When is NFP wrong?

[Lea101]

If you use NFP for your whole life and only have sex on fertile days when you want a child, is it wrong? Then maybe after 2 or 3 you use NFP to avoid children until menopause?

Is that wrong?

And then what if the husband wants to sleep with you on your fertile period but both of you initially planned to not have a baby, what are you supposed to do?

I know I’m like a baby, but I’m asking because someone I know said that it’s wrong?

 

[RoseRogers]

If you use NFP for your whole life and only have sex on fertile days when you want a child, is it wrong? Then maybe after 2 or 3 you use NFP to avoid children until menopause?

Is that wrong?

And then what if the husband wants to sleep with you on your fertile period but both of you initially planned to not have a baby, what are you supposed to do?

I know I’m like a baby, but I’m asking because someone I know said that it’s wrong?

I understand that strictly speaking to use NFP one should have a significant reason to want to avoid the possibility of pregnancy at that time - while the ideal of course remains that if a husband and wife are intimate it is with total openness (I don’t think it has to be hope), to the possibility of new life. What counts as a serious reason I suppose is really a matter of personal judgement for each couple (one could always talk to a priest if one has concerns, I think).

Without such a serious reason - if it’s more a ‘well we are happy with our life the way it is and don’t want more children’ type attitude - then my understanding is that that is hardly different from the mentality of using any sort of artificial contraception - it practically perverts the meaning of sex to deny totally and actively work against one part of it.

Partly it’s a matter of personal opinion I suppose and there are more qualified people to write about this topic - it’s probably quite a fine line between having a serious reason (the risk to the health of the mother, for instance), and a flippant one (‘children are expensive and we prefer our Caribbean holidays’), occasionally. One uses NFP to time intimate acts to reduce the chance of conception to a total minimum, but one should still be ready to welcome any child one has. If one can’t, then to use NFP I think IS wrong, and constitutes sin.

 

[Vico]

If you use NFP for your whole life and only have sex on fertile days when you want a child, is it wrong? Then maybe after 2 or 3 you use NFP to avoid children until menopause?

Is that wrong?

And then what if the husband wants to sleep with you on your fertile period but both of you initially planned to not have a baby, what are you supposed to do?

I know I’m like a baby, but I’m asking because someone I know said that it’s wrong?

Address to Midwives, Given by His Holiness Pope Pius XII, 29 October 1951

The reason is that marriage obliges the partners to a state of life, which even as it confers certain rights so it also imposes the accomplishment of a positive work concerning the state itself. In such a case, the general principle may be applied that a positive action may be omitted if grave motives, independent of the good will of those who are obliged to perform it, show that its performance is inopportune, or prove that it may not be claimed with equal right by the petitioner—in this case, mankind.

The matrimonial contract, which confers on the married couple the right to satisfy the inclination of nature, constitutes them in a state of life, namely, the matrimonial state. Now, on married couples, who make use of the specific act of their state, nature and the Creator impose the function of providing for the preservation of mankind. This is the characteristic service which gives rise to the peculiar value of their state, the bonum prolis. The individual and society, the people and the State, the Church itself, depend for their existence, in the order established by God, on fruitful marriages. Therefore, to embrace the matrimonial state, to use continually the faculty proper to such a state and lawful only therein, and, at the same time, to avoid its primary duty without a grave reason, would be a sin against the very nature of married life.

Serious motives, such as those which not rarely arise from medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called “indications,” may exempt husband and wife from the obligatory, positive debt for a long period or even for the entire period of matrimonial life. From this it follows that the observance of the natural sterile periods may be lawful, from the moral viewpoint: and it is lawful in the conditions mentioned. If, however, according to a reasonable and equitable judgment, there are no such grave reasons either personal or deriving from exterior circumstances, the will to avoid the fecundity of their union, while continuing to satisfy to the full their sensuality, can only be the result of a false appreciation of life and of motives foreign to sound ethical principles.

fisheaters.com/addresstomidwives.html

 

[Lookingforjoy]

If you use NFP for your whole life and only have sex on fertile days when you want a child, is it wrong? Then maybe after 2 or 3 you use NFP to avoid children until menopause?

Is that wrong?

