Part 2 of the Coming Home series.
As a columnist for my campus newspaper, I wrote an article during the month of “Sextober” (yes, for real) questioning the effects of birth control on the female body: is it really healthy to shut down the entire reproductive system, just to avoid the natural occurrence of pregnancy? Cycle tracking, combined with making more responsible sexual decisions, might be a healthier alternative if avoiding pregnancy is the goal.
It was the absolute wrong thing to say on a predominantly liberal campus. My inbox was full of hate mail for weeks. However, I won the admiration of the Catholic student center, and made two friends there who were later bridesmaids in my wedding. So all things considered, I’d say the backlash was worth it.
The appeal of Natural Family Planning
Fast forward a few years later: I’m in grad school, working part-time jobs to make ends meet, and about to be kicked off my parents’ insurance. Fortunately, I was also engaged to be married, so the insurance part wasn’t too much of a concern. Josh had just accepted the job that would start his career in medicine. With our wedding coming up, we signed a lease for a bigger apartment.
There wasn’t a ton of money to start our new life, and I’d been dealing with extremely heavy, painful periods for years. So when my gynecologist recommended the pill to “regulate” my periods, I went along with it. It was a convenient solution for someone juggling school, work, and wedding planning. I didn’t have a lot of time to invest in finding the root cause of my symptoms.
Here’s what that experience taught me: doctors do women no favors by pushing the pill to mask symptoms of conditions like endometriosis or PCOS. When these women come off the pill to start their families, chances are the symptoms will reappear, and they will spend years trying to figure out why they’re struggling to get pregnant.
Natural Reproductive Technology, a field of medicine pioneered by Catholics, is finally starting to get the secular press it deserves for its success in treating “unexplained infertility.”
It’s amusing now to realize I was thinking like a Catholic years before I ever considered becoming one. But that article was not a bad summary of the Church’s stance on sexuality and Natural Family Planning. The latter is not, as I incorrectly believed, the “Catholic form of birth control.” It’s a system that’s designed to work with the female body, rather than against it, as artificial contraceptives do.
Not just “Catholic birth control”
The main difference between using NFP to avoid pregnancy by abstaining from sex on fertile days, as opposed to taking a pill, is the openness to life. While not a foolproof method of pregnancy prevention, contraceptives are inherently closed off to life by making the uterus a hostile environment to a fertilized egg, which the Church teaches is contrary to God’s design for sex and marriage.
This, of course, raises some valid questions about marriage: what about infertile couples? What about people who marry later in life, well past the age of childbearing? In those situations, couples can still practice “openness to life” even if conception isn’t possible due to circumstances beyond their control.
Nor is it the goal of every married couple to produce as many children as their bodies will allow. NFP involves wisdom and discernment around when to engage in intercourse, allowing couples to make the decision together on whether they should engage or abstain.
Abstinence, when mutually agreed upon, is not a sin, especially if there are extenuating factors (like health) that lead a couple to decide not to expand their family at a certain time. The Church permits discernment in such situations.
Consequences of a “contraceptive mindset”
I can’t help but notice that separating sex and procreation inevitably treats pregnancy like a disease, rather than a natural consequence of nature. Modern contraception treats fertility as the woman’s issue: if she forgets to take it, or if it fails, it’s her problem (as if she got pregnant all by herself!). And the side effects of shutting down the reproductive system aren’t neutral: even secular media is starting to notice.
Perhaps that’s why couples who practice NFP tend to have increased levels of intimacy. After all, it’s a system that requires constant communication, and clues men in on what’s going on with their wives’ bodies.
Discovering Theology of the Body
The Catholic sexual ethic made more sense to me after reading Theology of the Body (the abridged version by Christopher West: the original by Pope John Paul II is several hundred pages). There is no such thorough catechism of sorts outlining the historic sexual ethic in Protestantism, which explains why, regarding matters like birth control, IVF, homosexuality, and abortion, opinions are all across the board.
In fact, many Protestants I know who are staunchly anti-Catholic have admitted that consistency and clarity when it comes to sexuality is one thing they do think the Church has gotten right. And that is one more thing that has attracted me to this faith.
Photo by Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition on Unsplash
