German politician: ‘Anyone who is Catholic cannot be against the male contraceptive pill’

MEP Peter Liese wants the EU's ‘Biotech Act’ to fund male contraceptives, claiming Catholics should support the initiative, in contrast with perennial Church doctrine.

(LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic politician from Germany is campaigning for new contraceptives for men, claiming that they are compatible with Church teaching. Peter Liese, a medical doctor and Member of the European Parliament for the Christian Democrats (CDU), is promoting the development of the new contraceptive methods for men, including the “male pill.” The 61-year-old argued, “In most cases, women have to use hormonal methods of birth control, such as the pill, which many do not tolerate well.

So the burden is either shifted onto women, or the only alternatives are methods that are either not as effective or are permanent – such as condoms or a vasectomy.” Together with his CDU colleague in Parliament, Christian Ehler, Liese has sent letters to the European Commission and German Research Minister Dorothee Bär (CSU). The commission should allocate more funding for research into male contraception, the MPs demand.

The legislators want Bär, who has already spearheaded efforts for more research and development at the national level, to highlight their initiative at the European level. The European Parliament is currently working on a legislative package designed to strengthen biomedical research – among other things, it aims to speed up the drug approval process. Liese is pushing for this “Biotech Act” to explicitly mention male contraceptives.

He introduced an amendment this week, supported by individual politicians from the liberal and social democratic factions. Liese and former federal minister Katarina Barley had already jointly appealed to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) back in September. This is because researchers developing male contraceptives are breaking new ground – and lack clear guidelines for market approval.

Liese argues that contraception is a good way to prevent unwanted pregnancies and abortions. He cited Catholic teaching that life begins at conception to justify his support for contraception. “Anyone who is Catholic cannot be against the male contraceptive pill,” Liese claimed.

The politician is an active member of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), the most important lay organization of the Catholic Church in Germany. The ZdK is known for its heterodoxy and support of the heretical Synodal Way. Liese said that the Church would promote Natural Family Planning (NFP), where couples avoid fertile days to lower the chance of pregnancy for certain reasons.

He said that he expects more “openness” from the Church in the future. “According to the current state of research, male contraception is a very safe method of family planning with few side effects,” the politician said. “And I believe that, even from a Catholic perspective, there is nothing against it, but plenty in its favor.”

Contrary to Liese’s claims, contraception is not compatible with Church teaching and is never permissible since the conjugal act is intrinsically ordered toward procreation. To artificially disrupt the nature of the sexual act and its ends is considered an intrinsic evil. Pope Pius XI writes in his encyclical Casti Connubii: “But no reason, however grave, may be put forward by which anything intrinsically against nature may become conformable to nature and morally good.

Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who in exercising it deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.” Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae affirms this teaching by stating: “Similarly excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation – whether as an end or as a means.” Regarding the practice of NFP, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality.

These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, ‘every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible’ is intrinsically evil.” Contrary to the claims of the CDU politicians, NFP and contraception are not comparable from a moral perspective.

While NFP involves periodic abstinence during fertile periods, every marital act remains open to life. Contraception, on the other hand, intentionally sterilizes the conjugal act, depriving it of its natural end.