You’ll get varying answers here. You do need a serious reason to delay or prevent having more children. To some people, only the likelihood of maternal death is a serious enough reason, but that’s not true of every couple. My husband and I have three children, and no plans to have more. Our children have certain needs that require a lot of time, effort, and advocacy, and I don’t think I could handle another child and adequately take care of the ones I have. For us, that’s a serious enough reason. You and your husband will have to decide what your reasons are.

And then what if the husband wants to sleep with you on your fertile period but both of you initially planned to not have a baby, what are you supposed to do?

You talk it out. Be straight with him. Negotiate together about whether risking a baby is worth what you’re about to do.

I know I’m like a baby, but I’m asking because someone I know said that it’s wrong?

I know there are some people who say women should give in to their husband’s every sexual desire, but I know my husband would be really upset if we had sex and then I said, “Oh, by the way, I was fertile. Hope we don’t get pregnant. Sorry, I just didn’t want to disappoint you.” Knowing the whole situation changes what he wants. Maybe that’s not what you’re concerned about, I just thought I’d put it out there.

 

[1ke]

If you use NFP for your whole life and only have sex on fertile days when you want a child, is it wrong? Then maybe after 2 or 3 you use NFP to avoid children until menopause? Is that wrong?

Monitoring your fertility (a.k.a. “NFP”) is information. It isn’t an action. Therefore NFP is not “right” or “wrong”. It has no moral component.

Your decision to have intercourse or not have intercourse is the action. Whether or not that is “wrong” depends on the three fonts of morality.

1750 The morality of human acts depends on:

• the object chosen;
• the end in view or the intention;
• the circumstances of the action.

And then what if the husband wants to sleep with you on your fertile period but both of you initially planned to not have a baby, what are you supposed to do?

Discuss it with him. It is a serious thing to withhold the marital embrace when asked for. But it is not an absolute right. So again-- it goes back to the three fonts of morality.

I know I’m like a baby, but I’m asking because someone I know said that it’s wrong?

It sounds like you want a black and white answer.

There isn’t one.

It “can” be wrong. And it “can” be not-wrong.

 

[Xantippe]

If you use NFP for your whole life and only have sex on fertile days when you want a child, is it wrong? Then maybe after 2 or 3 you use NFP to avoid children until menopause?

Is that wrong?

And then what if the husband wants to sleep with you on your fertile period but both of you initially planned to not have a baby, what are you supposed to do?

I know I’m like a baby, but I’m asking because someone I know said that it’s wrong?

This isn’t a theological approach, really, but Simcha Fisher’s Sinner’s Guide to NFP is very good on the lived realities.

 

[Lea101]

Umm…let’s say that I just don’t want to to through the whole pregnancy thing a lot of times/I don’t enjoy being pregnant

Or maybe that the money we have would be better spent on bills, the other children’s education instead of another a child (children are way too expensive basically)

Or anything more than 3 kids is too much to handle/chaotic

So it’s not like I’m in poor health but more trivial reasons like the above?

 

[1ke]

Umm…let’s say that I just don’t want to to through the whole pregnancy thing a lot of times/I don’t enjoy being pregnant

Or maybe that the money we have would be better spent on bills, the other children’s education instead of another a child (children are way too expensive basically)

Or anything more than 3 kids is too much to handle/chaotic

So it’s not like I’m in poor health but more trivial reasons like the above?

Perhaps some spiritual direction would be helpful for you. Ask your pastor if he does spiritual direction or can refer you to someone locally who does.

 

[ArielRussu]

Umm…let’s say that I just don’t want to to through the whole pregnancy thing a lot of times/I don’t enjoy being pregnant

Or maybe that the money we have would be better spent on bills, the other children’s education instead of another a child (children are way too expensive basically)

Or anything more than 3 kids is too much to handle/chaotic

So it’s not like I’m in poor health but more trivial reasons like the above?

I’m not a conservative Catholic and I’m not even married so if you want you can take my words, gained from observing others with a grain of salt if you want.

