My Pontification

I just finished the book “Holy Sex!” by Gregory K. Popcak, PH.D and in light of the “Contraception: Why Not?” series of posts, I thought i would share an excerpt from the book that I enjoyed.  It caused me to think back to the post “Contraception: Why Not? (Part 19)” where Professor Janet E. Smith asks where we get our immortal soul from if there is no immortal soul in either the sperm or the egg?  Of course the answer is from God, He creates the immortal soul in every being.  I just really enjoyed how the following excerpt was expanding on that point:

“God loves loving.  Love is what God does best, but a lover isn’t much good without a beloved.  This is why God seems to be endlessly fascinated with creating new things.  It gives him more to love.

G. K. Chesterton once observed that God delights in creation because he loves it so much and loves creating more to love.  In his book Orthodoxy, Chesterton writes,

                It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening “Do it again” to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes the daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never gotten tired of making them.  It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.  The repetition in Nature may not be mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.  Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg.  If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose.  It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain.

Perhaps this is one of the things Jesus meant when he told us that unless we became like little children we could not enter the kingdom of heaven (Luke 18:15-17).  Children never get tired of creating and of repeating a good thing.  Neither does God.  It is only we sinful, jaded adults who see a field of flowers and think “parking garage” or see a baby and think “second mortgage.”  By contrast, if a small child – or God – sees the same field of flowers or the same baby, they both think, “Yeah! Do it again!”

Who do you think is living more authentically?

Even though God is completely sufficient on his own, God loves creating, and God especially loves to create people.  As the Church tells us, the human being is “the only creature on earth whom God willed for its own sake” (Gaudium et Spes). Why?  Because we are the only creatures he gets to spend an eternity loving.  We are the only earthly beings built to last, so to speak.  One can only guess that for God it is a joy beyond words to create creatures whom he can love eternally.  This same God, who generously longs to share all of his joy with us, gives husbands and wives a taste of the particular joy that is creating and loving the creation by inviting us to bring his children into the world.”

 -Holy Sex! By Gregory K. Popcak, PH.D. pages 149 & 150

Although we cannot create a new and unique person on our own, I do find it truly amazing that God brings us along in the creation processes.  What an opportunity to experience God’s creative power through the mystery of life.  To live this experience has got to be a gift designed to reconnect us to our creator.

This is the final post of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post  please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Q.  How did the Church arrive at the conclusion that NFP is a viable family planning practice as opposed to completely putting one’s trust in God?

A.  Putting trust in God does not mean not planning.  God gave us our reason.  And He gave us our reason to plan.  I honestly don’t know anybody who at the end of every month empties out their bank account and gives it to the poor.  No one insists that “God will provide.  Trust in God.  I’m just going to give away every penny every month.” We pretty much know that God doesn’t ask us to do that.  Save some, give some away.  He gave us our reason to plan.   We don’t just eat whatever we want and expect God to keep us at our best weight.  No one counsels: “Just eat whatever you want and trust in God.  You won’t get diabetes.”  Isn’t it rather that God wants us to use our reason to live moderately?  We have to govern all of our appetites, and sometimes even the appetite for children needs to be governed.  In marriage it’s not always a good idea to have another child at this time.  Hopefully, eventually, the parents will be able to have more children.

Humanae Vitae says that some couples make the prudent and generous decision to have a large family.  But note that it speaks of a prudent decision.  The spouses should be confident they can meet the demands of a large family.  Some people are such good parents and so stable that it is a prudent decision on their part to “just let the babies come.”  I’ve got many friends who have very large families of 8, 9, 10, 11 children. Most of them are very stable people.  I don’t know where they came from.  Maybe having children makes people stable. I don’t know, there’s something about them that’s really special.  Some of them might say everyone ought to do what they would do.  But I don’t think that is necessary true. Some people can have six children and go to daily mass and get a medical degree and run the local Right to Life group and go on missions to foreign lands and run in marathons. They have an energy level that defies belief and that not everyone has.  Not all of us have the same gifts; not all are called to do the same things.  We need to accept who we are and live in accord with the gifts God has given us.     

On the other hand, it is easy for some of us to look for the easy life.  A lot of us need to learn stretch ourselves in most every respect.  Most of us need to give away more money than we do.  Most of us have to volunteer more time than we do.  And probably a lot of people should consider having a somewhat larger family than they are initially comfortable with.  But I see nothing in Church teaching that says that we’re supposed to let the babies come unless you make a decision that you can handle that.

 Q.  Isn’t having sex only when one can’t get pregnant, using NFP, not giving oneself completely in the act of marriage?

A.  Again, it is possible to use NFP selfishly.  Some couples simply don’t want to have more children because they don’t want to take on the additional responsibility. That’s selfish.  And those people are not giving of themselves completely. 

