According to government and research statistics, natural family planning won’t be winning any popularity contests soon. Despite the Catholic Church’s endorsement of natural planning to space children, the Guttmacher Institute reported in April 2011 that only two percent of Catholic women rely on natural methods. An earlier government figure isn’t much more promising. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that from 2006-2008, only 4.6 percent of all women of child-bearing age had used natural family planning and only 0.1 percent were currently using it.
Conventional wisdom may say natural family planning is a fringe birth control method to be dismissed as irrelevant. However, the Catholic Church teaches natural child spacing methods have their benefits for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Without relying on hormones, surgeries or chemicals, these methods are not only all-natural, they can also be up to 98 percent effective.
What is Natural Family Planning?
Remember the old joke…what do you call people who use the rhythm method? The answer, often said among to snickers from more sophisticated people, is ‘parents.’ While the rhythm method certainly fits under the umbrella of natural family planning, today’s methods are a far cry from this early technique.
Natural family planning encompasses a number of child spacing methods that are designed to work with a woman’s natural period of infertility. Couples using natural family planning abstain from intercourse during fertile times and enjoy each others, ahem, company during infertile times. The Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University identifies the following natural family planning methods:
- Standard Days (also known as the rhythm or calendar method)
- TwoDay
- Ovulation or Cervical Mucus
- Basal Body Temperature
- Sympto-Thermal
- Lactational Amenorrhea
While the Standard Days method relies on simply abstaining from intercourse on days 8 through 19 in a standard monthly cycle, other methods rely on observations such as temperature and cervical mucus to track fertile and infertile times. The lactational amenorrhea method relies on a mother exclusively breastfeeding her infant to delay a return of fertility.
Although there may be jokes about whether natural family planning works, the Institute for Reproductive Health finds that with perfect use, these methods can be just as effective as artificial methods. Even the Standard Days method is 95 percent effective with perfect use. Based upon typical use, that rate falls to 88 percent which is still better than the failure rate reported for condoms by the American Pregnancy Association.
Why Use Natural Family Planning?
With an abundance of artificial birth control options available, many may wonder why they should bother with natural family planning. For Catholics, the answer is clear: natural family planning works within God’s plan for our fertility rather than seeking to circumvent it. In Humanae Vitae – the 1968 encyclical prohibiting the use of artificial birth control – Pope Paul IV writes:
…they must also recognize that an act of mutual love which impairs the capacity to transmit life which God the Creator, through specific laws, has built into it, frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life.
In other words, Pope Paul IV asserts artificial birth control seeks to put our will above God’s will. Some argue since the result is the same – namely, a delay in pregnancy – the method does not matter. However, for the Catholic faithful, the use of natural family planning conveys a deeper respect and reverence for the marital act of intercourse.
“Our culture often presents sex as merely recreational, not as a deeply personal or even important encounter between spouses,” the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops writes in their statement Married Love and the Gift of Life. The document continues, “In this view, being responsible about sex simply means limiting its consequences—avoiding disease and using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy.” The Catholic use of natural family planning, on the other hand, respects God’s power to grant life under any circumstances.
Beyond the moral reasons to use natural family planning, Couple to Couple League International (CCLI) also argues that natural methods are safer, healthier and promote increase communication within a marriage. In addition, natural family planning is inexpensive and for most methods, requires little more than a thermometer and a sheet of paper.
Learning Natural Family Planning
Some methods such as Standard Days require only a calendar to track monthly cycles. However, to use more accurate natural planning methods, some training will improve the success rate. For the sympto-thermal method – 98 percent effective with perfect use – CCLI offers classes across the nation as well as a home study course. In addition, books such as Taking Control of Your Fertility, provide instruction on naturally spacing children.
For Catholic women wishing to delay pregnancy, natural family planning offers methods that have been deemed morally sound by the Church. For other women, these options are an all-natural alternative to the hormone and chemical birth control methods on the market today. No matter what draws you to natural family planning, with proper use, you get an effective method of child spacing – no side effects included.
Sources:
Natural Family Planning, Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University (Accessed July 15, 2011)
Humanae Vitae
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Married Love and the Gift of Life, November 14, 2006
Key Statistics from the National Survey of Family Growth, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Accessed July 15, 2011)
Contraceptive Use is the Norm Among Religious Women, Guttmacher Institute, April 13, 2011
Overview: Birth Control, American Pregnancy Association (Accessed July 15, 2011)
Maryalene LaPonsie - Maryalene LaPonsie has been writing professionally for nearly 15 years on topics including religion and politics, education and ...