I’d say pray about it and do what in your heart feels right. You have a responsibility to care for the children you already have and to some people, anything less than financial crisis, maternal health or deadly/painful genetic diseases (though there are people who, in my opinion, idiotically do not consider this an issue), to be selfish and not serious enough to avoid pregnancy. To them you simply not wanting another child or that you don’t like being pregnant, are not serious enough reasons and by not doing your married duty by being open to kids when your physically, emotionally and financially able you are being uncharitable and supposedly “preventing hypothetical souls from going to Heaven”. As for children being too expensive, they’ll throw out how they are a blessing and that you should not deny the world the blessings of the hypothetical children then give advice of how there family handles finances and how each child, no matter how much difficulty they brought gives them so much joy and how you’ll find a way. In my opinion, how many children you have is between you, your husband and God and that decision should be made through much prayer and if you really do not want another then DON’T try for another it’s that simple, and if you plan NFP wrong and get pregnant again, well then your pregnant again! Not everyone is meant for tons of kids.

From a lot of the reading I’ve found in general, not just on these forums, there are Catholics, Christians and well, anyone with many children that just let them come have this undertone of boasting to there words of “we are holier, we are better Catholic/Christians, look how many kids we have, how fruitful we are” as if there kids are trophies that show how “religious” the parents are, or to mothers with high risk pregnancies who keep having children, taking risk after risk despite doctor warnings can go parade there children around and the fact that they were very blessed the child’s healthy the mother lived, the doctor was wrong, how good God is. That is until some push there luck too far and leave there children already alive without a mother because mommy and daddy just had to have another baby!

Anyone who wants to try and attack me and say that it’s all up to God and you don’t have too take doctors advice at face value, tell that to my aunt whose body couldn’t handle pregnancy (she went into liver failure with her first child) and her doctors told her too not get pregnant again and she did anyway. Her body reacted to the pregnancy by developing shingles, the worse case the hospital had ever seen and since she was pregnant and they couldn’t give her appropriate drugs in fear that the baby would be harmed, the shingles turned into post herpetic neuralgia. As a result, she has been in chronic pain (like knife stabbing you in the back 24/7, 7 days a week pain) and living at a pain level of 6 or higher, no cure is available only treatments her body is becoming immune too, for 20 YEARS! And her son, although reminded it is NOT his fault, feels guilty for existing because if he was never conceived his mother would not be the way she is today. He has even taken up responsibility of caring for her, he sees it as his debt since his existence is responsible for his mothers suffering. My aunt was forced to have a tubal ligation, the hospital told my uncle she needed one and consented during a really bad episode, of level 10+ pain which did I mention can last anywhere from 30 minutes and up where you CAN NOT touch her, or it makes the pain worse, all you can do is sit by and watch her cry and suffer.

So, over all just pray about the situation and see where God leads you and what you feel you should do. Everyone on here is going to have there own opinion on what circumstances are permissible to use NFP to avoid pregnancy and what circumstances are not. And to those who might want to attack me saying our emotions and feelings are irrelevant in decision making, as I’ve had people on these forums tell me that. Well, how else is God going to lead us? By writing His response on a wall?

 

[Xantippe]

I think at the moment this is all much too hypothetical for the OP.

If she eventually acquires a fiance, these are very good topics to discuss. They won’t really know their own feelings for sure until they actually have children, but it will be possible to talk in general terms. It might be, for instance, that her future fiance is an only child and felt really lonely, or was from a large family and felt neglected or had one sister and wished he also had a brother to play with, etc.

Also, I see that in Singapore women currently have about 1.3 kids, which would have a lot of impact on housing options, cost of living, etc. School expectations might be largely based on that 1.3 kid family, so a larger family might be completely overwhelmed by school expectations. Even in the US, I feel like school expectations are based on the 2.0 kid family. My big kids are getting more and more independent, but back in the early days of having a baby sister, my brain was starting to smoke under the pressure of keeping up with school stuff (buy and send in this, read and sign these papers, do this project, sign this homework log, come to the evening meeting, meet the teacher, etc.).

Also, stuff may currently sound trivial that won’t sound trivial when you have kids asking for it. My kids do a lot of “unnecessary” stuff but hey, everything aside from breathing and eating and drinking is (strictly speaking) “unnecessary.” I never dreamed I’d be paying for music lessons, but here we are. Another family might feel the same way about sports or keeping a dog.

So, it’s much too early to say. Just plan to marry somebody sensible and not overly committed to anything extreme who is open to talking stuff through.

And read Simcha Fisher’s book.

 

[Rau]

Umm…let’s say that I just don’t want to to through the whole pregnancy thing a lot of times/I don’t enjoy being pregnant

Or maybe that the money we have would be better spent on bills, the other children’s education instead of another a child (children are way too expensive basically)

Or anything more than 3 kids is too much to handle/chaotic

So it’s not like I’m in poor health but more trivial reasons like the above?