But we also need to be clear that sometimes it is an act of self-giving not to have sex.  Often having sex is the selfish act.  People who don’t have sex before marriage, for instance, are giving of themselves very completely.  It’s those who are having sex that are being selfish.  They want a pleasure without commitment.  I find that people who are chaste before marriage find NFP quite natural to use; they abstained before marriage precisely because they loved each other and it was not appropriate to give themselves to each other sexually.  Their not having sex was a loving and self giving act. The same thing can be in marriage.  One or the other spouse is tired.  One spouse would like to have sex, the other wouldn’t.  “Not tonight, dear.”  There is considerable disappointment on the other end.  But if the disappointed spouse doesn’t pressure for sex, that is an act of self giving.  That person doesn’t put any pressure on you because it’s not good.  It’s not good right now.  That person walking out of the room is giving completely of himself or herself because it’s not good to engage in this act at this time.  So, I’m going to say yes, you can be giving of yourself completely by not having sex.

Q. How does cohabitation cause an increase in divorce rate?

A. Cohabitation is not a good preparation for many reasons.  Consider how it begins.  In our culture, those who begin serious relationships have often not made a very careful choice of a partner; they have not considered whether they want to have children with this person or to marry this person. Many couples start having sex fairly early in an intense relationship; if not early on, then eventually.  They wonder why they are paying rent at two places. So they move in together.  Pretty soon after they move in together they stop having the kinds of conversations they should have to build a relationship.  When you move in with someone, it’s very awkward to move out.  Important conversations are avoided because they might lead to fights and fights might lead to a separation.  Moving out means that somebody has to find a new apartment.  It’s embarrassing and costly.  So all of these conversations that couples should have, they don’t have.  They don’t have them until after marriage and then they discover that they have huge incompatibilities about really important matters.  

I saw a segment of Oprah one day featuring couples who had lived together for a year and a half and decided to get married.  They spent a whole year planning their wedding, some huge extravaganza.  When the wedding came, they just rolled out of bed in the morning, went off to the wedding, and experienced no real change in their relationship except that the wedding was over. These couples reported that as they were driving away from the wedding, they looked at each other and said, “What’s next?”  Their life had just been planning a wedding together, not a life together. 

And then what happens?  Two or three years after they get married one or the other says, “I think maybe we should start planning our family now.”  And the other one says, “What?  What do you mean now?  Why now?” The response: “I’m not getting any younger.  I only had one brother.  And I thought I’d like to have my kids have brothers and sisters.  I’d like to have three or four kids.”  The spouse replies, “Three or four, where’d you ever get that idea?  We’ve got college loans to pay off.  Where did you get that idea?”  The couple had no conversation about how many children they wanted to have previous to marriage.  Or they might disagree about the practice of religion.  One spouse decides to return to going to church on Sunday.  That other asks, “Church, where’d that come from?  You don’t go to church.  Why go to church?”  The spouse replies, “Well once we start our family, that’s how I’d like to raise the kids, in church.” “What?  You don’t expect me to go, do you?  What is happening? Are you becoming some kind of a fanatic?”  Marriages break up over these sorts of things.

When I speak to college students I tell them that within the first few weeks if not days of dating someone they need to make it clear that they are not going to have sex before marriage, they want to have children and they will be practicing their faith.  If the person they are dating doesn’t agree, find someone new.  Don’t fall in love with someone and then find out that that person does not share your values.  In our culture, people have sex, live together and then get to know each other. That is backwards; you should get to know someone, fall in love with the person, and then get married and have sex. Sexual intercourse should be moving the relationship to a new level, a relationship that already has a firm and solid foundation. 

One problem is that too few people in our culture know what their values are.  They don’t know how many children they want to have.  They don’t know whether they believe in God and want to go to church.  Years later they figure it out and they look at this person and think, “What I am doing with this person?? We don’t have the same values and same aims in life.”

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post  please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: Coronation of Mary

Married couples are meant to represent the marriage of Christ and his Church.  Christ is the bridegroom, the Church is the bride.  Couples are meant to symbolize for the rest of us the devotion, the love, the commitment, the unconditional laying down of your life for your bride, which Christ, the bridegroom did for Mary and for the Church, his bride.  It’s an incredible thing.  It’s an incredible responsibility and one not accomplished by the 50 to 60 percent of the marriages in our culture that end in divorce.  When I meet couples who have been married for 15 years or longer, I want to thank them.  They’ve done something good for all of us.  For their children, for each other, and for all if us.  Divorce is hard on everyone; it is hard for the couple, for their children, and for the rest of us to see all that goes on.  When we think of what it takes to have a marriage last, we realize it is very difficult.   The spouses need to learn to forgive and to ask forgiveness.  They need to learn to put up with disappointment both in their spouses and in themselves. It’s hard to when we are a disappointment to ourselves. I think that happens a lot in marriage.  We want to be better than we are and we are not.  And our faults cause a lot of trouble for other people.  People who have been married for 15 years or longer have done a lot of the hard work it takes to get along in this world.  I believe the rewards are great for such dedication; that the satisfaction they experience is incredibly deep.  I hope that they are incredibly in love with each other and it just gets better all the time.  My parents have been married, as I said, for 60 years.  I think they are happier and more in love now than they’ve ever been.  They are reaping the rewards of a life that was well lived.  Let’s stop there and get some questions in.

