Pregnancy can threaten the lives of women with certain medical conditions. Other health problems can be aggravated by multiple pregnancies and by the daily grind of caring for children. Should the wife die or suffer from poor health she cannot care for and educate her children properly, something that is required if the marriage is to be properly procreative. By contraception one might avoid these consequences. Not all people have an equal capacity to care for children. A particular parent may be able to cope more or less adequately with one or two children, but because of a nervous condition or some other trait, the burden of caring for more offspring is excessive. Contraception can allow a couple to have the number of children they can properly care for. Contraception can satisfy the reasonable wish of parents not to pass on serious genetic defects. If it is true that the world is now overpopulated, or is likely to be overpopulated in the near future, bringing many children into the world seems to be irresponsible. Although it is far from obvious that a country like Canada or United States has too many people, there are nations that seem to have more people than can be sustained adequately by the available resources. Contraception is an obvious means of population control. One might argue about the weight to be given to one or other of the reasons listed above. The severity of the problem of overpopulation, for example, is disputed. Nevertheless, these reasons have caused many Catholics to question and even to reject the Church's teaching on contraception. All of the above reasons for not having children can be honoured without artificial contraception if couples are willing to abstain from sexual intercourse during fertile periods. However, many think that such abstention is too difficult, or too uncertain, or undesirable for some other reason; they conclude that in some cases at least only contraception provides an adequate method when there are legitimate reasons to limit the number of children.
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