Acceptable uses of birth control in the Catholic Church - health

  • Thread starter Thread starter ryecroft
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
R

ryecroft

Guest
I have yet to find a deffinate answer to this delima - I have had Bishops and Priests give me completely different answeres. I am Roman Catholic - I will have been married 9 years this Tuesday. My husband and I do not have children. Currently I am on birth control - the last time I was off BC, I wound up getting transfusions for loss of blood. I have been pregnant multiple times and have no trouble getting pregnant but I also have loin pain hematuria syndrome with stones (kidney disease) and when I get pregnant if the pregnancy last more than 3 months, I go hydronephrotic in some cases, wind up in horrible pain and my kidneys stop working as well as they can making me very ill - I have been in a situation of having to make the choice wether to continue with a pregnancy that probably would not make it and would leave me very ill if not all together dead - I don’t want to have to ever go through that decision again. What is the teaching regarding someone who will not only hurt a fetus from the medications taken to deal with pain and illness as well as becoming much more ill from getting pregnant. I’m also told I need to be on the BC because of it’s effect on decreasing the ovarian cyts as well as multiple fibroid tumors present. I am hoping that if my body is not taxed too badly that I might be able to try again with Doctor’s approval and help. NFP is NOT an option(does NOT work for me) as I have NEVER been regular and again can wind up loosing too much blood not only from menses but also from the loss I always have from my kidneys. I’m hoping that if I don’t get pregnant and really watch myself, my doctor might eventually give me the go ahead to try again. fI really have a hard time believing that I am commiting a sin using artificial contreception. I can’t seem to find anything deffinate regarding this. Thanks - feel free to message me.🤷
 
Well, you’ve entwined several different things. So let’s separate them:

(1) You have medical conditions for which your doctor wants to treat you with hormonal therapy in the form of “birth control” pills. This is for the bleeding, cysts, and fibroid tumors. While we can’t get into the medical aspects of this-- I would encourage you to get a second opinion from doctors such as those at Pope Paul VI Institute. Staying on the moral aspects of this, when one has a serious medical condition/disease that requires treatment one may choose a treatment that has a **secondary **and **unintended **side effect of sterility. This is called the principle of double effect. It has 4 aspects and all must be met for a treatment to be morally acceptable under this principle.
  • The action itself must be morally good or morally neutral
  • The bad result must not be directly intended
  • The good result cannot be a direct causal result of the bad result
  • The good result be “proportionate to” the bad result
So, it would appear that your use of the pill meets some of the criteria but your stated use of it as contraceptive **seems **to indicate #2 is contravened-- that is, you seem to want the “bad result” of sterility and directly intend it.

(2) You do not want to become pregnant due to complications that arise once pregnant. You seem to be indicating in your post that you are using the “pill” as a contraceptive, not merely as a treatment for cysts and such. That would never be morally permissable. You state NFP “cannot” work for you because you are irregular. Being regular has no bearing on observing signs of fertility. Your statement makes me wonder if you have taken a class in NFP and studied reference material. If you have not, you should do so. Lastly, if you truly do not want to risk a pregnancy and don’t want to use NFP, then you can choose total abstinence. You can NEVER choose contraception. It is intrinsically disordered and never a moral option. EVER.

(3) You stated that in the past you had to “choose” whether to carry an existing pregnancy to term or face life threatening complications. That **implies **you “chose” an abortion-- I hope I am misunderstanding you. You also state that you may ask your doctor to let you “try” pregnancy again. Abortion can never be chosen in any circumstance, so if you “choose” to become pregnant again, you cannot “choose” to end the pregnancy. Have you discussed this with your priest?
 
ryecroft said:
I have yet to find a deffinate answer to this delima - I have had Bishops and Priests give me completely different answeres.
Click to expand...
My normal advice would be to speak with a priest. But you say that you’ve spoken with both priests and bishops. (And both are plural.) How can you imagine that anonymous people on the Internet could give you better advice than they can? And why multiple priests and bishops? Don’t you like their answers?

Talk with your confessor or another good priest and then follow his advice.
 
Go to the “Ask an Apologist” section and read the answer to “Does the Church ever allow birth control for health issues?”. Father Serpa states that it is fine to take birth control pills for medical reasons. I was rather appalled by some of the answers you are getting here. The people who say you should use NFP must not have read your post. You stated how ill you can become when you are not on the pill and how much it endangers your health. I know from personal experience how the pill can turn a period from hell into something that you hardly notice. Please follow the advice of your doctor and ignore the people on this forum. The Church does not teach that you must bleed to death to avoid going on the pill. In this case, the pill is just like any other medicine. You are taking it to stop dangerous bleeding.
 
