Couples choose to abstain during the fertile time when they have a sufficiently serious reason to avoid pregnancy. Some couples may make use of this time by helping more with the children or reading a book or starting a project or finding an activity they can do together. Some couples make the decision to abstain for spiritual reasons, such as on a Friday or during Lent.
There are couples who decide to abstain for a lengthy period of time because of a medical or mental-emotional reason. We know a couple who abstained for 18 months after childbirth. We know another couple who abstained for two years for an anxiety-mental situation as the wife was going through pre-menopause. We know another couple who abstained for six months because some ill-informed infertility doctor told them she might be allergic to her husband’s sperm. (The doctor told the couple to use condoms for six months.) They abstained and finally became pregnant by using guafenesin to improve the liquidity of her cervical mucus. When they wanted to become pregnant again, they used guafenesin and achieved pregnancy again.
What’s the great problem that the population has with systematic NFP? Chaste abstinence for about 10 days is no big deal. All too many of our priests and even bishops are afraid to teach the need for chaste periodic abstinence when there is a sufficiently serious reason to postpone pregnancy.
A critic recently told us that we are going to hell for teaching natural family planning. NFP International definitely encourages couples to be generous in having children, and we teach ecological breastfeeding as a form of baby spacing—which implies that another baby will come along.
However, for those couples who have a sufficiently serious reason to avoid pregnancy, periodic abstinence is a real blessing and can help a couple grow closer together.
Abstinence can help a couple grow in holiness if they continue to think of the good of the other and continue to be a helpmate to each other.
(April 23 is our 7th anniversary for blogging…460 blogs!)
John and Sheila Kippley
Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach
The Seven Standards of Ecological Breastfeeding: The Frequency Factor