Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

128 JOHN BERKMAN
to becoming pregnant only through acts of sexual intercourse
between herself and her husband.
If reproductive integrity is properly understood as being
concerned with the means by which a woman “allows herself to
be made pregnant,” then Geach is correct to insist that a woman
engages in acts that impact upon her reproductive integrity both
in her action in sexual intercourse and in her action when she
allows a medical technician to implant an embryo into her
uterus. Under this description, both acts are of the kind that
leads to impregnation, and both are thus properly understood as
marriage acts. The former – conjugal acts between a husband
and wife – are appropriate marriage acts. The latter – acts by
which a woman becomes pregnant which are not the result of a
conjugal act between a husband and wife – are perversions of
the marriage act, and as such are intrinsically immoral. 27
However, Geach’s argument gains some of its force from an
equivocation as to the nature of an act that leads to pregnancy.
For to say that a woman’s reproductive integrity lies in her
allowing the conception of a child only through marriage acts
with her husband is not the same as to say that a woman’s reproductive
integrity lies in her allowing herself to become pregnant
only through marriage acts with her husband. 28 The former is
27 “Now if these [orgasmic] sensations are ones which it is wrong to
excite by acts of solitary vice, how much worse must it be to isolate the spiritual
component of the marriage act, the giving up of the body to the
impregnator, dissociating oneself from the parents of the child, and substituting
for the relation to the father a mere arrangement with a technician.
What is being asked of women is that they take a vital part of the marriage
act, and perform it without the father. If solitary vice is objectionable as part
of the marriage act taken out of context, much more so is this giving up of
one’s body to an impregnating intromission.
…To lay one’s womb open to an impregnating intromission which is not
performed by the father, and is not generative, and is not expressive of a preexisting,
sexually exclusive personal relationship, would be seriously to damage
one’s ability to give oneself in marriage, and one’s sense of oneself as a
psychophysical unity, and one’s understanding of the human animal as an
image of the creator.” Geach (1999), p. 345. For Geach’s claim that having an
orphan embryo implanted in one’s womb is intrinsically immoral, see Geach
(1999), p. 341.
28 On the question of the appropriate context for conception, DV says