 Q.  How would you address the misuse of NFP to control family size for selfish reasons?

 A.  Some people say that couples using NFP can use it just as selfishly as couples who are contracepting.  I think that’s possible, but I’m going to actually argue that natural family planning is the solution to the problem. 

Let me explain.  Let’s consider two couples who both want to control their family size.  Both have been married several years.  Let’s say that they may have 3 children under 5, and want to wait awhile before they have another child.  They are tired and need some time to work on household organization, etc.  One couple decides to use contraception and the other couple decides to use natural family planning.  Are they doing the same thing?  While both couples have the same goal, they are using different means to achieve their goals. 

The Church teaches that you not only have to have a good goal, and controlling your family size can be a good goal, you have to have a good means to that goal.  I think contraception, again, violates a woman’s health.  It’s a barrier between the spouses.  It’s a rejection of God, etc.  Natural family planning couples are living in accord with God’s plan.  Very importantly – they are having to deny themselves, and it is a very good thing to be able to deny yourself in pursuit of other goods.  Let’s consider two individuals who both need to lose weight, one engages in bulimia – in eating and throwing up, because that person wants the pleasure of food without the consequence.   Another individual diets.  That denies him or herself cake, ice cream, etc, because he or she is seeking a good, which is weight loss.  Through that self-denial, that dieter is probably going to rise in self-esteem, feel better about him or herself, have more self-control, probably enjoy food more than the bulimic person.  

The couple who is using natural family planning is like the dieter, the contracepting couple are like a bulimic person.  The NFP couple appreciates the goodness of sex but refrains from fertile sex until they are prepared to have another child. The contracepting couple treats fertility as a great annoyance if not a bad thing and they are determined to have sexual pleasure without the consequences. They are engaging in an act and as they engage in it are trying to undo the consequences of it.

The couple using NFP treat the fertile period of the woman’s cycle somewhat like sacred ground. They revere it and will not enter that sacred space until they are prepared to accept the gift of a child.  If it is not a good idea for them to have a child at some time, they won’t engage in an action that amounts to inviting God to send them a child and at the same time rejecting that invitation.  NFP means that a couple is going to have sex during the infertile times and not during the fertile times.  Remember, there is no obligation to have sex during the fertile times.  If there is no obligation to have sex, those who are not having sex during the fertile times are not doing something wrong by not having sex during those times.  Remember that it is perfectly all right to have sex during the infertile days.  So a couple is doing nothing wrong in having sex during the infertile days.  We all know that couples don’t have sex for a lot of reasons, headaches, sporting events they want to watch on TV, visitors in the house.  Now if it’s okay not to have sex because you had a headache, or you want to watch a sporting event, or you have visitors in the house, it’s okay not to have sex because it’s not a good idea to have a child.  That’s a good reason. 

Couples who teach natural family planning say a lot of people coming to them have no more openness to life than those who are contraceptive.  They just are sick and tired of the bad physical side effects.  But in using natural family planning they start to have more respect for their fertility.  They start to have more respect for each other.  They start to appreciate fertility as a gift.  And some of them will have more children and some of them won’t.  But they have a whole different appreciation of their fertility.  That suggests that NFP is a cure for using natural family planning selfishly.  Abstention is difficult.  When people want to have sex, they want to have sex.  If they don’t have a good reason for not having sex, it is difficult for them to abstain.  As they discuss their reasons for abstaining, they often discover whether they are being selfish or unselfish in their decision not to have a child.  So NFP has in internal mechanism for helping spouses realize their selfishness if in fact they are being selfish.

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post  please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: Effectiveness of Natural Family Planning

Natural family planning is every bit as effective as any form of contraception.  Dr. R. E. J. Ryder published an article in the British Medical Journal in 1993 in which he reviewed studies done by world health organizations on natural family planning and concluded that pregnancy rates of couples using NFP have depended on the motivation of couples.  He concluded:

Increasingly studies show that rates equivalent to those with other contraceptive methods are readily achieved in the developed and developing world.  Indeed a study of 19,843 poor women in India had a pregnancy rate approaching zero.  Natural planning family is cheap, efficient, without side effects and may be particularly acceptable to and efficacious among of people in areas of poverty. 

Of the women studied, one third were Christian, one third were Muslim, and one third were Hindu.  Most of them were illiterate.  Do you know who was teaching them?  Mother Teresa’s nuns.  Mother Teresa had all of her nuns learn how to teach natural family planning. 

NFP costs nothing and is perfectly healthy.  A fraction of the money, a fraction of the billions of dollars recommended by the UN for contraceptives could be used to teach women NFP and there would be billions left for health care, antibiotics, hygiene, making the water supply safe, etc. 

 Slide: Benefits of NFP

One benefit of natural family planning is that there are no bad physical side effects.  One of the reasons that NFP marriages last longer is that women using NFP are not as irritable, prone to depression and gaining weight and to having a reduced sex life as are women on contraceptives.  The non contracepting woman is a healthier woman; she feels better.  She is not taking drugs that mess with her system.

