Sex during pregnancy

[Ophelia23]

If a woman is on the pill, the couple is going through the motions also. To say you’re open to conception when you know it’s impossible is meaningless.

But you aren’t open to conception when you are on the pill. You have closed that gate by your own will. When you are pregnant, or you have gone through menopause, or are in the infertile phase of your cycle, these are all things caused by God’s law and the nature he put in place. It is very, very different.

 

[underacloud]

I think you’re getting closer to the answer but I’m not sure we’re there yet. With NFP it is possible to become pregnant. In the case of sex during pregnancy, it is not. Why doesn’t the Church say abstain from sex during pregnancy.

The difference is in whether the couple is deliberately attempting to frustrate the act of its procreative nature.

In the case of pregnancy and menopause, there is no such deliberate attempt. They cooperate with nature; with God’s intended rhythms of fertility and infertility.

This is the same with NFP, where a couples works with nature, not against it.

This is fundamentally different from contraception, where a couple works against nature and against God’s plans for sex.

I recommend reading Humanae Vitae (if you haven’t yet) which explains these principles further:

vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html

 

[Brendan]

If a woman is on the pill, the couple is going through the motions also. To say you’re open to conception when you know it’s impossible is meaningless.

What is important is to be open to life in the way that God intents. Since His intent is perfect any intentional devation from God’s design for the sexual act deforms the sexual act.

Thus the sexual act is perfectly procreative when it happens in accord to God’s design for sexualality.

God designed the female body with time of fertilty and infertilty. Those times include times within the normative cycle, during pregnany and after menopause. Therefore there is no flaw in using such times.as they are part of the perfect procreative nature of God as expressed in the human design.

But to alter that fertilty, either through artificial means, or via acts that are outside of the procreative nature results is a flawed sexual act. If done intentionally, it is a violation of God’s plan for fertility and is thus sinful

 

[Corki]

If a woman is on the pill, the couple is going through the motions also. To say you’re open to conception when you know it’s impossible is meaningless.

It’s not just “going through the motions”. If either spouse has chemically altered his/her bodily functions, the couple is not doing what marrried couples do when they want to procreate.

Neither is it just “saying” that you are open to conception. The Chuch does not require that you be “open to conception”. The Church requirement is that you do nothing to distort the meaning of the marital act. That means each act is unitive and ordered to procreation.

 

[mini_me640]

As well, a man or woman that have had their 'tubes tied" should not have sex, which is contradictory to the purpose of having them “tied”.

The Church does not require sterilized couples to abstain. It does require that they repent and confess, but not that they abstain.

 

[Windmill]

Gary,

I think you’re trying to give “openness to life” a narrower definition than the Church does.

Here is an analogy that Dr. Douglas Bushman gave that helped me with this whole thing:

Imagine that a married couple’s sexuality is like an ice fishing house (you know those little shacks that people put on a frozen pond that has a door, walls, a roof, and inside has little benches around the walls where people sit while they fish through a hole in the ice on the floor).

God has given you this fishing house. He designed it and explains to you how it works: Any time you and your wife want to “go fishing” at the fish house, that’s fine. Go in any time you want. However, about 3 days a month (when the wife is fertile), God is going to enter the fishing house. If you choose to go fishing in there while God is there, He may exercise His creative power and give you a child. If you happen not to go fishing during this time, no child will result. However, God simply asks that you keep the door open to Him. He never makes you go in, and he may not choose to give you a child if you go fishing while he’s there. But that’s his prerogative.

Now, how does this [imperfect] analogy play out?

If you are a couple using NFP, you keep a calendar and can reasonably predict when God will be present. On those days, you stay at home. God comes into the fish house for a few days and then leaves. The door has remained open for him.

The contracepting couple would be a couple that goes into the fish house and locks the door shut. God tries to enter on his days, but can’t get in because the couple has willfully prevented God’s entrance while they are there enjoying some “fishing”. He knocks, but they don’t enter. God may try to breakthrough the door (eg. contraception may fail), but the intent of the couple is obvious: enjoy the fishing but not let God have his creative option.

