{"id":1999,"date":"2015-05-21T15:23:49","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T21:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=1999"},"modified":"2015-05-21T15:23:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T21:23:49","slug":"um-ok-so-lets-talk-nfp-persona-anyone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2015\/05\/um-ok-so-lets-talk-nfp-persona-anyone.html","title":{"rendered":"Um, OK, so, let’s talk NFP: Persona, anyone?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Hey, readers!<\/p>\n

Look, I know that many of you aren\u2019t Catholic. \u00a0But I also know that most of you are pretty thoughtful and like to think about things rather than just pounding out knee-jerk bashing-type responses.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m going to wade into the issue of contraception, and ask my readers to put on their thinking caps here. \u00a0I am not going to get onto a soapbox, much less talk about my own family life.<\/p>\n

Here are two paragraphs of context:<\/p>\n

Yesterday\u00a0I landed on a lengthy article (which I X\u2019ed out of and forgot where it came from) that got me thinking about the topic. \u00a0The article, seeming to think that Pope Paul VI invented opposition to contraception out of whole cloth, suggested that Pope Francis just announce that Humanae Vitae was a mistake and undo it, whereas in reality, the teaching against contraception goes way back to the earliest non-Biblical documents.<\/p>\n

And this author, and many of the commenters took the position that Natural Family Planning is not really distinguishable from the pill in any meaningful way so there\u2019s no logic to this teaching. \u00a0Here is the distinction between NFP and other forms of family planning: \u00a0there is no specific act within the practice of NFP in which one actively does something to prevent pregnancy. \u00a0Taking one\u2019s temperature and monitoring other fertility signs: \u00a0there\u2019s nothing inherently \u201ccontraceptive\u201d about this, as the many people who monitor their fertility signs to achieve pregnancy will tell you. \u00a0Not having sex? \u00a0Well, that\u2019s not an act<\/em>, is it? \u00a0By definition, it\u2019s something you\u2019re not doing<\/em>. \u00a0Seem a bit legalistic? \u00a0Maybe so, but that\u2019s not what I\u2019m interested in talking about.<\/p>\n

What is interesting is that there\u00a0are new, high-tech ways of practicing NFP \u2014 the \u201cMarquette Model<\/a>\u201d uses the ClearBlue Fertility Monitor to identify fertile days, although, in the United States, its manufacturer doesn\u2019t appear to support this<\/a>. \u00a0This is\u00a0not so in Germany, and elsewhere in Europe\u00a0where it\u2019s sold as a 94%-effective NFP device<\/a>\u00a0under the name\u00a0Persona, for not just Catholics but in line with a general German distrust of chemicals; the difference appears to be that any company selling such a device in the U.S. would have to get FDA approval, which they\u2019ve never found it worth seeking (yeah, I asked them, via their \u201cask a question\u201d link). \u00a0There\u2019s also a device called \u201cOvacue<\/a>,\u201d which has a sensor to detect fertility of cervical fluid, which, again, as sold in the U.S. necessarily states that it\u2019s not approved for pregnancy avoidance (I can\u2019t find a non-U.S. site), and in the UK, there\u2019s a device called \u201cLadyComp<\/a>,\u201d which is less sophisticated (temperature\/charting only) but, again, is able to promote its use for natural birth control because it\u2019s marketed in the UK rather than the US.<\/p>\n

What if the FDA approved these devices, or a similar device that measures a woman\u2019s hormones\/chemistry to determine periods of fertility and infertility? \u00a0Per the HHS mandate, these would now be provided at no out-of-pocket cost as a part of health insurance, and the hormone measurement would mean that even women for whom traditional NFP is difficult due to irregular cycles and confusing fertility signs, could use these methods with ease (though the German Persona website says it\u2019s not to be used by women with cycles shorter than 24 or longer than 35 days, or women with premenopausal symptoms).<\/p>\n

So \u2014 to an extent this is a regulatory question: \u00a0are the FDA approval requirements so much more burdensome than those in the EU that it simply is unreasonable for the ClearBlue maker to put for the effort for approval? \u00a0Is the potential market in the EU simply larger, not on account of Catholics but women looking for natural, non-chemical methods, in the same way as they favor organic foods?<\/p>\n

And, in practice, if ClearBlue were able to market Persona without additional regulatory hoops, would they? \u00a0Would there be enough market to make even the necessary additional programming and packaging worthwhile?<\/p>\n

And how many takers would there be?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey, readers! Look, I know that many of you aren\u2019t Catholic. \u00a0But I also know that most of you are pretty thoughtful and like to think about things rather than just pounding out knee-jerk bashing-type responses. So I\u2019m going to wade into the issue of contraception, and ask my readers to put on their thinking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nUm, OK, so, let's talk NFP: Persona, anyone?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hey, readers! 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