Secondly, using NFP requires mutual sacrifice.  That is key.  It takes two people to have sex.  It takes two people to abstain.  Not one or the other of the couple is bearing the contraceptive burden.  In couples where natural family planning is used, wives generally think their husbands are exceptional men.  She thinks, “I married myself an exceptional man.  He doesn’t ask me or expect me to take all of these drugs into my body that are bad for me.  He enjoys my company even when I’m not sexually available.  He can control his sexual desires.  He’s probably not masturbating and using pornography.  I’ve got myself an exceptionally fine man.”

And when a man is married to a woman who thinks he’s exceptionally fine, he tends to think he’s exceptionally fine.  It does good things for his self-esteem.  We women can be very critical.  When a wife thinks her husband is an incredibly wonderful man, that makes for an incredibly wonderful relationship.  He respects his wife; she respects him.

NFP enhances communication between spouses and strengthens marriages.   For some time I wondered how NFP enhances communication.  I figured it out one day and some people now accuse me of hiding in their closets and listening to their conversations.  I understand that about once a month, somewhere during that 7 to 10 day period of abstaining, a couple want to have sex, especially since she’s fertile and males and females are more attracted to each other when the female is fertile.  So they have a conversation that usually begins with the question: “Why did we decide it wasn’t a good idea to have a child right now?”  That’s a very important question because if the answer is that having a baby would be acceptable, the couple can go ahead and do what they want to do.

Now if a couple has a good reason for not having a baby right now,  that can go a long way to dampening the sexual desire.  Spouses have some pretty revealing conversations about the reasons.  The wife might say, “If we have another child right now, I’ll kill you.”  That could lead her husband to remember that there is a sporting event on TV that he very much wants to watch. 

Or she might say, “You said that you would do the dishes.  You said that you would give the kids baths.  You said that I would have time for shopping on Saturday.  When was the last time that you did the dishes or gave the kids a bath or gave me any time on Saturdays?”  And he may respond, “I forgot; I’m so sorry.  I didn’t know.  All right, I’m on duty.”  Or she might say, “I have been tired with three kids under 5 but the baby is out of diapers now.  If we had another one I could handle it.”

Or the husband might say to the wife, “The reason we’re not having more babies right now is because I just can’t imagine how I’m going to support the kids that I’ve already got. I am worried about paying for braces, tuition, and having to buy a bigger van. The way you spend money!!  Your friend Jane wants a fence, you need a fence.  Your friend Jane gets a new kitchen, you need a new kitchen.  What’s a man supposed to do?  And she might reply, “I really had no idea that you felt that way.  I don’t need that kitchen.  I don’t need a fence.”  Or he might say, “I was worried about finances, but I have been getting raises along the way.  My dad raised 4 or 5 children on next to nothing.  If he could do it, I can do it.  So, yes we can go ahead.  If there’s another baby around here, we can handle it.”

That conversation takes place about once a month for couples who are using natural family planning.  It makes them assess where they are in respect to these key questions: Why are we having children and why are we not having children?  Who’s carrying their weight around here?  Who is not?  That’s the kind of conversation that marriage counselors want every couple to have, touching base with each other.  Natural family planning couples have that conversation. 

Most people who use natural family planning have contracepted at one time.  They know the difference between a contracepted relationship and an NFP one.   Nearly all of them testify that their NFP relationship is definitely better than their contraceptive relationship was. When they were contracepting they rarely had conversations about having or not having babies.  They decided they were not having a baby for another 3 or 4 or 5 years.  They just get all involved in their own world and don’t talk about the mutual world they should inhabit.    

NFP strengthens a couple’s relationship with God.  Catholics who come to accept the Church’s teaching on contraception generally have a whole new respect for their church.  It’s an incredible Church that has this teaching.  The Church clearly isn’t trying to win a popularity contest.  It teaches against contraception because this is God’s truth, not man’s truth.  These are God’s laws, not man’s laws.  Some of God’s laws are very peculiar to us.  But when we live by them, when we love our enemies, for instance, we’re usually a lot better off than when we hate them.  And it’s counterintuitive to think you ought to love your enemies.   But if we live by that then we’ve got a better world. We thought contraception was going to be great, but maybe it’s not.  My view is that if people stop using contraception, we will reduce the problems in society.  Poverty will go down.  Crime will go down.  People will generally be happier and better off.

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: Responsible Parenthood

The Church doesn’t teach that you have to have as many children as your body can bear.  This picture is of the little old woman who lived in a shoe; she had so many children she didn’t know what to do. The Church teaches that spouses should practice what is called responsible parenting.  God wants parents to enjoy their children.  Those who have children often find themselves really fatigued.  That’s normal.  It’s just that it should not be the dominant feeling in your life.  You want the dominant feeling to be gratitude.  Grateful for your spouse and grateful for your children.  If you’re starting to feel dragged down by it all, it’s probably time to push the pause button and get a little bit of rest.  Get the diapers under control.  And you probably will be soon wanting at some point to have another one when you’re feeling less overwhelmed. 

 Slide: Natural Family Planning

The Church approves of what is called Natural Family Planning or NFP.  NFP is not the old rhythm method.  It has nothing to do with counting days.  I’m going to be explaining NFP by reference to days and numbers, but that’s irrelevant really to what I’m saying here; any woman can use NFP no matter how irregular her cycles. 