The pregnant couple is also not locking the door. They go into the fishing house as God intended it. However, God chooses not to enter because he has already exercised his creative option. The couple has not placed any barricades to the door, and neither has God.

Finally, the post-menopausal couple is where God chooses not to enter the fish house anymore, but he leaves the door open for the couple to continue to enter as often as they want. He has decided he is done visiting (for procreative purposes…of course God is present in any act of love to some degree) . The couple is not shutting God out by a willful act. This is God’s decision.

---

It’s an imperfect analogy, but it gets to the heart of the matter.

 

[ndeparis88]

Gary,

I think you’re trying to give “openness to life” a narrower definition than the Church does.

Here is an analogy that Dr. Douglas Bushman gave that helped me with this whole thing:

Imagine that a married couple’s sexuality is like an ice fishing house (you know those little shacks that people put on a frozen pond that has a door, walls, a roof, and inside has little benches around the walls where people sit while they fish through a hole in the ice on the floor).

God has given you this fishing house. He designed it and explains to you how it works: Any time you and your wife want to “go fishing” at the fish house, that’s fine. Go in any time you want. However, about 3 days a month (when the wife is fertile), God is going to enter the fishing house. If you choose to go fishing in there while God is there, He may exercise His creative power and give you a child. If you happen not to go fishing during this time, no child will result. However, God simply asks that you keep the door open to Him. He never makes you go in, and he may not choose to give you a child if you go fishing while he’s there. But that’s his prerogative.

Now, how does this [imperfect] analogy play out?

If you are a couple using NFP, you keep a calendar and can reasonably predict when God will be present. On those days, you stay at home. God comes into the fish house for a few days and then leaves. The door has remained open for him.

The contracepting couple would be a couple that goes into the fish house and locks the door shut. God tries to enter on his days, but can’t get in because the couple has willfully prevented God’s entrance while they are there enjoying some “fishing”. He knocks, but they don’t enter. God may try to breakthrough the door (eg. contraception may fail), but the intent of the couple is obvious: enjoy the fishing but not let God have his creative option.

The pregnant couple is also not locking the door. They go into the fishing house as God intended it. However, God chooses not to enter because he has already exercised his creative option. The couple has not placed any barricades to the door, and neither has God.

Finally, the post-menopausal couple is where God chooses not to enter the fish house anymore, but he leaves the door open for the couple to continue to enter as often as they want. He has decided he is done visiting (for procreative purposes…of course God is present in any act of love to some degree) . The couple is not shutting God out by a willful act. This is God’s decision.

---

It’s an imperfect analogy, but it gets to the heart of the matter.

I like that analogy it covers it really well. Plus I think it emphasizes the fact that couples who are always open to creative powers of God know to leave the door unlocked for him. The menopause thing is really big because one aspect of the unitive and procreative parts of the marital embrace is gone but that isn’t because the people themselves shut the door it was just that God decided in keeping with his design that he isn’t to go to the fishing house but will be with you in other places.

 

[johnnyjones]

The Church does not require sterilized couples to abstain. It does require that they repent and confess, but not that they abstain.

Your making my point. Why doesn’t the church require "“sterilized” couples to abstain? Sex would be purely for pleasure.

 

[Corki]

Your making my point. Why doesn’t the church require "“sterilized” couples to abstain? Sex would be purely for pleasure.

Because they have repented of what they did. It is a sin that happened at one point in time. Sterlization is a grave sin against marriage but it doesn’t invalidate the marriage. There are other sins against marriage that can be forgiven - adultery, fornication, etc. Once forgiven, the couple is in the same situation as someone who is involuntarily sterile.

Undergoing sterilization is a sin. ** Being **sterilized is not a sin.

 

[johnnyjones]

Because they have repented of what they did. It is a sin that happened at one point in time. Sterlization is a grave sin against marriage but it doesn’t invalidate the marriage. There are other sins against marriage that can be forgiven - adultery, fornication, etc. Once forgiven, the couple is in the same situation as someone who is involuntarily sterile.