While health factors may generally rate as more “serious” than the other factors, only you can decide and nothing in the teaching of the Church says otherwise. The factors you list, for a given person, can be just.

 

[Lea101]

While health factors may generally rate as more “serious” than the other factors, only you can decide and nothing in the teaching of the Church says otherwise. The factors you list, for a given person, can be just.

In that way…then there is no unjust reason isn’t there? I tried to pick the most “selfish” (well selfish to people with an army of kids) reasons hahaha

 

[Rau]

In that way…then there is no unjust reason isn’t there? I tried to pick the most “selfish” (well selfish to people with an army of kids) reasons hahaha

No, that doesn’t follow. It just means it’s a personal judgement, not an objective standard.

 

[Vico]

In that way…then there is no unjust reason isn’t there? I tried to pick the most “selfish” (well selfish to people with an army of kids) reasons hahaha

Pope Pius XII gave a list of indications “medical, eugenic, economic and social”, in his Address to Midwives on the Nature of Their Profession, in October 1951:

If, one of the parties contracted marriage with the intention of limiting the matrimonial right itself to the periods of sterility, and not only its use, in such a manner that during the other days the other party would not even have the right to ask for the debt, than this would imply an essential defect in the marriage consent, which would result in the marriage being invalid, because the right deriving from the marriage contract is a permanent, uninterrupted and continuous right of husband and wife with respect to each other.

However if the limitation of the act to the periods of natural sterility does not refer to the right itself but only to the use of the right, the validity of the marriage does not come up for discussion. Nonetheless, the moral lawfulness of such conduct of husband and wife should be affirmed or denied according as their intention to observe constantly those periods is or is not based on sufficiently morally sure motives. The mere fact that husband and wife do not offend the nature of the act and are even ready to accept and bring up the child, who, notwithstanding their precautions, might be born, would not be itself sufficient to guarantee the rectitude of their intention and the unobjectionable morality of their motives.

The reason is that marriage obliges the partners to a state of life, which even as it confers certain rights so it also imposes the accomplishment of a positive work concerning the state itself. In such a case, the general principle may be applied that a positive action may be omitted if grave motives, independent of the good will of those who are obliged to perform it, show that its performance is inopportune, or prove that it may not be claimed with equal right by the petitioner—in this case, mankind.

The matrimonial contract, which confers on the married couple the right to satisfy the inclination of nature, constitutes them in a state of life, namely, the matrimonial state. Now, on married couples, who make use of the specific act of their state, nature and the Creator impose the function of providing for the preservation of mankind. This is the characteristic service which gives rise to the peculiar value of their state, the bonum prolis. The individual and society, the people and the State, the Church itself, depend for their existence, in the order established by God, on fruitful marriages. Therefore, to embrace the matrimonial state, to use continually the faculty proper to such a state and lawful only therein, and, at the same time, to avoid its primary duty without a grave reason, would be a sin against the very nature of married life.

Serious motives, such as those which not rarely arise from medical, eugenic, economic and social so-called “indications,” may exempt husband and wife from the obligatory, positive debt for a long period or even for the entire period of matrimonial life. From this it follows that the observance of the natural sterile periods may be lawful, from the moral viewpoint: and it is lawful in the conditions mentioned. If, however, according to a reasonable and equitable judgment, there are no such grave reasons either personal or deriving from exterior circumstances, the will to avoid the fecundity of their union, while continuing to satisfy to the full their sensuality, can only be the result of a false appreciation of life and of motives foreign to sound ethical principles.
Tredicesimo anno di Pontificato, 2 marzo 1951 - 1° marzo 1952, p. 333 - 353

papalencyclicals.net/Pius12/P12midwives.htm
ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P511029.HTM
w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/it/speeches/1951/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19511029_ostetriche.html

 

[SusanneT]

One uses NFP to time intimate acts to reduce the chance of conception to a total minimum, but one should still be ready to welcome any child one has. If one can’t, then to use NFP I think IS wrong, and constitutes sin.

For me there are two big issues with NFP.

Firstly though there is no requirement to be intimate only “in the hope of conceiving” - is it right to be intimate habitually “in the hope of NOT conceiving” ?