A woman is a relatively infertile creature.  For a long time it has been said that a woman is born with all of the eggs that she is ever going to have.  Now some researchers are saying women may produce more during their lifetime, but, whatever is the case, women have only a couple hundred thousand eggs, maybe at the most a million or so.  Males, on the other hand, are unbelievably fertile: any male has four to five, six to seven million sperm in any ejaculation.  So, comparatively speaking, women are incredibly infertile. 

Women ripen and release only one egg a month.  That egg lives in a woman’s body for only 24 hours.  It can be fertilized for only 12 of those 24 hours.  So there is only a 12-hour window every month when a woman can get pregnant.  It’s more complicated than that, of course.  At the beginning of a month a woman has a few days of bleeding.   That’s because she didn’t conceive the month before.  During the last cycle she built up an endometrium which was prepared to receive a new little fertilized ovum, a new little human being.  If there’s no little human being, she sheds the endometrium.  Then a woman has what are called dry days that can last for several days.  There is no bleeding and there is no fertile mucus.  Her body is resting from having bled for a couple days.  She’s got to restore herself.  At the same time her body is preparing for the next cycle of ovulation.  She is starting to produce hormones that are going to cause her ovaries to ripen and release an egg and send it down the fallopian tube.  As those hormones are preparing that egg for ripening and releasing, the woman is starting to produce a certain kind of fertile mucus that she can recognize in her system.  It is present throughout the whole fertile phase.  It disappears about two or three days after she’s ovulated. 

If that fertile mucus appears on a Monday, but a woman doesn’t ovulate until Friday, she can get pregnant from any act of sexual intercourse she had between Monday and Friday because the fertile mucus helps preserve the sperm and carries it to meet the egg.  If she has sexual intercourse on Monday, but not Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday and ovulates on Friday, she could get pregnant from the act of sexual intercourse that she had on Monday although it is only about a three percent chance.  On the day that she ovulates she has about a 43-47 percent chance of getting pregnant.  Twenty-four hours later the egg dies if it is not fertilized.  The woman cannot get pregnant for the rest of the month.  It’s absolutely impossible.  It’s only during the fertile part of the month that a woman can get pregnant.  She cannot possibly get pregnant during the first third of the month since there is no egg available.  She cannot possibly get pregnant for the final third of the month because there’s no egg available.  The egg has come and the egg has gone.  At about the same time the fertile mucus dries up.  So a woman knows that she has ovulated and she’s not going to ovulate again.  Her temperature also goes up a bit and stays up for the rest of the month.  So when a woman sees her temperature rise for a couple days in a row, she knows that she has ovulated, the egg has come and the egg has gone and she cannot get pregnant for the rest of the month.  There’s also a change in her cervix that alerts her that she has entered the fertile days and exited the fertile days.

Ninety three percent of women can learn how to read their bodily signs with one month of observation.  Ninety-three percent of women figure out right away when the fertile mucus is present.  The other seven percent, however, have some trouble reading their signs of fertility.  Some of these women have a problem because they are infertile.  If a woman is infertile the signs of fertility are not going to show up.  She is not going to have the mucus because she is not producing the hormones to help her ovulate.  A very good way for a woman to determine whether she’s fertile or infertile is to use natural family planning.  There may be other reasons for unreliable signs besides infertility. A woman, for instance, might be taking medication that dries up the mucus.  She might have allergies that cause her to produce mucus during the infertile days.  But almost every woman within 3 to 4 months of observing bodily signs can determine when she’s fertile and when she’s infertile.

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: Impediment to Total Self-Giving

John Paul II maintained that contraception is an impediment to total self-giving.  He maintained that it is a contradiction to say “I love you” and then to have contraceptive sex.  He said the act of sexual intercourse is meant to be an act of complete self-giving; it means, “I give myself to you in a way in which I give myself to no other.”  How many in our culture can say that?  It also means “I find you immensely attractive.  I want to give you great pleasure and I want to receive pleasure.” And it means “I’m open to having children with you.”  Contraceptive sex means, “I want to have great physical pleasure with you.”  It’s a minimal statement. 

Non-contraceptive sex, on the other hand, is a maximal statement.  Males seem to understand this even better than females.  Contraceptive sex is, as they say, supposedly safe sex.  Not just safe from pregnancy but safe from commitment since pregnancy means commitment.  If there is no openness to a pregnancy, there is no commitment.  In fact, most men find the prospect of non-contraceptive sex scary.  And why is it scary?  Because it means a lifetime commitment.  If you have a baby with someone else, you have a lifetime commitment with that person.  And a man who is willing to engage in an act of non-contraceptive sex with a woman, who has any idea of what he’s doing, any sense of responsibility, is saying to this woman I am willing to make a lifetime commitment to you.  That’s what it’s all about.  If we have a baby and we’re going to be with each other forever, that’s fine with me.  In fact, that’s what I want.  And that’s what a non-contraceptive act of sexual intercourse means.  A contraceptive act of sexual intercourse you can have with just about anybody.  It has nothing written into it of lifetime commitment.