Listener said:
I was rather appalled by some of the answers you are getting here. The people who say you should use NFP must not have read your post.
Click to expand...
Well, the only persons who mentioned NFP were me and the OP. Note that the **OP is the one who brought up using NFP **and said she couldn’t use it because she’s irregular. That, to me, indicated she had thought about discontinuing the pill for reasons of her own.

I didn’t suggest she do so. I suggested that she research NFP and see that it does not rely on “regular” cycles.
 
I am sorry you have not been blessed with babies, I bet you want them. I wish I could tell you that you should somehow see the difficulties you have as God loving you, and you need to trust Him, and all will be well. That probably does not help much. I know it never helped me. We get things stuck in our head about what we want and it is really hard when we cannot get them.

My parents could not have kids, so they adopted me when I was a baby. I gave them a child and they gave me wonderful parents. If you think that God is alive, and actually doing things in our world, then you need to seek His Presence with your husband. I think He will make His wishes for you somehow known. It is really hard sometimes. My wife and I had kids just by thinking about getting pregnant together. We had 3 kids. She died when our youngest was 6.

I would urge you to embrace the actions that make the love between you and your husband stronger. Why you have difficulty in having a baby is something no one can answer, might as well say it is God’s will. It would be very hard to believe that he wanted you to have many biological children.

As far as your relationship with God and the Church and sex, again it really is up to you. The Church wants married couples to have kids, always has. Except. Having a child, eating a cake, skydiving, anything that threatens your life is immoral. There is the sticky part. It is just common sense really. I hope some of the clergy you talked to said something along those lines. Now Bishops and priests are supposed to help you. Lets face it, the Catholic Church is not always so smart. It doesn’t have all the answers, never has. But your salvation is based on your actions. If you love everyone in your life as best you can that is what God wants. Generally He doesn’t want you to do something contrary to the Church. However, having relations with your husband is also something the Church wants you to do. For a mature Catholic, the Church teaches that you can do pretty much whatever you want as long as you do it with a well formed conscience and out of love.

But, when you read the Catechism you find out the Church does not approve of BC. It is a “mortal sin”. Well, if you were Pope you would probably say the same thing. You would think about all the people that might get married and never have kids, never love them, and you would know that is wrong. Children are a source of great joy, sometimes.

So you are in a position many couples do not find themselves it. But right now I wish I could say I’d been married 9 years, but I am single. I guess we all need to acknowledge the blessings we do have. I hope you find your answers in the arms of your spouse and the presence of God.
 
yinekka said:
Try the National Catholic Bioethics Center

ncbcenter.org/
Click to expand...
Yeah I would definitely try the center. This is a complex issue. If you would die without the birth control then you need to take it. However, if you are married and having marital relations, it could also mean that unborn children are being aborted by the birth control. So yeah, it’s a complicated issue. May God bless you, OP, and may you be able to find an acceptable solution.
 
Holly3278 said:
Yeah I would definitely try the center. This is a complex issue. If you would die without the birth control then you need to take it. However, if you are married and having marital relations, it could also mean that unborn children are being aborted by the birth control. So yeah, it’s a complicated issue. May God bless you, OP, and may you be able to find an acceptable solution.
Click to expand...
I would like to point out something regarding the issue of children being aborted by the birth control pill. When someone has something wrong like fibroid tumors, I think perhaps this makes the uterus a rather hostile place for a fertilized egg. There is probably a much greater possibility that a fertilized egg would be rejected when she is off the pill. I read somewhere that the pill prevents pregnancy primarily by preventing ovulation. I think that the chance of getting pregnant while on the pill is only about 5%. Some women do get pregnant while on the pill, and they end up with a baby 9 months later! I really have trouble with the idea that women on the pill are having a lot of early miscarriages. I have never seen anything that proves that this is true.
 
Listener said:
Go to the “Ask an Apologist” section and read the answer to “Does the Church ever allow birth control for health issues?”. Father Serpa states that it is fine to take birth control pills for medical reasons. I was rather appalled by some of the answers you are getting here. The people who say you should use NFP must not have read your post. You stated how ill you can become when you are not on the pill and how much it endangers your health. I know from personal experience how the pill can turn a period from hell into something that you hardly notice. Please follow the advice of your doctor and ignore the people on this forum. The Church does not teach that you must bleed to death to avoid going on the pill. In this case, the pill is just like any other medicine. You are taking it to stop dangerous bleeding.
Click to expand...
While it might be acceptable to take birth control for ovarian cycts, it is not morally acceptable to use birth control to prevent risky pregnancy. If you take artificial birth control pills for simply heavy bleeding it would be morally ok, however if if is only to prevent pregnancy’s that cause bleeding it is not in line with the church’s teaching. When you use artificial birth control pills as contraception (to prevent pregnancy for any reason) it is never acceptable, it would be the sin of contraception, you can’t do wrong (contracept) for a good reason. However if you use artificial birth control pills for health reasons, like ovarian cysts, and they inadvertently cause you not to be pregnant, it is morally acceptable, as long as you aren’t using them to prevent pregnancy, you aren’t committing the sin of contraception.
 