Undergoing sterilization is a sin. ** Being **sterilized is not a sin.

So, although they are forgiven of their past sterilization sin, they are freely able to indulge their sexual pleasures of which openness to life is not realistic?

A couple who can not have children for “natural” medical reasons (not existent sperm , hostile womb etc.) can not be compared because they ARE open to life through possible ongoing medical help or the miraculous.

 

[Corki]

So, although they are forgiven of their past sterilization sin, they are freely able to indulge their sexual pleasures of which openness to life is not realistic?

A couple who can not have children for “natural” medical reasons (not existent sperm , hostile womb etc.) can not be compared because they ARE open to life through possible ongoing medical help or the miraculous.

Being open to life is an intention - a state of mind. A person who is sterilized is as capable of having a proper state of mind as is a person who is sterile due to illness, injury or other surgery (ie hysterectomy for a diseases uterous). A woman who has had her tubes tied is, in fact, much **more likely **to experience a “miracle” pregnancy than someone who has no uterous.

Being open to life is not about results. It’s a willingness to live by God’s plan. Past sins, especially when repented and absolved, do not negate the right of a married couple to each other sexually.

 

[mini_me640]

Being open to life is an intention - a state of mind. A person who is sterilized is as capable of having a proper state of mind as is a person who is sterile due to illness, injury or other surgery (ie hysterectomy for a diseases uterous). A woman who has had her tubes tied is, in fact, much **more likely **to experience a “miracle” pregnancy than someone who has no uterous.

Being open to life is not about results. It’s a willingness to live by God’s plan. Past sins, especially when repented and absolved, do not negate the right of a married couple to each other sexually.

Well said. In fact, I know two women who became pregnant after a tubal ligation. In contrast, a woman who has had to have a complete hysterctomy for medical reasons is not going to get pregnant ever. As you say, it is not about results, but about the state of mind.

 

[Ana_v]

What am I missing here?

Though your question pertains to martial intercourse during pregnancy, you might find the following to be helpful (I did when I doubted the morality of NFP in principle):

"… when couples carry out conjugal acts on the infertile days exclusively, they are not “frustrating” the “natural power and purpose” of those acts which they perform on those days. For those particular acts do not have any “natural [procreative] power and purpose” to begin with! You cannot “frustrate” a non-existent power or purpose – or a non-existent anything!

…]

Couples using NFP, on the other hand, are not guilty of any such presumption. They are respecting God’s sovereignty over human life and death, and are simply following their God-given instincts, and using their God-given conjugal right, at those times when the Creator Himself has already made it clear, by the way He has fashioned human female biology, that He has no will to use their spousal love in order to create new life."

Source: Is Natural Family Planning a ‘Heresy’?

 

[johnnyjones]

The Church does not require sterilized couples to abstain. It does require that they repent and confess, but not that they abstain.

Although forgiven, one could say they could have sex to the hilt for pleasure only. Some others wouldn’t mind being forgiven and able to have mega sex.

 

[Windmill]

God forgives, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to go and get sterilized. If your heart is moved to the truth beforehand, then you accept the grace and don’t get sterilized. To go under the knife knowing that you are seriously sinning is reckless in the worst kind of way: you are placing yourself in a possible occasion of death (this happens with anesthetics, ya know) without being in God’s grace. How crazy is that?! Instant Hell. How would you explain that away to your Lord just before he sentences you to eternal punishment? Think about that one.

However, if you were sterilized and have reeeeeally repented, the Church doesn’t require you to go into surgery again to get unsterilized. It is meritorious to do so, but it could not be imposed as a sign of amendment of life. One suggested solution is for the couple to abstain during the woman’s fertile time (or what would have been her fertile time) as a normal couple observing NFP would do. But again, this is not required - it is simply meritorious before God and (I would say) likely removes much of the temporal punishment due to your sin (like an indulgence).

Some things are more important than earthly pleasure…Really. I mean it.