 Slide: Babies are bonding   

Babies are bonding.  It takes 23 male chromosomes and 23 female chromosomes to have a baby.  Two really do become one in a very physical and profound incarnational way.  Not only one physically, but much more than that, since they have brought into existence a new human being who has an immortal soul.  You have an immortal connection with someone with whom you’ve had a baby. 

 Slide: God creates every human soul

Conception is an astonishing thing for it involves a creative act by God.  A sperm does not have an immortal soul.  And an egg does not have an immortal soul.  But human beings do.  So where did we get that immortal soul?  We didn’t get it from the sperm.  We didn’t get it from the egg.  Only God can create a human soul.  And when God creates a new human soul He does what He did at the beginning of the universe.  He brings into existence something that did not exist before.  He makes something out of nothing. 

There is no storeroom of preexisting souls.  It is very important to realize that God created your soul and the soul of every other human being individually.  He willed you into existence.  And He wants you to exist for eternity.  He entrusts babies to spouses.  He is saying:  “This soul belongs to me. I want this immortal soul to be part of the loving community that I am setting up for an eternity.  And I’m giving this baby to you to do the best that you can to raise up to be a citizen of the heavenly kingdom. Certainly this person has free will and I don’t expect you to make any guarantees.  But I want you to do the best that you can to return this baby to me.” 

When spouses are engaging in an act of sexual intercourse during the fertile time of the month, they are sending an invitation to God to create a new human soul.  When sperm meets egg, He answers that invitation.  He answers that invitation if it’s made through rape or if it’s made through in vitro fertilization.  He honors the rules that He has set up.  He doesn’t want babies conceived through rape.  He doesn’t want them conceived through in vitro fertilization.  But when sperm meets egg, he says, “I’ve set up these laws; I’m going to respect them.  But what I want is human beings to be responsible.  They should be sending me an invitation only when they are prepared to accept the gift of a child.”

 Slide: Contraception thwarts God’s life-giving power

Contraception puts up a barrier not just between the sperm and the egg, but between the sperm and the egg and God.  Contraceptive sex says we want to have sex on our terms.  We’re not going to allow God to engage in His creative act.

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: The Magic of Sexual Attraction

There is some really good news for the ladies.   Here we have an article that reports:

They say female chemical messengers, known as pheromones, may help dupe men into thinking plain women are more attractive and beautiful women are less attractive than they actually are.  Pheromones, the colorless, odorless chemical signals given off by the body, are thought to affect behavior in both animals and humans at a subconscious level. 

This study involved showing men pictures of super models and having them rate the women for their attractiveness.  Of course, they found them to be very attractive.  Then they took something soaked in female fertile hormones and put that in the same room with the men.  We exchange hormones through the sense of smell, although they have no discernable odor.  Next the men viewed pictures of average women and under the influence of the fertile hormones, found the average women more attractive than the super models.  Women don’t seem to realize that they are naturally attractive to males and that using contraception works against, not for, that attractiveness.

            Let us recall that whereas contracepting couples divorce at the rate of about 50%, couples using natural family planning almost never divorce.  It seems men are living in households with women who are going through fertile cycles are less likely to stray.  In fact, the men I know to be in marriages that use natural family planning are what I want to call very married.  They do not look around.  They are not interested in anyone else.  They are very satisfied in their marriage.

After one of my talks, a woman came up to me and said that when she converted to Catholicism she stopped contracepting and started using NFP.  She mentioned that many of her friends who were still contracepting complained that their husbands were having a problem with masturbation and pornography.  She said none of her friends who use natural family planning complained of that problem.  I think there is a reason.  Again, I think the men living with women having fertile cycles are having satisfying natural sex.  Men having sex with women who are contracepting seem to be turbulent and confused.

Slide: Pollution changes sex of fish

We have so much estrogen in our water supply it is unbelievable.  Here we read of a  study that reports:  

A third of male fish in British rivers are in the process of changing sex due to pollution in human sewage.  Researcher by the environment [JES1] agency suggests they surveyed 1,500 fish in 50 river sites and found more than a third of males displayed female characteristics.  Hormones in the sewage, including those produced by the female contraceptive pill, are thought to be the main cause.  The agency says the problem could damage fish population by reducing their ability to reproduce. 

There is a massive amount of estrogen in our water supply, both from contraceptives and also from plastics that shed various estrogens.  The modern era has a problem with premature puberty in girls; it may be because they are getting too much estrogen in their system.  There is evidence of some difficulties with male development of boy fetuses whose mothers were using a chemical contraceptive when they conceived.  Three percent of women conceive while they are on the Pill and continue to take the Pill for several weeks, if not months, after they conceive.  Consequently, their male fetuses are getting a lot of extra estrogen into their system.  We don’t have full understanding of the effect of all that estrogen on male fetuses, but it may create some serious difficulties.

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: Elle: Sexual Chemistry

This blurb from Elle, a woman’s fashion magazine, advises that “For years Prozac and the Pill have given women emotional stability and sexual freedom, but new research suggests that these drugs can negatively affect everything from our sex drive to our choice of a mate.”  This article reports that contraceptives and antidepressants both reduce a woman’s sex drive and also change their perception of males. 

