After I parked my car, I got out and took in the sight huge stone building, the largest Catholic Church in Rapid City. I sighed heavily, and turned to retrieve my 8-week-old son from his car seat. Sleeping soundly as newborns do, he melted into my chest when I held him close, adjusted the heavy winter blankets tightly around him, and patted his little diapered butt. Here goes nothing, I thought to myself and made my way to the narrow stairway that descended to a basement entrance.
My nurse midwife had given me the names of Tiffany and Joseph, a couple who taught the Sympto Thermal Method (STM) of natural family planning (NFP). Not to be confused with the highly unreliable rhythm method, STM is a type of NFP that uses charts to track temperatures and self-cervical examinations and mucus patterns. I had never envisioned myself as an NFP enthusiast, but being a dedicated breast-feeding woman, and after having had previous complications with taking progesterone-only chemical birth control (irregular bleeding for 5 months before I finally threw in the proverbial towel) while nursing my first child, I knew I needed to find other options for birth control while I nursed my second.
My midwife had given me a couple of options: one medical professional who taught NFP and Tiffany and her husband, both devout Catholics, who taught STM NFP with all the Catholic jargon peppered in it. For whatever reason, but probably because of my unquenchable thirst for curiosity, I chose the latter. I wanted exposure to another way of thinking—whether or not I agreed with it. And so it was, that once a week for the next several weeks, I learned all about how to track my cycles, when it was safe participate in coitus, and when I was most at risk for pregnancy. And, of course, what the pope said about acceptable coitus practices, which must always include ejaculation inside the vagina, no exceptions. Any ejaculation otherwise, even if in the presence of the man’s wife, is considered the sin of Onan and overtly sinful. God had killed Onan for “spilling his seed,” so it is considered a sin that is particularly grave. Oral coitus is permissible as long as it is during foreplay, but be warned, this coitus practice will often make women feel degraded. How about if the couple is experiencing fertility problems and the man needs his semen analyzed? Poke holes in a condom and then have coitus! I mean, every nit picking thing had really been thought through by someone!
Joking aside though, I’ve gotta hand it to the Catholics. They don’t go halfway on their doctrine. Scientifically speaking, the definition of life is when cells begin to divide, so we know that any birth chemical birth control is an abortificant, either by its primary way of functioning or its secondary. The most widely used combination of estrogen and progesterone pill or patch, once the woman has been taking it for a while, suppresses ovulation as its primary mode of functioning; however, if ovulation does occur its secondary mode of functioning is to flush the blastocyst (after fertilization, the grouping of developing cells) from the uterus, and thus, preventing implantation. No one knows how often fertilization occurs in this scenario, nor can one predict it. The progesterone-only pill, Depo Provera shot, and most IUDs (hormones one can use while nursing) prevent fertilization by making the uterine lining too thick for implantation as its primary mode for functioning. Who knows? Fertilization could occur every single month and a woman would never know it.
So here’s what I don’t understand: why are most Christians so opposed to the highly controversial Plan B, but not the regular chemical birth control? It works the exact same way. Seriously. Plan B is a higher dose of hormones to speed up the body’s process in not allowing the blastocyst to attach to the uterus after it has taken the 5 day or so journey of traveling down one of the fallopian tubes into the uterus. I had an acquaintance once who was totally disgusted with society about the legalization of the abortificant, Plan B. She had gone on a rant about it, about how her husband, a pharmacist, refuses to dispense it and makes other pharmacists do it instead. About how society is Godless and selfish.
I looked at her for a few moments as she nursed her 4-month-old. “You take progesterone-only birth control so that you can nurse, right?” I asked.
“Yeah…”
“Then what’s the difference?”
“The pill is not an abortificant. My husband knows all about it and he says that it isn’t.” she said with an air of incredulity.
I just stared at her, slack-jawed, not really knowing what else to say. Clearly she didn’t care know the truth. She (or maybe it was her husband, but I won’t point fingers) wanted to have an easy guilt-free sex life, one where cumbersome barrier methods didn’t fizzle the mood or decrease the sensation. I wanted to ask her, “Do you always make it a practice not to educate yourself and read the inserts in your prescription medication?” but didn’t.
One would think the Catholics' objection to birth control would end here, where chemical birth control is labeled as an abortificant, but no, they take it one step further in that any ejaculate not put directly into the vagina is sinful and considered outside of God’s plan; therefore, the only acceptable form of birth control would consist of abstinence for 7 to 10 days out of the month while the woman is in her most fertile time. What a bummer really, because the times where a woman is feeling particularly amorous are the times she can’t be with her husband for fear of getting pregnant. That means, for the rest of the woman’s fertile years, unless she wants to get pregnant, she must avoid sex almost every time she is in the mood. I found this particularly frustrating during my bout with natural family planning, but since I had no allegiance to Catholicism’s teachings, barrier methods were implemented into my sex life for at least a week out of every month during the time I was nursing my second and third children. The problem with NFP is that I was always thinking about pregnancy. I had to take my temp and check for other signs of fertility and chart them every single day. I never got a break. Ever. I couldn’t imagine the life of a devout Catholic woman. I was only 23 when I used NFP the first time. That meant I had at least 25 years of temperatures, and charting mucus patterns and the state of my cervix. The only break I would have would be during pregnancy, which of course cut out almost an entire year of charting. I’ve gotta say, pregnancy looked pretty damn appealing after a while.
I practiced NFP for a year after my second child was born, at which point we decided to have a third. Then I practiced NFP 15 months after my third child was born, until we knew for sure we wanted no more babies, then Jeremy then went under the knife. I’ve got to say, it is absolutely heavenly not having to worry about pregnancy, barrier methods, or taking hormones that, for me, screwed with my cycle. I am absolutely certain that sterilization, whether tubal litigation or vasectomy, is God’s gift to any committed couple whose family is complete, but that’s just me.
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