G
gurneyhalleck1
Guest
I have to take issue with that statement. People who are willing to abort an innocent child are far more than birth control pill users, they have more than a closed-mindedness to life but a contempt for it and an evil heart. I know countless people who use birth control but who are absolutely 100% staunchly committed to life and are anti-abortion. Using birth control does not necessarily lead to an evil abortion mode of thinking. Many couples contracept but “slip up” and get pregnant. They go on to gladly accept their little “surprise.” My wife and I used contraception for years before being Catholic and we were firmly pro-life then just as now. We never would have aborted any baby, period. That’s an oversimplification. We hear the statistic that says now NFP-users have a less than 1% divorce rate, etc. but we don’t know if NFP had anything to do with that? So, divorce rates and abortion rates tied to NFP is not exact statistically or empirically to say the least.
I would never, in a million years, look around my church and judge somebody based on the number of children they have. I am particularly sensitive to this because I grew up in a very “traditional” Catholic background in which there was judging going on all the time (I’m not saying all “traditional” upbringings are like this, just that mine was). I tend to come at these issues from a slightly different perspective because I have lived most of my life around “orthodox” Catholics and their very-large families. I have been privy to what goes on behind closed to doors (to some degree) and can tell you that large families can be just as unhappy as small families, and there are no guarantees that just because a family goes to church several times a week, says the rosary every day, and homeschools their 9 children that they are any more charitable or happily married than couples I know who may very well contracept and have 2 children. Indeed, my husband and I have one of the smallest families among his coworkers (works for a Catholic organization), and I have been judged more than once for not having more. I know what it’s like to be on that other side, and it’s a real turnoff to have people looking down their noses at you while they sit on their high horses feeling mighty. The same people who complain incessantly about being asked “Are you done yet?” quite frequently ask their friends and family “So when are you having your next one?” 
) children, I apologize. I don’t think everyone is meant to have a large brood, and I don’t waste my time and energy worrying about other couples’ decisions regarding their own families. Geez, I have enough of my OWN issues to worry about 
This motherhood thing has been a tremendous struggle for me from day one!!
I don’t know if it’s because most of those people married fairly young and started having families young (went to a traditional Catholic college, so many of the people we know who use NFP happen to have married young), never had a history of birth control pill use (which can possibly adversely affect future fertility), came from large families themselves and so were open to the idea, didn’t feel they had a major reason not to have large families and so only intended their NFP use to be child-spacing at most, were poorly instructed or happen to have very difficult cycles (mine are very difficult to interpret, so I know this can happen), “messed up” on NFP a bunch of times, or if it’s just a huge coincidence. But I would imagine if this is my experience, it’s probably been the experience of others out there in Catholic land. This may not be your experience at all, and so you probably come at this from a different perspective. I always like to hear what others are seeing/experiencing in their circles because it’s fascinating and broadens ALL of our perspectives.