Sexy makeover for natural family planning

April 16, 2012 By

I’m not Catholic, but I’m part of a religious tradition that embraces children and affirms large families. I had absolutely no idea how counter-cultural this was until I became an adult and was surrounded by contraceptive messaging. When I got married, my girlfriends gave me copies of books such as the one pictured here. They told me stories about how they spaced out their children or learned how to get pregnant. I think, in fact, that as many people who use what is frequently called “Natural Family Planning” are doing so in order to achieve pregnancy as to avoid it.

In any case, this is one of those topics that religious women talk about all the time and the Washington Post picked up on a recent incarnation of this with a story headlined “Young Catholic women try to modernize the message on birth control.” The story features a woman I know, Ashley McGuire, who runs the AltCatholicah blog. She talks about how she was drawn to the church because of what it taught about sex:

Yet the images the church uses to promote its own method of birth control freaked her out. Pamphlets for what the church calls natural family planning feature photos of babies galore. A church-sponsored class on the method uses a book with a woman on the cover, smiling as she balances a grocery bag on one hip, a baby on the other.

“My guess is 99 out of 100 21st-century women trying to navigate the decision about contraception would see that cover and run for the hills,” McGuire wrote in a post on her blog, Altcatholicah, which is aimed at Catholic women.

McGuire, 26, of Alexandria is part of a movement of younger, religiously conservative Catholic women who are trying to rebrand an often-ignored church teaching: its ban on birth control methods such as the Pill. Arguing that church theology has been poorly explained and encouraged, they want to shift the image of a traditional Catholic woman from one at home with children to one with a great, communicative sex life, a chemical-free body and babies only when the parents think the time is right.

You know how when you read a story about something you know, sometimes you think that what you’ve read bears no relation to your personal experience? That happens so frequently with me that I’m pleasantly surprised downright shocked when the opposite happens. See, whenever I’ve talked with Catholic or Lutheran friends about natural family planning, one of the main things that men and women will say they enjoy about it is that it leads to greater communication between the spouses. And far more now then even a few years ago, I hear people talking a great deal about their concern over how hormones affect their body and the general environment. I don’t know how much we need to go into that here, but I just love that my personal experience matched up with something I read. I know, this should be happening all the time. But it doesn’t.

So we learn how the Obama administration’s mandate forcing religious employers to provide contraception coverage over their moral objections has led to Catholics talking more about contraception. It’s a great, fresh hook on this story.

The new movement’s goal is to make over the image of natural family planning, now used by a small minority of Catholic women. But natural family planning, which requires women to track their fertile periods through such natural signs such as temperature and cervical mucus, is seen by many fertility experts as unreliable and is viewed by most Catholics as out of step with contemporary women.

“It ends up being this lofty, ‘Isn’t every baby a precious blessing?’?” said Jennifer Fulwiler, a Catholic writer with five children based in Austin who uses natural family planning. “Meanwhile, you have one kid with colic [and] some 2-year-old pulling on your pants. It just doesn’t resonate. There needs to be a modernizing.”

My doctor always says it’s as reliable a method as you are (you’ll have to read the book on natural birth control to figure out what that means). In any case, the article quotes these women who are following the practice and they all give the reporter interesting and realistic quotes. We learn, too, that educational seminars about family planning are being held at local dioceses. We learn about some of the debates surrounding natural family planning and the intramural battles are interesting. It’s all very multi-dimensional.

One reader who submitted the story said about it “It’s not terrible, but there are some definite ghosts (the biggest one I see is that they don’t make even a cursory attempt at explaining the Church’s opposition to contraception).” But I thought the section with the subhed “Papal Guidance” included some helpful information:

Pope Paul VI wrote the contemporary teaching on birth control in 1968, a few years after the Pill was approved. It says couples can delay or decide against having children “for serious reasons.” The term is left undefined, but the big picture is clear.

Couples “are not free to act as they choose in the service of transmitting life,” it says. Instead, Catholics are to seek “the will of God and remember … that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life.”

Even though the pope never defined what constituted a justification to delay a pregnancy, large families became a hallmark of Catholics who wanted to show their fidelity.

I’m always skeptical when reporters claim to know what motivated all those folks with large families. Who’s to know whether their large families were a result of fidelity to church teaching or not? It’s also an interesting choice to say they “wanted to show” their fidelity instead of just that they “showed” their fidelity. I have many friends with large families and they just genuinely believe that children are one of God’s greatest blessings. They’re not having large families to “show” anybody anything. In the same way, another couple might be perfectly faithful to church teaching but, due to infertility or other problems, not have any children. They’re not barren because they “wanted to show their infidelity” to church teaching, are they? It’s just kind of a bizarre construction.

All in all, though, I thought this was a very interesting story. What did you think?

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Journalism, Marriage & family, Sex
  • Jeff

    “McGuire, 26, of Alexandria is part of a movement of younger, religiously conservative Catholic women who are trying to rebrand an often-ignored church teaching: its ban on birth control methods such as the Pill. Arguing that church theology has been poorly explained and encouraged, they want to shift the image of a traditional Catholic woman from one at home with children to one with a great, communicative sex life, a chemical-free body and babies only when the parents think the time is right.”

    This does a good job of conveying how much more “green” and “organic” the orthodox Christian view of sex is than the secular-leftist alternatives are.

    A great irony of the secular left is how little “green” it’s sexual practices are, how “inorganic” they are, despite the (selective) environmentalism of the secular left.

    That irony is a kind of religion-ghost in and of itself — or maybe just one of the elephants in the secular-leftist room.

