The Parapet

The most serious objection to what this site argues about certain contraceptives runs like this: we accept small risks to life every day. We drive. We cross roads. We let our children climb trees. If a contraceptive method carries only a small possibility of ending a newly conceived life, why is that different from any other managed risk?

It is a fair question, and it deserves a fair answer. The answer is in Deuteronomy.

God commanded a wall on every roof

“When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it.” (Deuteronomy 22:8)

In ancient Israel the roof was living space. People slept there, ate there, gathered there. A fall was not likely. But it was possible, and it would be fatal. So God did not tell the householder to weigh the odds. He commanded a wall.

Notice what the command assumes. Guilt of blood does not require intent. It does not require likelihood. It attaches to the man who saw a fatal possibility and built nothing against it. The parapet is the difference between a tragedy and a bloodguilt.

Driving already has its parapet

Now look at the driving comparison, and it comes apart.

Driving is not a system that merely tolerates risk. It is a system built to answer for life. Speed limits fall near schools. Drivers are tested, licensed, and insured. Cars are inspected and engineered with safety systems. At every moment a conscious person is at the wheel, able to brake or swerve. And when something goes wrong, it is investigated, and someone is answerable. Dangerous driving. Causing death by careless driving. The whole structure rests on one premise: a lost life demands an answer.

Driving, in other words, is covered in parapets. The objection cites a system that obeys Deuteronomy 22:8 to excuse one that does not.

This has no parapet, and can have none

Once the pill is taken or the device fitted, no one is at the wheel. If the post-fertilisation mechanism ends a life, there is no test, no investigation, no record, no accountability, and no justice, because there is no way even to know it happened. The child at that stage is a tenth of a millimetre. His loss is indistinguishable from an ordinary period.

And here is the decisive point: no safeguard can be added afterwards. You cannot inspect this system, licence it, or put a driver at its wheel. The mechanism, once in use, runs unwitnessed. The only parapet available is not to use a method that carries it at all.

Rarity settles frequency, not morality

One more thing must be said, because the objection often retreats to the odds. However small the per-cycle probability, a mechanism that ends a life only occasionally still ends a life every time it operates. We do not reason from rarity anywhere else a human life is at stake. No one defends an action that kills an innocent person “only rarely”. The infrequency of a death is no part of the question whether we may knowingly risk causing it.

The householder was not told the odds of a fall. He was told to build the wall.