The most recent issue of Conscience, “Family Planning vs. Abortion” (Vol. XXXV, No. 3), is even more rewarding than most issues. The compelling arguments in Beverly Winikoff’s article, “Why Abortion Can’t Be Separated from Contraception,” fit well with Daniel Dombrowski’s critical review of Fabrizio Amerini’s new book, Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life.

As Winikoff writes, “It has never been behaviorally, biologically or pragmatically sensible to try and promote contraception by segre-gating abortion.” Repro-duc—tion is a seamless sequence of biological events, from the primordial germ cells set aside early in embryonic development to the birth of a baby. Abortion is not an ugly word. Embryonic wastage and spontaneous abortion often involve abnormal embryos. Without these healing processes few women would wish to become pregnant knowing they faced perhaps a 30 percent risk of delivering a seriously abnormal baby. Even before the insights of modern embryology, sources from Aristotle to the Koran (Sura 23:14) to, as Dombrowski reminds us, Thomas Aquinas, saw human devel-opment as an increasingly complex process.

Good science and a respect for both Christian and Muslim theology tell us that family planning and abortion are not opposites. Philosophically and in daily practice, family planning should always include knowledge about, and access to, comprehensive contraception options, as well as the choice of safe abortion.

Finally, as family planning is based on an unbroken chain of events, we should stop trying to describe IUDs or emergency contraception as unambiguously a contraceptive or an abortion, but as a bridge between two natural and necessarily linked processes.

MALCOLM POTTS
Professor of Public Health, University of California
Berkeley, Calif.