clear that the Pill is contraceptive—an an-
ti-life choice—and must be understood as
included in what the Church has always
rejected.
We must, of course, reject dissent
and defend the Church’s teaching. But
how can we help couples for whom this
teaching presents grave challenges? If it
is wron g to practice contraception, how
can a couple with children who are open
to more children in the future, but whose
responsibilities limit the ability to properly
care for more children at the present time?
Might not a couple in these and similar
circumstances rightly judge they cannot
meet their other responsibilities properly
if they have more children now, yet be
justified in continuing to come together as
husband and wife?
The answer, of course, is yes. And
such couples are not without recourse,
because natural family planning is
available to them, a method the Church
encourages them to learn about so they
can identify the signs of the wife’s fertility
and avoid possible pregnancy. Because
this method has proven to be so effective
in promoting marital communion, it is
worth considering more closely.
There are many advantages to practicing
natural family planning, or NFP. First
and foremost, couples that practice
NFP do not make the anti-life choice of
contraception, for they make the sacrifice
of abstaining whenever intercourse might
result in conception. They do so precisely
to avoid the sin of contraception.
Of course, practicing NFP requires
discipline and sacrifice. It will not work
if, for example, a husband treats his
wife as the instrument of his pleasure
rather than as his beloved spouse. As
they abstain for approximately eight days
each cycle, a faithful husband and wife
will build up their relationship in other
ways. When they come together after
their time of abstinence, their union has
more meaning, for it embodies a fuller
relationship.
NFP is also a great benefit because it is
completely natural, based on a couple’s
understanding of the woman’s fertility
and acting in a way that respects the
fertile part of her cycle. Contraception,
on the other hand, is not based on a
couple’s understanding and respecting
the woman’s fertility, but instead stifles
the fertility through a device or pill or
patch or injection. Research has shown
such means can be harmful to a woman’s
health and can even make it difficult for
her to have children later on when she
wants them. Moreover, some so-called
contraceptives, for example, Ella and the
copper IUD, are in reality abortifacients:
they prevent the already fertilized ovum—a
tiny new human being—from surviving in
the womb. They cause an abortion at a
very early stage of the child’s life.
Natural family planning, on the
other hand, has nothing to do with
contraception or abortion and is not at
all harmful to the woman’s health. All
it requires is a couple’s willingness to
practice it properly. When they do, no
method of birth control is more reliable,
for couples practicing NFP know when
the woman is fertile and realize that she
simply cannot become pregnant when
the signs indicate that she is not fertile.
Finally, natural family planning can
be used to help not only the couple that
needs to wait before having more children
but also the couple that is ready to have
children but has difficulty conceiving.
Knowing when the woman is fertile, such
a couple plans to come together at the
peak of the woman’s fertile time, making
it extremely likely she will conceive.
Indeed, the whole point of NFP is not to
enable a couple to avoid having children
altogether but to help them bring
their intelligence to bear in planning
their family by recognizing the signs of
fertility. Such an approach reflects well
the openness to life that Christ asks of
married couples and honors the soon-to-
be-canonized Paul VI, who was a model
of fidelity and pastoral charity.
Fr. Peter F. Ryan, S.J. is professor of theology at
Sacred Heart.
shms.edu
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