None of the FDA-approved contraceptive methods are abortifacients because they do not interfere with a pregnancy and are not effective after a fertilized egg has implanted successfully in the uterus Health care providers also may have knowledge deficits that can hamper their ability to offer appropriate contraceptive methods to their patients.
For example, many clinicians are uncertain about the risks and benefits of IUDs and lack knowledge about correct patient selection and contraindications 16 17 Improving health care provider and patient knowledge about contraceptive methods would improve access and allow for safer use. Unfavorable legal rulings and restrictive legislative measures can impede access to contraceptives for minors and adults and interfere with the patient—physician relationship by impeding contraceptive counseling, coverage, and provision.
With the U. Some corporations also may use the legal process to challenge laws in states that ensure equitable contraceptive coverage. Additionally, state lawmakers may be emboldened to further restrict access to contraception. For example, in , Arizona revisited its decade-old law that ensures equitable insurance coverage for birth control and authorized a much broader class of employers to exclude this coverage from employee health insurance plans.
In , bills designed to weaken existing contraceptive equity laws or to allow employers—secular and religious—to deny contraceptive coverage to their workers were introduced in more than a dozen states. Although the Title X family planning program and Medicaid require that minors receive confidential health services, state and federal legislation requiring parental notification, parental consent, or both for minors who receive contraceptive care has been increasingly proposed Even though policies should encourage and facilitate communication between a minor and her parent or guardian when appropriate, legal barriers and deference to parental involvement should not stand in the way of needed contraceptive care for adolescents who request confidential services.
More than one half of the 37 million U. One in four women in the United States who obtain contraceptive services seek these services at publicly funded family planning clinics Expanding access to publicly funded family planning services produces cost savings by reducing unintended pregnancy.
As the ACA goes into effect, obstetrician—gynecologists can be strong advocates for continued expansion of affordable contraceptive access, which has been shown to be cost neutral at worst and cost saving at best 22 High out-of-pocket costs, deductibles, and copayments for contraception also limit contraceptive access even for those with private health insurance.
Most private health plans cover prescription contraception, but cost sharing and formularies vary Under the ACA, all FDA-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient contraceptive education and counseling are covered for women without cost sharing by all new and revised health plans and issuers as of the first full plan year beginning on or after August 1, This requirement also applies to those enrolled in Medicaid expansion programs.
However, many employers are now exempt from these requirements because of regulatory and court decisions. Women covered through exempted employers, as well as women such as unauthorized immigrants who remain uninsured in spite of the ACA, will not benefit from coverage introduced by the ACA.
For these women, cost barriers will persist and the most effective methods, such as IUDs and the contraceptive implant, likely will remain out of reach. Other insurance barriers include limits on the number of contraceptive products dispensed. In the absence of contraindications, patient choice and efficacy should be the principal factors in choosing one method of contraception over another.
Another strategy for improving access to contraception is to allow over-the-counter access to oral contraceptive pills However, over-the-counter provision may improve access only if over-the-counter products also are covered by insurance or other cost supports in order to make them financially accessible to low-income women.
Efforts to frame access as an issue of conscience or religious belief rather than as essential health care have grave consequences for women and can create major obstacles to obtaining insurance coverage, receiving prescriptions from health care providers, obtaining medications from pharmacists, and receiving care at hospitals.
Ten of the 25 largest health systems in the country are Catholic-sponsored facilities Mergers between religious predominantly Catholic health care facilities and other hospitals are common and often result in decreased access to reproductive health services, including contraception Advocacy by clinicians and community leaders has been effective in preserving access in some communities 32 Pharmacist refusals to fill contraceptive prescriptions or provide emergency contraception, as well as pharmacies that refuse to stock contraceptives, are considerable barriers.
Although some women have access to an alternative pharmacy, women in areas where pharmacies and pharmacists are limited, such as rural areas, may find insurmountable obstacles to obtaining prescribed contraception. The American Pharmacists Association supports the establishment of systems to ensure patient access to contraception when individual pharmacists refuse provision The College supports unhindered access to contraception for all women and opposes health care provider and institutional refusals that create obstacles to contraceptive access.
Common medical practices prevent easy initiation of contraception. There is no medical or safety benefit to requiring routine pelvic examination or cervical cytology before initiating hormonal contraception.
The prospect of such an examination may deter a woman, especially an adolescent, from having a clinical visit that could facilitate her use of a more effective contraceptive method than those available over the counter Another common practice is requiring one medical appointment to discuss initiation of a LARC method and a second for placement of the device or requiring two visits to perform and obtain results from sexually transmitted infection testing.