 

[johnnyjones]

God forgives, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to go and get sterilized. If your heart is moved to the truth beforehand, then you accept the grace and don’t get sterilized. To go under the knife knowing that you are seriously sinning is reckless in the worst kind of way: you are placing yourself in a possible occasion of death (this happens with anesthetics, ya know) without being in God’s grace. How crazy is that?! Instant Hell. How would you explain that away to your Lord just before he sentences you to eternal punishment? Think about that one.

However, if you were sterilized and have reeeeeally repented, the Church doesn’t require you to go into surgery again to get unsterilized. It is meritorious to do so, but it could not be imposed as a sign of amendment of life. One suggested solution is for the couple to abstain during the woman’s fertile time (or what would have been her fertile time) as a normal couple observing NFP would do. But again, this is not required - it is simply meritorious before God and (I would say) likely removes much of the temporal punishment due to your sin (like an indulgence).

Some things are more important than earthly pleasure…Really. I mean it.

I am not inferring it is a reason to go out and get neutered, just that there are thousands who have purposely done just that, received forgiveness ,and now can have a different kind of sex life than those who are fertile.

 

[Corki]

I am not inferring it is a reason to go out and get neutered, just that there are thousands who have purposely done just that, received forgiveness ,and now can have a different kind of sex life than those who are fertile.

So?

There are thousands of couples out there who do not have serious reasons to avoid pregnancy who can now have a different kind of sex life than those who do. Sex is not a civil right where everyone has a right to the same kind of sex life.

 

[johnnyjones]

So?

There are thousands of couples out there who do not have serious reasons to avoid pregnancy who can now have a different kind of sex life than those who do. Sex is not a civil right where everyone has a right to the same kind of sex life.

You say"so", but to the thousands of guys who would love to have sex like those who are “sterilized” it does seem very unfair. You might say too bad, but it is still unfair.

 

[Corki]

You say"so", but to the thousands of guys who would love to have sex like those who are “sterilized” it does seem very unfair. You might say too bad, but it is still unfair.

Life is not fair. Decisions have consequences. Those guys who are sterilized, even if forgiven, still have to deal with the temporal effects of their sins. They have to deal with the emotional effects of the damage they did to their marriages. For whatever reason, those other guys you speak of have decided that they have a serious reason not to try to have another baby with their wife. They have to deal with the consequences of that decision too.

The couple who has a serious reason to postpone another child’s birth has the hope that those serious reasons will be resolved and they will be able to experience the blessing of a new life at some point in the future. The sterilized couple has to deal with the reality that, even if the reasons that led to sterilization are resolved, they will never have the joy and blessing of another child.

Both types of couples have challenges.

 

[johnnyjones]

Life is not fair. Decisions have consequences. Those guys who are sterilized, even if forgiven, still have to deal with the temporal effects of their sins. They have to deal with the emotional effects of the damage they did to their marriages. For whatever reason, those other guys you speak of have decided that they have a serious reason not to try to have another baby with their wife. They have to deal with the consequences of that decision too.

The couple who has a serious reason to postpone another child’s birth has the hope that those serious reasons will be resolved and they will be able to experience the blessing of a new life at some point in the future. The sterilized couple has to deal with the reality that, even if the reasons that led to sterilization are resolved, they will never have the joy and blessing of another child.

Both types of couples have challenges.

Of course life is not fair, your talking to a man who greatly understands that. I think there are consequences if a man or women wanted to have a child after being “fixed”. However, if both are content with the children they already have, then unknowing it’s a sin get sterilized, then come to conscience and ask for forgiveness, the sin is forgven, and they can go on having pleasurable sex with no expections of creating life if there tubes are tied and burned.

If it’s about a mindset of being open to life which I do understand, every time this sterilized couple has sex they would be hopeful of a miracle that does not happen in our current age. So they are saying, if it happens (pregnancy) it happens, but we all know realisticly it won’t happen. Where is the challenge for the forgiven couple who are content with the amount of children they already have?