy (Yiddish for Sabbath gentile) to help reconcile Catholics to EC.