What is natural family planning?

June 28th, 2009

Sheila:  A friend was under many deadlines and asked John if he could provide a text summarizing natural family planning and Church teaching in 250 words or less.  Our friend needed this the next day. The following is what John wrote:

A brief description of Natural Family Planning in 234 words:

Natural Family Planning (or NFP) is a general term that refers to the use of natural methods to achieve and to avoid pregnancy.  There are two basic forms of NFP—Systematic NFP and Ecological Breastfeeding. 

Systematic NFP consists of “fertility awareness” so that the spouses know the fertile and infertile times of the wife’s fertility-menstrual cycle.  Fertility awareness is an educated awareness of the normal female signs of fertility and infertility.  There are several common signs of fertility, and when couples take an NFP course, they learn how to observe and interpret these signs.  When seeking pregnancy, they engage in the marriage act during the fertile time.  When seeking to avoid pregnancy, the couple practice chaste abstinence during the fertile time.   
 
The second basic form of NFP is Ecological Breastfeeding.  This is a form of the form of nursing in which 1) the mother fulfills her baby’s needs for frequent suckling and her full-time presence and 2) in which the child’s frequent suckling postpones the return of the mother’s fertility.  Studies have shown that mothers who do this form of breastfeeding experience, on the average, 14 to 15 months before their first postpartum period.

Since the apostolic era, the Catholic Church has taught that it is immoral to use contraception.  Today, the Church encourages couples to learn NFP, to be generous in having children, and to raise them in the ways of the Lord.

by John Kippley

Posted in Ecological Breastfeeding, NFP | No Comments »

Bedsharing is not a risk.

June 21st, 2009

The Alaska Division of Public Health (ADPH) has stated since 2000 “that infants may safely share a bed for sleeping if this occurs with a nonsmoking, unimpaired caregiver on a standard, adult, non-water mattress.”  Because the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) stated in 2005 that infants should not share a sleep surface with adults or other children, the ADPH decided to research the issue once again in case their 2000 statement needed modifications.  The ADPH also expressed some concerns with the studies supporting the AAP findings. 
     Bedsharing with an infant is common in Alaska.  Those infants who always or almost always shared a bed increased from 33% in 1996 to 43% in 2005.  After researching all Alaskan infant deaths from 1996-2003,  the ADPH concluded that “almost all bedsharing deaths occurred in association with other risk factors despite the finding that most women reporting frequent bedsharing had no risk factors; this suggests that bedsharing alone does not increase the risk of infant death.”  Risk factors were “maternal cigarette smoking habits currently and during the last three months of pregnancy, prenatal smokeless tobacco or chew use, prenatal marijuana use, number of alcoholic drinks in an average week during the first three months before pregnancy and currently, and the position in which the infant was most often laid down to sleep.” 
     The ADPH reaffirms three policies:  1) that infants sleep on their backs unless told differently by a medical provider, 2) that infants never sleep on a couch or water bed, and 3) that infants sleep in an infant crib or with a nonsmoking, unimpaired caregiver on a standard, adult, non-water mattress.
     This study was published in Public Health Reports , July-August 2009. 
For 21 advantages of bedsharing, see Chapter 4 of The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding.
For safety guidelines on bedsharing and free brochures on this topic, go to “links” at left column on the Home Page of www.NFPandmore.org.  Scroll down to “Safe Bedsharing for Mother and Baby” and “Reactions to the AAP’s Policy Statement on SIDS.”

Sheila Kippley

Posted in Ecological Breastfeeding, Education | 1 Comment »

Pill as Pollutant

June 14th, 2009

In early January 2009, there was a brief flurry of headlines about the birth control pill as a major pollutant in the waterways of the Western countries. This has made headlines before, but the kicker in January was a report in La Osservatore Romano, the official newspaper of the Vatican. In that article, Pedro Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, reported that the Pill was having devastating effects on the environment. He also linked this to increasing male infertility. (Source: The Pill causes male infertility, says the Vatican, Simon Caldwell, MailOnline, 090106)

As one might expect, this was dismissed by some pharmaceutical organizations, saying that these hormones were distributed by other causes as well and were all over the place including plastics, disinfectants, and the meats we eat. One Italian scientist denied that the Pill had any characteristics of female hormones after it was metabolized. That assertion certainly seems open to challenge because the success of the Pill has been the fact that it does not break down as natural hormones do. It was engineered to resist being broken down so that it could be taken orally and still be effective after having been digested. Women have been urinating their natural female hormones since Eve, but it’s only been in recent years that these waste products have been feminizing the male fish.

I googled “Pill and environmental pollution” and got 48,200 responses. The Vatican statement was prominent in the first pages, but on page 5 of the search results I found a reference to a recent book, The Really Inconvenient Truths by Iain Murray published in 2008. You can read it online. Chapter 3 is titled “The Pill as Pollutant” and is helpful. Among other things, Murray describes what happened when the mountain streams near Boulder, Colorado were found to have these pollutants. Or it is better to say what didn’t happen. It appears that as soon as the liberals discovered that their favorite birth control mechanism was responsible or partially responsible for this, all of sudden they lost interest.

The article in the Vatican paper was based on a 100-page report with 300 bibliographic citations, but it was breezily dismissed by those who make money selling the Pill. Yes, there are other sources of overall pollution, but the question needs to be studied further. To what extent have the other possible sources been deliberately constructed so as to be resistant to normally breaking down as natural hormones do? And yes, it would be good to get rid of the contamination from the other sources, which may or may not be feasible. But one thing is certain. Any and all pollution caused by the Pill and its derivatives such as the Morning-after Pill, the Shot, implants, and hormone-laced IUDs can be completely eliminated by a ban on their manufacture. There are other ways to avoid pregnancy that do not pollute and that do not carry abortifacient properties.

And the best of all of these is Natural Family Planning, both systematic and ecological breastfeeding.

John F. Kippley
Sex and the Marriage Covenant: A Basis for Morality

Posted in Abortion-Contraception | Comments Off

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