Birth Control and Turner's syndrome

[Good_Daughter]

Yup, that’s true.
I posted to make sure that the OP realises that NFP is not as highly effective as some might claim.

All birth control works best when a couple is both highly motivated and well educated. NFP is no different.

 

[thomfra]

Please take what people say here with a grain of salt. The only person who can really advise you on this matter is a medical professional.

 

[Hope070408]

This is such a complex issue, and I pray that all of us who have medical complications that would be life-threatening, or could be potentially lifethreatening, in a pregnancy are never truly faced with this!

Here’s another angle of the issue. The lining of the endometrium can become very thin (or even nonexistent) when one goes into premature ovarian failure due to Turner’s Syndrome. Or it can if it’s not diagnosed and treated until years later. Some forms of hormone replacement don’t really build up the lining, though they take care of providing enough estrogen and progesterone to preserve bone and heart health. The doses in bcp’s are much higher and those that don’t work by thinning the lining actually can build it up.

In this situation what is more morally acceptable?:

1. Avoiding the bcp’s and leaving the lining thin? That could potentially be abortifacient, though it would protect the woman’s life by preventing pregnancy. And by God’s design, the woman was made with Turner’s and is dealing with this issue.
2. Taking the higher dose of the hormones, at least until the lining is built up enough to potentially support a pregnancy should God bless the woman and her spouse with the conception of a child? Or would that type of estrogen build up a lining that would be toxic to any baby that would implant, anyway?

 

[Listener]

I did a little research on Turner’s syndrome. It is a serious chromosomal disorder where a woman ends up with a single X chromosome instead of the normal XX. According to what I read, they have to take hormones in order to develop like women. Women with Turner’s syndrome almost universally cannot produce eggs. The only way for them to have a baby is to use an egg from another female donor. This is against Church teaching, too. It sounds like it wouldn’t be an option anyway, since pregnancy is dangerous for this woman.

I also read that 99% of fetuses who have Turner Syndrome are spontaneously aborted through miscarriage. So I guess women with this syndrome should be consider it miraculous that they are alive!

I wonder if the real question is whether or not the person who started this thread would be happy marrying a woman who can’t give him any children. Birth control would probably not even be an issue. It would be the same as if he married someone who had a hysterectomy or who was past the age of menopause. There is no moral problem and no problem with the validity of the marriage.

For those who are afraid that taking hormones cause early abortions, I think it is obvious that the hormones are necessary for women with this syndrome. If there is no egg to fertilize, there will obviously be no early abortion.

If there is any chance that this woman could get pregnant, I would think that under the circumstances, she has an extremely serious reason to avoid pregnancy. It would probably be smart to go to an NFP class and learn all of the signs and symptoms, just in case. If there is no chance of pregnancy, there would be no reason to practice NFP (or any other method of birth control).

 

[Hope070408]

I wonder how NFP with premature ovarian failure (in this case due to Turner’s) would work. I’ve been curious about that. You might not cycle at all, in which case there’s probably no need to worry about pregnancy, though with POF there’s still the very slim 1% chance. Also, the necessary hormones can artificially give you some of the signs you’d ordinarily use to tell if you’re ovulating or not, so it could be hard to tell if the CM is due to a rare ovulation or the hormones…unless maybe taking the temperature daily would still be accurate and reliable enough to help.