Why nfp

With NFP, both the loving and life-giving aspects are respected every time the spouses are joined together in the marital act. NFP is true family planning because couples are taught to identify, chart, and interpret the signs of fertility so that they can either avoid or achieve pregnancy in a safe, healthy, and effective way. No longer content with side effects ranging from mildly annoying all the way to death, men and women are looking for a better way to take control of their fertility.

Not only is contraception being prescribed for family-planning purposes, but increasingly for non-contraceptive purposes as well. Is it worth it? Mary Claire Lacrue, from Verily Magazine doesn't think so. Four years ago, her doctor prescribed the pill to treat her adult acne. A friend shared how fertility awareness methods had helped her understand and treat her reproductive and hormonal health. Her alternative to popping a pill intrigued me, so I took her advice and began researching.

She came to the conclusion that while the Pill and other artificial contraceptives are widely prescribed, it is rarely the best health care option. If the Church is against artificial contraceptives, surely it just wants couples to have as many children as physically possible then, with no regard for health, safety, finances, etc! It encourages couples to think that sexual self-control is not necessary.

It can encourage them to become slaves to pleasure. Both spouses need to know when the fertile days of the woman's cycle have arrived, and then decide together what to do depending on whether they are trying to avoid or achieve pregnancy.

To think that such communication and cooperation make the sexual act less pleasurable because less spontaneous is simply not true. To know with certainty what stage of the cycle one is in can increase the pleasure and spontaneity of the act, since the spouses can ignore worries about contraceptive failure or side-effects of the pill. Artificial birth control, besides introducing these worries, also puts the "contraceptive burden" on the shoulders of ONE, not both, spouses.

It makes it possible for a spouse to cut off the fertility of the act, even without the consent of the other spouse. It can introduce division into the marriage. It is a wholly positive approach to the sexual life of the spouses. It is clean, inexpensive, morally acceptable, and reliable.

As with anything good, NFP can be misused, if a couple has the wrong motives. Married couples are called by God to cooperate generously in bringing forth and educating new life. For a couple to decide that "we don't want children at this time", there need to be serious, objective reasons health, finances, etc.

If the reasons are not objective but selfish, then the couple cannot justify the avoidance of pregnancy just because they are using NFP to do it.

In this case they are not practicing "family planning", but "family avoidance"! There are differences between NFP and artificial birth control, but let these suffice for now. As Pope John Paul II has explained, the difference really rests on a person's answers to some very basic questions like, "What is marriage? What is the human body? Dalton herself was so incensed when a defensive instructor tried to blame her for a devastating method failure pregnancy that she went out and became an N.

While this one-to-one, personal encouragement and support can be hugely helpful, a more centralized database, institutional leadership and funding from the church are still needed. Amiri also acknowledges that Catholics will send women to fertility awareness-friendly doctors with the promise that they will be treated with more respect and dignity than a mainstream fertility specialist can provide. Ever a realist, she admits that does not always happen.

But Ms. Both women urge more transparency, more collaboration and more communication about natural family planning from the people who have lived it and know it best.

There are countless unofficial support groups for every method; and a new, lay-led online membership community called Off the Charts offers advice, encouragement and practical resources, including access to instructors for charting help and priests for spiritual guidance.

While this one-to-one, personal encouragement and support can be hugely helpful, a more centralized database, institutional leadership and funding from the church are still needed to help the many couples who seek assistance in learning about fertility awareness methods. There is no accurate, up-to-date, comprehensive index of methods of fertility awareness based methods, of how much they cost, who teaches them and where to go to find out more.

Here is my wish list: The U. More Catholic universities incorporate fertility awareness education into their nursing programs. Dioceses incentivize parishes to subsidize classes and advertise financial aid.

Individual methods hire tech-savvy people who understand social media. Priests and seminarians learn hard facts about various methods and about how N. And someone gets paid a living wage to organize and maintain a comprehensive index of information about church-approved methods of N.

It seems like a lot. But asking couples to use N. Years ago, when we were so cash poor we could not afford to switch methods, a friend gave me her used monitor. Our finances improved, and I passed along the monitor to someone else, who has since donated it to yet another couple.

There is no substitute for person-to-person support in this most personal of endeavors. But there is also no reason the institutional church cannot do more to help. She blogs daily at simchafisher. She lives in New Hampshire. Your source for jobs, books, retreats, and much more. Faith Features February 3, issue. Simcha Fisher January 24, What Catholic women actually believe about Natural Family Planning.

Love, Naturally: Reflections on natural family planning. Regina Bambrick-Rust. Show Comments. Join the conversation: Login or create an account. Before you can comment, you need to update your profile to include your first and last name, as required in our comments policy.

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