  • http://authenticbioethics.blogspot.com AuthenticBioethics

    Even though the pope never defined what constituted a justification to delay a pregnancy, large families became a hallmark of Catholics who wanted to show their fidelity.

    This statement is not wanting only because we cannot know the motives of Catholics with large families. Also, it doesn’t make good sense grammatically. The cause and effect relationship between the clauses is topsy turvy. In starting with “Even though…,” the main clause wants to be something about how Catholics limited the size of their families anyway. The sentence ought to start simply, “The pope never defined….” and continue in the second clause, “…so large families became a hallmark.”

    Further, even if Paul VI didn’t define or list grave reasons for delaying pregnancy, other popes or competent Church authorities have. It warrants a little digging. The main rule of thumb is that parents act reasonably in avoiding a pregnancy “right now” if circumstances would be unreasonably difficult if they were to have a child at that time. Note: It is the circumstances that are in question. It is not the child that is a hardship, but the circumstances.

  • http://www.ephesians4-15.blogspot.com/ Randy

    I think large families are a hallmark mostly because couples with smaller families never get asked. We had 2 children and then a gap of 6 years. Then we had 4 more. Guess when the questions started? But we were always faithful to the church.

    The other side is that NFP leaves in place your body’s natural tendency to remind you of fertility. The desire for sex is a desire for children. So you have this gentle reminder going on.

  • Jerry

    Jeff appears to be more interested in promoting a political frame-of-reference while ignoring the religious left and secular right.

    But to the story itself: I also found it an interesting story. It’s a story that is startling to people with stereotypical assumptions of Catholic women’s views on birth control and that’s part of what makes it interesting.

    Also anyone who’s interested in marketing would agree that showing a woman with a baby in a document promoting a birth control method does not convey the intended message.

    But the implicit frame-of-reference in part of the story is partly between the rhythm method and the pill. So while it’s helpful to understand that women don’t want to put chemicals in their bodies, there is a natural question raised about various mechanical methods of birth control available to both sexes.

    There is also a ghost in the story: there is no talk about how husbands view this effort. I know that historically birth control was a woman’s responsibility, but is it still overwhelmingly her responsibility in 2012? Maybe it is and I’ve made a bad assumption, but the story should have provided a nod in that direction.

  • sari

    Both McGuire and Fulwiler are converts to Catholicism. It’s unclear if the same is true for Severino, the last woman quoted. It might have been interesting to explore and contrast the difference in perspectives between converts and those born Catholic.

  • http://podles.org Lee Podles

    The use of the word “ban” in reference to the Church’s teaching on contraception implies a whole theology, an implication of which the writer is totally unaware. It implies a voluntaristic view of law, a view that is controversial, to say the least.

    The Church’s teaching that artificial contraception is wrong is not a ban, it is a judgment. It may be an erroneous judgment, but it is a judgment, not an act of the will or a decree. The Church judges something to be wrong. The moral axion “Do good, avoid evil” tells us to avoid doing what is wrong.

  • Rachel K

    I almost did a spit take when I saw the “one in four NFP users become pregnant” stat in the ACOG fact sheet the article linked to. Then I saw that the fact sheet lumped together mucus, temperature and symptothermal methods (which work) with calendar methods (which don’t unless your cycles are clockwork) and LAM (which is incredibly misused; quite a few women try to use LAM after they’ve introduced solids or started supplementing with formula). This explains much.

    I really like that this article treats NFP-users like intelligent, educated women making a choice about our bodies and our sexuality, not remnants of the Dark Ages who have been brainwashed or bullied by men.

  • http://www.getreligion.org Mollie

    That’s interesting Rachel. The whole point of the mucus and temp methods (as taught in the book I showcased above which, if I recall correctly is not the least bit religious, is that the calendar method is not reliable.

  • Jeff

    Jerry,

    The ghost in this story has principally to do with convergences, divergences, and ironies in the relationship of orthodox Chistians and the secular left where matters “green,” “organic,” and “natural” are concerned.

    It has secondarily to do and rather marginally to do with convergence, divergences, and ironies in the relationship of orthodox Christians and heterodox Christians where matters “green,” “organic” and “natural” are concerend and it has tertiarily to do and even more marginally to do with convergences, divergences, and ironies between orthodox Christians and the secular right where those same matters are concerned.

    So, if it relives your vapors, to have my acknowledgement that very small cohort of heterodox Christians and the even smaller cohort on the secular right who take their cues on matters “green,” organic” and “natural” from the secular left are likewise — like the secular left — less “green,” “organic,” and “natural” in their views on sex than orthodox Christians are, then that’s fine by me.

    You have my acknowledgement, and there was no need for you to inject politics into this to get that, and also no need to accuse me of things I haven’t done — and no need for you to get the vapors at all, as a matter of fact.

    ; )

  • Savia D’cunha

    Rachel K,

    I agree. If it was so unreliable why would the Chinese government of all people including it in their family planning programs.

    http://www.billings-centre.ab.ca/general/fiftyfour.html

  • http://authenticbioethics.blogspot.com AuthenticBioethics

    Having re-looked it over, I think one of the great things about NFP — the ability to use the knowledge to achieve a pregnancy, which no chemical or mechanical mode of contraception offers — is missing. The focus of attention on wanting to avoid a pregnancy is inherently a spin on the issue — the presumption is that children are thing everyone wants to avoid. NFP is all about understanding how human biology works and putting that knowledge to good use in a responsible way.

    Someone mentioned the lack of involvement of men in reproductive issues such as this. If done correctly, the husband will understand things better and if the prospect of having a child is undesirable, he has to respect his wife’s state of fertility and regulate his actions accordingly. Ideally, he will help chart and interpret the data.