Holly3278 said:
Yeah I would definitely try the center. This is a complex issue. If you would die without the birth control then you need to take it. However, if you are married and having marital relations, it could also mean that unborn children are being aborted by the birth control. So yeah, it’s a complicated issue. May God bless you, OP, and may you be able to find an acceptable solution.
Click to expand...
Good point; if a medication is taken for effects other than for BC, then it isn’t really BC as the primary intended effect.
Jeanne_dArc said:
While it might be acceptable to take birth control for ovarian cycts, it is not morally acceptable to use birth control to prevent risky pregnancy. If you take artificial birth control pills for simply heavy bleeding it would be morally ok, however if if is only to prevent pregnancy’s that cause bleeding it is not in line with the church’s teaching. When you use artificial birth control pills as contraception (to prevent pregnancy for any reason) it is never acceptable, it would be the sin of contraception, you can’t do wrong (contracept) for a good reason. However if you use artificial birth control pills for health reasons, like ovarian cysts, and they inadvertently cause you not to be pregnant, it is morally acceptable, as long as you aren’t using them to prevent pregnancy, you aren’t committing the sin of contraception.
Click to expand...
Best answer yet. 👍
 
ryecroft said:
I have yet to find a deffinate answer to this delima - I have had Bishops and Priests give me completely different answeres. I am Roman Catholic - I will have been married 9 years this Tuesday. My husband and I do not have children. Currently I am on birth control - the last time I was off BC, I wound up getting transfusions for loss of blood. I have been pregnant multiple times and have no trouble getting pregnant but I also have loin pain hematuria syndrome with stones (kidney disease) and when I get pregnant if the pregnancy last more than 3 months, I go hydronephrotic in some cases, wind up in horrible pain and my kidneys stop working as well as they can making me very ill - I have been in a situation of having to make the choice wether to continue with a pregnancy that probably would not make it and would leave me very ill if not all together dead - I don’t want to have to ever go through that decision again. What is the teaching regarding someone who will not only hurt a fetus from the medications taken to deal with pain and illness as well as becoming much more ill from getting pregnant. I’m also told I need to be on the BC because of it’s effect on decreasing the ovarian cyts as well as multiple fibroid tumors present. I am hoping that if my body is not taxed too badly that I might be able to try again with Doctor’s approval and help. NFP is NOT an option(does NOT work for me) as I have NEVER been regular and again can wind up loosing too much blood not only from menses but also from the loss I always have from my kidneys. I’m hoping that if I don’t get pregnant and really watch myself, my doctor might eventually give me the go ahead to try again. fI really have a hard time believing that I am commiting a sin using artificial contreception. I can’t seem to find anything deffinate regarding this. Thanks - feel free to message me.🤷
Click to expand...
Ryecroft, my heart goes out to you. Really, please try the bioethics institute. Their website indicates that they do individual consultations, which given the complexity of your conditions will surely be needed.

Being faithful to the infallible moral authority of Christ’s Church, they do hold firm to the moral teachings, but they also do recognize complicated circumstances and can help greatly in unraveling them to find the right course of action.

Congrats on your anniversary, btw! 😃

You may not realize that BCP’s entail serious health risks after age 35, or earlier for women with certain family histories of things like heart disease. What this tells me is that using them cannot give you a permanent solution. Just another complication, but something to be aware of during your treatment decisions.

I wonder whether the name of the woman who was healed of a hemorrhage after touching the hem of Jesus’ garment is known. Maybe she would be a good intercessor for you. In Biblical times, and for Orthodox Jews today, a woman may not have marital relations or even be touched by her husband while she has menstrual bleeding of *any *amount at *any *point of her cycle. If that woman had been hemorrhaging for 7 years, then that means she and her husband had been totally abstinent for all that time! He couldn’t even *touch *her. Heartbreaking isolation!

Otherwise, maybe you could turn to St. Gerard Magella. He has been a friend and intercessor to many couples who have had difficulty conceiving or carrying to term or giving birth safely.

And of course there’s St. Gianna Beretta Molla: saintgianna.org/

Do try the bioethics institute; I think they’re best equipped to unravel your complicated situation, much more so than even your priest or bishop because it’s their main focus.

If you do find a resolution or a good course of action, would you be willing to post it here? I’d really like to know, and I’m sure others would be glad to know that you’re doing better, too.

Good luck and God bless you!

Peace-
-mdr
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top