Why are women taking these antidepressants?  One of the side effects of the Pill is depression.  So doctors try to combat the effects of the Pill by prescribing antidepressant.  But antidepressants also reduce a woman’s sex drive.  So a woman is taking the contraceptive Pill to help her have sex and supposedly be happier and then taking an antidepressant because she’s taking a pill that causes depression.  And she’s not any happier and she doesn’t even want to have sex. 

What they’re also discovering is that when women go off the Pill, they’re no longer interested in the man that they’re with.  They picked him when they were in the state of pseudo-pregnancy.  There was another video featured on NBC10.com called “The Divorce Pill”.  It reported that women who go off the Pill have a higher sex drive than they had when they were on the Pill, but they’re no longer interested in the man they are with; they chose him under the influence of the pseudo pregnancy hormones in their bodies.  I suspect there is more to the story than that.  I suspect that many of these women are going off the Pill because they want to have a baby.  When a woman decides to have a baby, she starts looking at guys with a whole different set of eyes.  Is this man going to be a good father to my children? 

As a matter of fact, don’t be too impressed if someone comes up to you and says, “I want to have sex with you.”  That’s a saying that’s not particularly flattering.  But if someone comes up to you and says, “I want you to be the parent of my children,” fall over.  That’s a marriage proposal.  And a marriage proposal is one of the most incredible things that anybody’s ever said to another person.  A marriage proposal means, I want someone with your eyes, your laugh, the way you walk and most importantly your values.  I’m going to trust my children to you.  A lot of people have sex with people, but they won’t entrust their children to them. 

How many people in our culture court and get married with the view toward having a child?  How many choose a spouse because that spouse will be a good parent?  I tell my students when dating to consider whether the person they are interested in would be a good parent; that person will also make a good spouse, for good parents are generous and responsible and hardworking and such are the qualities that make for a good spouse. 

One of my former students who had been a good Catholic went off to graduate school, became completely infatuated with a young man and started having sex with him.  She realized that she was very confused and it wasn’t right.  She stopped having sex with him but was still crazy about him.  It was an incredibly passionate relationship, though not sexual.  He was a very lapsed Catholic and in fact, hated the Church.  She remained in the relationship for about five or six years.   At one point I said, either you have to marry him or you have to break up.  She said she was still crazy about him and didn’t think she could imagine finding another man that fascinates her as much as he did.  But she said, “I don’t want him to be the father of my children.  I want to raise my kids Catholic.  He hates the Church.  I can’t have children with him.”  I recommended that she write those words down and look at them and see what conclusions she ought to draw.  She soon broke up with him and a few years later met and married a wonderful, fascinating man and started a family.

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: Monkeys and Contraception

There is an amazing study reported from a book by a man named Lionel Tiger.  Lionel Tiger is an anthropologist from Rutgers University who studies animal behavior to explain human behavior.  He works with a colleague named Robin Fox, who also is an anthropologist who studies animal behavior to explain human behavior.   In the 1960’s, as he saw contraception becoming more and more popular, he speculated that male/female relationships would change radically.  He did a study in the early ‘70’s that involved a tribe of monkeys.  The alpha monkey of this tribe, named Austin, chose three female monkeys to be his exclusive sexual partners.  Austin had a grand time with these three female monkeys.  Then the researchers injected Austin’s three females with the contraceptive Depo-Provera. Austin stopped having sex with them and chose other female monkeys to be his sexual partners.  Then they contracepted all of the females in the tribe.  The males stopped having sex with the females and started behaving in a turbulent and confused manner.

            Male monkeys at least evidently prefer intercourse with fertile females.  Studies also show that males – human males — produce more testosterone when they are around women who have fertile cycles.  In fact, men are more attracted to women when they are fertile and women are more attracted to men when the women are fertile. 

Once when I mentioned this at a talk in Kansas, a man came up to me and said, “In Kansas, we don’t need studies to show that males are more interested in females when they’re fertile.”  He said everyone in Kansas grows up on a farm and we know that when a bull is in a pen with a cow who is not fertile, he is not at all interested.  But if the bull is in a barn a mile away with metal fences in between, the bull will get to the cow when she is fertile. 

Tiger speculates that one of the reasons that women are dressing so immodestly is because they’re not attracting men because of their fertility.  They have to act as though they will do bizarre things in order to attract a male.  They aren’t attracting them simply by their fertility since they are not having fertile cycles. 

Tiger also reports on a study involving tee shirts.  The study included two groups of human females, one contracepting, one not contracepting.  It also involved a group of males who had been rated for their evolutionary desirability.  Men who are evolutionarily desirable are healthy and aggressive and responsible; the other group included those who can’t hold a job, etc.  These men all wore a tee shirt for a day. At the end of the day the women smelled the tee shirts.   Without meeting the males the non contracepting women chose the evolutionarily desirable males as potentially attractive mates; the contracepting women chose the losers. 