Clinicians are encouraged to initiate and place LARC in a single visit as long as pregnancy may be reasonably excluded. Sexually transmitted infection testing can occur on the same day as LARC placement, and women do not require cervical preparation for insertion 37 Insurer payment policies should support same-day provision by providing appropriate payment and reimbursement for multiple services performed during a single visit.
Similarly, health care providers should encourage patients initiating combined hormonal contraceptives to start on the day of the medical visit Appropriate compensation for contraceptive services enables health care providers to provide the full range of contraceptive options, which improves quality of care and optimizes health outcomes.
Public and private payers can contribute to efforts to improve contraceptive access by working with health care providers to ensure appropriate payment for clinician services and to provide reimbursement for contraceptive devices at acquisition cost levels.
Twenty-seven percent of reproductive-aged women choose to undergo permanent sterilization once they have completed childbearing Institutional and payment barriers often prevent women from receiving this desired procedure. Many sterilization procedures are planned immediately postpartum, which is an advantageous time because the woman is not pregnant, is within a medical facility, and often has insurance coverage.
However, many women do not obtain their planned postpartum sterilization because of limited operating room availability, lack of motivation or coordination on the part of the health care team obstetricians, nurses, and anesthesiologists , perceived increased risk because of the postpartum state, or misplaced or incomplete sterilization consent forms. Federal regulations require a specific sterilization consent form to be signed 30 days before sterilization for women enrolled in Medicaid or covered by other government insurance This requirement eliminates immediate postpartum sterilization as an option if the paperwork is not completed in advance and available at the time of delivery.
This regulation, created to protect women from coerced sterilization, also can pose a barrier to a desired sterilization. Women with commercial or private insurance who desire sterilization are not mandated to follow the same consent rules. Revision of the federal consent mandate in order to create fair and equitable access to sterilization services for women enrolled in Medicaid or covered by other government insurance would improve access. These revisions can be balanced by educating patients and obtaining informed consent to address concerns of coercion Highly effective LARC methods are underutilized, and promoting affordable access to LARC methods for current low-use populations, including adolescents and nulliparous women, may help reduce unintended pregnancy In addition to the high up-front costs associated with these methods, another common barrier is inadequate reimbursement for LARC devices in certain settings.
Providing effective contraception postpartum and postabortion can be ideal because the patient is often highly motivated to avoid pregnancy, is within the health care system, and is not pregnant. Appropriate reimbursement for LARC methods immediately postpartum or postabortion can be difficult to obtain. Rates of adverse reproductive health outcomes are higher among low-income and minority women. Unintended pregnancy rates are highest among those least able to afford contraception and have increased substantially over the past decade 5.
The unintended pregnancy rate for poor women is more than five times the rate for women in the highest income bracket 5. Low-income minority women have higher rates of nonuse of contraceptives and are more likely to use less effective reversible methods such as condoms Additionally, low-income women face health system barriers to contraceptive access because they are more likely to be uninsured, a major risk factor for nonuse of prescription contraceptives Publicly funded programs that support family planning services, including Title X and Medicaid, are increasingly underfunded and cannot bridge the gap in access for vulnerable women.
To address these barriers, the ACA has encouraged states to expand Medicaid eligibility for family planning services to greater numbers of low-income women. Also, in states that choose to expand Medicaid under the ACA, fewer poor women will lose Medicaid eligibility postpartum. All rights reserved. Sperm, this little sperm, it does not have an immortal soul. The little sperm does not have an immortal soul. It has a short and sometimes very happy life, but it does not have an immortal soul.
And the ovum, you see, it does not have an immortal soul. It can have a short and happy life, but it doesn't have an immortal soul. And when the two come together, where does that immortal soul come from? The sperm doesn't carry it.
The egg doesn't carry it. Where does it come from? It comes from a new act of creation by God. In each act of conception, there needs to be a new act of creation by God.
And now, He's made a new soul from nothing. It didn't exist. There's not a whole group of souls out there that are sort of waiting around for a landing place. God actually performs a new act of creation. So, when male and female participate in the sexual act, they have opened up this arena which God has designed for bringing forth new human life. And when they contracept, they are slamming that door in God's face. But, this is what the act itself means. It's much like drinking a little bit of poison in your orange juice.
You might not know it's there, but it will have it's effect on you. You're not intentionally doing that, but that's what the act itself means. So, in the first place, the Church objects to contraception because it refuses to let God perform His creative act in the arena in which He chose to do it. You know, God could have created new human life in different ways. In fact, He has before. I'm afraid I'm going to do a little male bashing here, but you're all used to it, so you can take it.