Secondly I believe it is always supposed to be a mutual decision, but as the OP says what happens if the decision is to “avoid” pregnancy, but then one party (often but not always the husband) want’s intimacy during the fertile time ? It seems to me wrong to refuse for “fear” of what is in essence the purpose of the act.

 

[Rau]

For me there are two big issues with NFP.

Firstly though there is no requirement to be intimate only “in the hope of conceiving” - is it right to be intimate habitually “in the hope of NOT conceiving” ?

Secondly I believe it is always supposed to be a mutual decision, but as the OP says what happens if the decision is to “avoid” pregnancy, but then one party (often but not always the husband) want’s intimacy during the fertile time ? It seems to me wrong to refuse for “fear” of what is in essence the purpose of the act.

First question: it can be, with just cause.

Second: Generally one ought not refuse. But the particular circumstances would weigh heavily on the answer.

 

[Xantippe]

For me there are two big issues with NFP.

Firstly though there is no requirement to be intimate only “in the hope of conceiving” - is it right to be intimate habitually “in the hope of NOT conceiving” ?

Secondly I believe it is always supposed to be a mutual decision, but as the OP says what happens if the decision is to “avoid” pregnancy, but then one party (often but not always the husband) want’s intimacy during the fertile time ? It seems to me wrong to refuse for “fear” of what is in essence the purpose of the act.

Well, it would be possible to be intimate habitually “in the hope of NOT conceiving” while not doing NFP at all.

 

[bitterhope]

For me there are two big issues with NFP.

Firstly though there is no requirement to be intimate only “in the hope of conceiving” - is it right to be intimate habitually “in the hope of NOT conceiving” ?

Secondly I believe it is always supposed to be a mutual decision, but as the OP says what happens if the decision is to “avoid” pregnancy, but then one party (often but not always the husband) want’s intimacy during the fertile time ? It seems to me wrong to refuse for “fear” of what is in essence the purpose of the act.

I agree with you.

 

[Xantippe]

First question: it can be, with just cause.

Second: Generally one ought not refuse. But the particular circumstances would weigh heavily on the answer.

Right.

If the doctor says, “Don’t get pregnant within X amount of time because your c-section scars won’t be healed and your uterus may rupture” that’s an awfully good reason. And a lot of women get c-sections and face exactly that situation.

Or, the doctor says to the same woman, “it looks like you can manage one more pregnancy without uterine rupture, but more than that is dicey.”

The more serious the issue inspiring NFP is, the more justified refusal is.

And, to be very fair to the guys, they may be as concerned or more concerned about having more children or dealing with the practical side of having a pregnant wife and other children. They’re not all panting sex fiends who can’t see past their own sexual arousal.

I know personally that now that we are older (both 40-somethings), my husband is quite concerned about how another pregnancy would impact our family. My last pregnancy, I was sick as a dog the first trimester, bleeding scarily and on physical restrictions the second trimester, and a gestational diabetic the last trimester (and still being very cautious about activity because of the second trimester stuff). My husband had to do 80-90% of home and kid stuff for about 6 months, on top of his job, while I mostly just gestated. That’s not a situation we’re in a big hurry to repeat.

 

[Rau]

Right.

If the doctor says, “Don’t get pregnant within X amount of time because your c-section scars won’t be healed and your uterus may rupture” that’s an awfully good reason. And a lot of women get c-sections and face exactly that situation.

Or, the doctor says to the same woman, “it looks like you can manage one more pregnancy without uterine rupture, but more than that is dicey.”

The more serious the issue inspiring NFP is, the more justified refusal is.

And, to be very fair to the guys, they may be as concerned or more concerned about having more children or dealing with the practical side of having a pregnant wife and other children. They’re not all panting sex fiends who can’t see past their own sexual arousal.

I know personally that now that we are older (both 40-somethings), my husband is quite concerned about how another pregnancy would impact our family. My last pregnancy, I was sick as a dog the first trimester, bleeding scarily and on physical restrictions the second trimester, and a gestational diabetic the last trimester (and still being very cautious about activity because of the second trimester stuff). My husband had to do 80-90% of home and kid stuff for about 6 months, on top of his job, while I mostly just gestated. That’s not a situation we’re in a big hurry to repeat.

I recall one poster on CAF declare that when circumstances disincline one to conceive, one should not engage in sex at all. That, of course, is a personal opinion, not one taught by the Church.