Contraception and vocations

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Anicette said:
The ends may be to differ or favor a pregnancy.
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I agree that it can be used for either. My point is that when used to avoid a pregnancy, it is being used as a contraceptive. When birth control hormones are used to regulate hormone imbalances, it is not being used as a contraceptive, or it is being used as both in some cases. I was on BC pills for many years with no need of the contraceptive effects so I called it “being on hormones” because I certainly wasn’t using it for avoiding pregnancy.
 
Not really a contraceptive because nothing can differ a pregnancy other than your will and a hard commitment to observation.

The question of fertility and what to do will be questioned many time during the cycle.

Contraception refer to medical means to avoid fertility during intercourse.
In a natural method, only abstinence can do it. And abstinence is not a contraceptive.

Couple who used it don’t consider it as a contraception.
 
Pattylt said:
What would be a better term for it then.
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Its really just a semantic thing, tied to the strong Catholic reaction to the term “contraception”. Because contraception has become synonymous with illicit contraception to many people. But what else to call it, maybe “licit means to avoid pregnancy”?
 
Do you know what percentage of women using NFP use it to avoid pregnancy vs. trying to conceive? I suppose it can be used for both during a woman’s marriage but mostly , I’m assuming, it is used for avoidance and not used during attempts to get pregnant. I do know how useful it is for those with fertility issues.
I’m just curious here!
 
For faithfull Catholic women I don’t know the percentage of those using it for avoid versus trying. I guess more use it to avoid, but can use or used it for trying if they need to. I tend to think that as couple are now having children more late, and the general fertility declines, the need of NFP for trying is more pressing in current times.

In general society, I will said that more used self observation to trying to conceive when they experience delay than to avoid a pregnancy. And if they use it to avoid they, for many of them, don’t abstain during fertile times, so it is more a method to permit to use barrier methods less frequently and avoid hormones.
 
I’ve used it for both. When we decided to start TTC a few years ago I just kept charting, even though I had no reason to think we would have trouble. Which was a good thing because it allowed me to prove to my OB that I had low progesterone and another issue causing my recurrent miscarriages. I wouldn’t be surprised if a decent number of women who learn NFP to avoid keep using it when they and their husband decide to try for a baby.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
But what else to call it, maybe “licit means to avoid pregnancy”?
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Err seems a neutral term, but not now!

“fertility awarness” is a term used after Toni Weschler’s book to describe self-observation. But in her secular perspective, contraceptives can be used and are advocate during fertile time.

So, now, fertility awarness is become a term which means self observation, but no abstinence requiered/practiced contrary to NFP that is the term used to desribe traditional perspective compatible with catholic doctrine, where abstinence is lived during fertile time if the couple do not wish to conceived (=periodic abstinence).
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It’s already called the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) when backup contraception is used.
 
Anicette said:
Contraception refers to medical means to avoid fertility during intercourse.
In a natural method, only abstinence can do it. And abstinence is not a contraceptive.
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Exactly. It’s not a contraceptive unless you consider abstinence to be a contraceptive, and I don’t know anyone who defines it that way.
 
Pattylt said:
Do you know what percentage of women using NFP use it to avoid pregnancy vs. trying to conceive? I suppose it can be used for both during a woman’s marriage but mostly , I’m assuming, it is used for avoidance and not used during attempts to get pregnant. I do know how useful it is for those with fertility issues.
I’m just curious here!
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No idea on official percentages, but the Facebook group for “Fertility Care Creighton and NaPro User Support” currently has over 8,200 members, and just judging by the subject matter of the posts, it seems the majority of women there are using it to try to get pregnant. (The Creighton method is one of several NFP methods.)

Many or most couples will use it for one or the other at different points in their marriage, though. You can take it month by month with NFP.
 
EnglishTeacher said:
Exactly. It’s not a contraceptive unless you consider abstinence to be a contraceptive, and I don’t know anyone who defines it that way.
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That’s my take, at best it is conception avoidance, but there’s nothing that interferes with the natural process. If it were a contraceptive, so too would be entering into religious life!!!

It’s to conception what bulimia is to digestion. Do the deed, but do everything necessary to prevent the effects of the deed.

However conjugal anorexia can cause the marriage to shrivel up and die 😉
 
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OraLabora said:
That’s my take, at best it is conception avoidance, but there’s nothing that interferes with the natural process. If it were a contraceptive, so too would be entering into religious life!!!
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Yes, true.
OraLabora said:
It’s to conception what bulimia is to digestion. Do the deed, but do everything necessary to prevent the effects of the deed.
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You mean contraceptives are like this? NFP is not. Because with NFP, you aren’t trying to prevent any natural effects. If you wish to avoid pregnancy, you just time sex for days when the natural effect would be no pregnancy.
 
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The Catechism says it better than I:

2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, “every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” is intrinsically evil:

Thus the innate language that expresses the total reciprocal self-giving of husband and wife is overlaid, through contraception, by an objectively contradictory language, namely, that of not giving oneself totally to the other. This leads not only to a positive refusal to be open to life but also to a falsification of the inner truth of conjugal love, which is called upon to give itself in personal totality. . . . The difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle . . . involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.
 
EnglishTeacher said:
You mean contraceptives are like this? NFP is not. Because with NFP, you aren’t trying to prevent any natural effects. If you wish to avoid pregnancy, you just time sex for days when the natural effect would be no pregnancy.
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No, indeed NFP is not like bulimia. Take a person who needs to lose weight. You can avoid eating when not hungry, or even fast when you are; that’s like having the urge for sex (in a marriage of course) but abstaining because you need to avoid pregnancy at this particular time. Bulimia, i.e. binging and purging is like contraception, because it is interfering with a natural process, to get the pleasure of one but without the effects (nutrition or weight gain). Not eating when not hungry makes use of the natural process. Nor does periodic fasting interfere with natural processes. Bulimia does though. So not eating when not hungry, or periodic fasting to avoid unwanted weight gain (or in my case, control diabetes) is perfectly natural. It doesn’t interfere with digestion, it merely postpones eating until it is beneficial. NFP doesn’t interfere with the natural cycle, it uses it to postpone pregnancy until a more appropriate time in a couple’s life (and make it easier to conceive, presumably, when it is appropriate; in our case it seemed like my wife got pregnant just thinking about it!!! )

I know, poor analogy but it’s the best I can think of that could be useful to explain to the uninitiated.
 
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