You know, God did create new human life before in different ways. He made the first man, the first male, out of mud. And He made the first female out of the rib of a rational creature. Now, this explains a lot when you think about it. We do not understand what a great gift it is to participate in this act with God. God has chosen spouses as His vehicle for bringing forth new human life and new human life is precisely what He wants in this universe. As a matter of fact, every one of us should be putting forward most of our efforts, all of our efforts, to getting ourselves to heaven and helping others.
That's our job. And, spouses play a major role in this by bringing forth that new human life that all of us are meant to be forming. It's an amazing task that God has given us.
It's not something to be dallied with. It's not something that should be happening as an accident. Having sex, having babies, as an accident is not in God's plan.
Having babies is meant to be within the loving act of spouses because God wants the parents to love the children in the same way in which He loves all of us, which means in a committed and unconditional way. God loves us in a committed and unconditional way and He wants parents that are committed to each other for a lifetime relationship who are going to love these children in an unconditional way.
And our society can't begin to see that. Babies are just options, burdens, environmental hazards, something to be taken down to the abortion clinic and terminated. Now, along with our disregard for the value of human life, there is an enormous disregard for fertility. We don't have any high estimation of fertility. Contraceptives are manifestly related to a hostility to fertility.
Think about the word contraception. When do you take a pill? You take a pill when you're sick. But pregnancy is not a disease and fertility is not a disease. Fertility is a healthy condition in an adult person. It's those who are infertile who need assistance in becoming fertile. They are the ones who need the medication.
Fertility is a perfectly healthy condition. I would like to challenge doctors in this way, and anyone else who wants to straighten me out afterwards, you're welcome to have a shot at it.
So, would you please give me some steroids. Join the wrestling team. Lift weights. Do push-ups. I'm not going to give you steroids. They're bad for you. They could ruin you. I'm not giving you steroids. Why has our culture told us that this makes sense?
Why has our culture told us that this is a sensible thing for a doctor to do? There's a wonderful book out by Dr. Ellen Grant called The Bitter Pill. She was very much in on distributing contraceptives in the 60's in London, but she saw woman after woman coming in with different pathologies that she found were pill-related high blood pressure, blood clots, cysts in the breast, all sorts of things.
And in the first study group of males, they found that there was some slight shrinkage of the testicles of one male, so they stopped all testing of the male contraceptive pill. You might notice that there is no such thing in the first study group of females.
Three females died and they just readjusted the dosage. Now, I don't know what that tells you, but it tells me that there's something sinister going on here. Women are still dying from the pill. If you look at the insert in any set of pills, you can get this from a pharmacist if you can't find it elsewhere, it says such things as the pill will cause blood clots, high blood pressure, heart disease, greater increase of some kinds of cancer, infertility.
Now, these are very small percentages where this happens, but there are some sixteen million women in the United States on the pill. Sixteen million. And even a very small percentage is still a very large number of women.
Not to mention the day by day side effects. These always fascinate me. But, what are they? Most women complain of: increased irritability increased propensity to depression weight gain a reduced libido Now, I don't know about the rest of you women, but I've been looking for a pill that will make me more irritable, more depressed, help me to gain weight, and reduce my libido so I can have sex.
And I'm sure all the men would like the woman he's dealing with to be more irritable, more depressed, gain weight more easily, and have a reduced libido, don't you? Now, why does the pill do this to a woman? Why does it do this to a woman? Well, the fact is that the pill makes a woman's body think it's pregnant. It gives it hormones that are there the first couple months of pregnancy. And women in the first couple months of pregnancy get irritable, depressed, gain weight, and have a reduced libido.
And women are in this condition when they're on the pill, for week after week, month after month, year after year. It's an astonishing thing. Now, I haven't really told you the worst reality about the pill which really is that it's an abortifacient. I've been talking about it as though it were a contraceptive, but it also works as an abortifacient.
At least it says so in the insert that's in with the pill. It says that it works in three different ways: One is it stops ovulation, and again, that's clear enough. If it makes your body think it's pregnant, the body will not ovulate because when you're pregnant, you can't get pregnant.
When you're pregnant you don't ovulate because you have a new baby growing inside of you and there's no reason to ovulate. Or if that doesn't work, there may be a breakthrough ovulation, and no woman knows when that's happening in her body.
Women have the most complex hormonal system, as you know. If you've ever looked at the chart of a female hormonal system, there's three major ones as far as their reproductive system is concerned.
And they go up and down like peaks and valleys and they crisscross. I'm dealing with a whole new chemical system every day. How do I know? Let me see how I feel after my coffee.
You know the male hormonal system, it's just wonderful. You know how much fluctuation there is in that? There's two of them. Straight line, all month long. This guy seems steady day by day, same guy yesterday, today and tomorrow, and you don't know who you are yesterday, today and tomorrow.