Mothers have approached me after my talk and said, “That explains a lot.  It explains why my daughter is stuck with that loser.”  Other women say, “Now I understand why my son, who is such a marvelous young man, seems to be having trouble finding good young women.”                                     

Slide: Contraceptive may kill libido

Here we have an article that says contraception may kill libido.  As mentioned, one of the side effects of contraceptives is that it reduces a woman’s sex drive.  Testosterone is also the source of a female’s sexual drive and women who are using chemical contraceptives do not produce as much testosterone as when they are not contracepting.

Here we read that:

• When women on the Pill were tested, levels of a chemical that wipes out testosterone were found to be seven times higher than in those who had never taken it.
• Most worryingly, even those who were not on the Pill, but had taken it in the past, had levels up to four times higher than those who had never used it.
• Past studies had suggested taking the Pill could dampen a woman’s sexual desire, but that if she came off it, her libido would return within a month.
• Dr Goldstein, former director of the Institute for Sexual Medicine at Boston University, Massachusetts, said that while his research seemed to suggest the effects could be permanent, more investigations were needed.

The website NBC10.com has featured a video that reported this information that the Pill reduces a woman’s sex drive.  So, of course, the solution to this problem was what?  Give women shots of testosterone.  Don’t take them off the Pill: give them shots of testosterone.  What a great idea!

This post is part of a series by Professor Janet E. Smith.  If you have not read the previous post please do so now.  If you need to start at the beginning, then please read “Contraception Preamble“.

Slide: Dismissing Side Effects

When the Pill was first discovered in the later 1950’s it was tested on women in Puerto Rico.  And these are the reports that came back:

Dr. Edris Rice-Wray, a faculty member of the Puerto Rico Medical School and medical director of the Puerto Rico Family Planning Association, was in charge of the trials. After a year of tests, Dr. Rice-Wray reported good news to Pincus. The pill was 100% effective when taken properly. She also informed him that 17% of the women in the study complained of nausea, dizziness, headaches, stomach pain, and vomiting. So serious and sustained were the reactions that Rice-Wray told Pincus that a 10-milligram dose of Enovid caused “too many side reactions to be generally acceptable.”

 Slide: Dismissing Side Effects

Rock and Pincus quickly dismissed Rice-Wray’s conclusions. Their patients in Boston had experienced far fewer negative reactions, and they believed many of the complaints were psychosomatic. The men also felt that problems such as bloating and nausea were minor compared to the contraceptive benefits of the drug. Although three women died while participating in the trials, no investigation was conducted to see if the Pill had caused the young womens’ deaths. Confident in the safety of the Pill, Pincus and Rock took no action to assess the root cause of the side effects.

I first heard about this situation in Puerto Rico years ago when I read a book by a woman named Dr. Ellen Grant.  The title of the book was, “The Bitter Pill.”  She was a physician in London in the 1950’s and she started prescribing the Pill to her patients.  She was dismayed when they returned with migraines, high blood pressure, ovarian cysts, and other maladies.  She was perplexed since she wanted to make her patients’ lives better, not worse.  This led her to review the early studies of the Pill. 

She discovered that there was an attempt to find a contraceptive for males as well as for females.  As you will notice, there is no contraceptive pill for males.  There is a reason for that.  In the study group of males, one male had some slight shrinkage of his testicles.   Thus, all testing on the male contraceptive pill was stopped, since that is intolerable.  Among the female study group three women died.  They simply adjusted the dosage of the hormone.  What does that tell people? It may tell us that women are stupid.  Women do things to their bodies that men won’t do to theirs. 

 Slide: “Sexy” contraceptive patch fatality rate revealed

We read in this report of September, 2004 that 17 women between the ages of 17 and 30 had died since the release of the patch in 2002.  The contraceptive patch is placed on a woman’s abdomen so she can absorb into her body a chemical contraceptive.  The report tells us that, “These documents also revealed that 21 additional life-threatening conditions have been found, including heart attacks, blood clots, and strokes.”

If a 28-year-old woman dies of a stroke, they’re not going to put on the death certificate that she died because she was using a contraceptive.  One doctor doubted these reports so he looked at the medical records of these 17 women between the ages of 17 and 30 that died and found out that he thought only 6 of them could really be attributed to the patch, that we had enough evidence to say that these deaths were caused by the patch.  But he thought that was an acceptable side effect.  The convenience of the patch is so great that it is worth risking death for.  What other drug would get this pass from the pharmaceutical industry, from the FDA?  Tobacco is treated more harshly.

Doctors have told me that we’ve seen nothing yet in respect to lawsuits.  What the pharmaceutical companies will face in respect to contraceptives is going to be huge compared to what we had with the tobacco companies.  The pharmaceutical companies know every bit as much how bad contraceptives are for women as the tobacco companies knew about tobacco.  And some day there may be massive lawsuits.

 Slide: An Insult to Women

I think contraception is an insult to women.  Instead of women saying fertility is a great gift, fertility is healthy, I’m not going to mess with my fertility, I’m not going to put massive doses of anything in my body to mess up my fertility, women basically apologize for their fertility.  “I’m sorry.  When I have sex, I may get pregnant.  Sure, I’ll be glad to mess with my body to correct this humiliating and inconvenient feature of my sex.”