Marquis on Contraception

In part five of the Marquis piece, he briefly addresses the possible wrongness of contraception. Contraception’s goal is to keep an egg and sperm from coming together during sexual intercourse. Since a fetus cannot be formed if the egg and sperm cannot come together, there is a loss of “potential value” that could have happened if the contraception had not been used. This loss of potential value is the only argument Marquis addresses for the case that contraception is wrong. He concludes that millions of egg and sperm combinations are lost at the point of contraception, and therefore a non-arbitrary line cannot be drawn, thus making contraception not immoral. However, I wish to go even further than where he stops at. Let’s say that only one egg and one sperm are released at the time of conception. Would this change his conclusion? I think it would based on his loss-of-a-future-like –ours argument he uses in his essay. Using contraception would prevent the one and only potential value that occurs during sexual intercourse, as opposed to the many combinations lost under real life conditions. Having one sperm and one egg draws a non-arbitrary line which I believe Marquis would not want to cross. The reason has to do with the intent of an action. I want to reiterate I am not speaking of a formed fetus after conception. I am only speaking of potential life value that would be lost from keeping a sperm from getting to an egg. Marquis seems to indicate that when two human beings engage in an action that is directed at uniting an egg and a sperm (and if a definite line could be drawn, such as one egg and one sperm), then he would say that contraception is wrong.