There are explanations for that. They're called hormones. A woman doesn't know month by month, how her hormones are acting, whether she's not ovulating when she's on the pill or if there's breakthrough ovulation. There's a certain mucus that helps the sperm get to the egg and a certain mucus that prohibits the sperm from getting to the egg. The pill sometimes changes the mucus. Or, it will prevent the nidation of the fertilized ovum.
That means, the fertilized ovum, new little human being, working down the fallopian tube, try to implant itself in its mother's uterine wall but fails to nest. The pill prohibits that and then the uterus sloughs off the new fertilized ovum. A woman doesn't know how the pill is working in her system.
And think of the other forms of contraception, true contraceptives, the barrier methods. It's a wonderful word. I want to make love to you, but I've got to get my barrier in place. Sounds a bit like making war not making love. I have to go get my spermicide. Spermicide means kill the sperm. I want to make love to you, but I'm going to kill any sperm that come my way. There's something hostile in that act, but I claim that contraception is fundamentally hostile especially to a female's fertility.
Because, you know, it's the males who can have sex and not get pregnant. So, what the pill does and contraceptives do is make a female like a creature who can have sex and not get pregnant. But, that's not what we are. And it's not a great burden and a great defect to be a person who can have sex and get pregnant. That happens to be a great gift. So, for now I've given you two reasons why the Church teaches that contraception is wrong. One is that it locks God out of His procreative act.
The other is that it treats a natural gift of life and fertility as if these were not gifts, as if they were burdens and defects. The third reason is John Paul II's observation that contraception violates not only the procreative meaning of the sexual act, but also the unitive meaning of the sexual act. It prevents not only babies, but it also prevents bonding. I'll give you another Adam and Eve joke just to lighten you up a bit here. Adam and God are in the garden.
You know, she's so beautiful that I think about her all the time, I get distracted, I can't get my work done. You didn't have to make her so beautiful. Why did You make her so beautiful? Thank you, God. That's very thoughtful. What's your second complaint? One day I'm the greatest guy in the universe, the next I'm the worst guy in the universe. That one cuts both ways. But isn't that the point, that God made male and female to love each other, to have babies, and to bond?
Well, let's think about how violating the procreative meaning of the sexual act is also violating the bonding meaning of the sexual act. Pope John Paul II has very profound and beautiful things to say about the meaning of sexual intercourse and I can only give you the briefest of descriptions of it here.
He says that the sexual act was meant to be an act of total self-giving. You want to give everything you've got to someone you love. And when you're withholding your fertility, you're withholding something that belongs in the sexual act, something that actually belongs there. To withhold it means that you're not giving of yourself completely.
Would you mind putting a paper bag over your head? You know, I want to make love to you, but I can't stand looking at that hair. It's driving me crazy. First of all, we'd be bringing forth a new immortal soul and we have an immortal link through this immortal soul that wouldn't exist if we hadn't engaged in this act.
It also means, I like you eyes and your smile and the way you walk and I want to bring another one of you into this world. And I like the way you think and I want my children to think like you. And I'm willing to be there for midnight feedings and breakfast and PTA's and weddings and the long haul. I want to have a baby with you. You are expressing the desire for an incredible bond with a person when all of your acts of sexual intercourse leave open the ordination to procreation.
Whether it's literal or symbolic, at least it's there and preserved in some sense. I'm now moving to my last point. You've been patient but I still have to say some more. And this is it, you all want to wait for this part.
You're not ready to move yet. They're trying to have sex without trying to have babies or without wanting to have babies. They're doing the same thing.
And that's a very common confusion and a very common complaint, and I'm going to try and help you think about it. I'd have to change everything. You just told me there's no difference and now you tell me it'd be completely different.
If there's an enormous lifestyle difference, then that may be a hint that there's some kind of a moral difference as well. Not only your goal must be good, but also the way you get there must be good. A couple who is contracepting. Another couple using Natural Family Planning. Consider two men, or individuals, who both want to support their family.
One robs a bank and one gets a job. I've tried to indicate why I think contraception is wrong. It says no to God in His creative act. It says fertility is a bad condition as opposed to a wonderful condition. It puts a wedge between the giving between a husband and wife. And it has dreadful consequences for society.
I want to claim that Natural Family Planning is not open to those same kinds of objections. It does not do those same things. Most couples are frightened about using Natural Family Planning, and frightened is the right word. They are frightened of using Natural Family Planning and largely for two reasons.
One is they think it doesn't work. But they are wrong. In an article in the British Medical Journal, September 18th, , a doctor reviews the evidence on Natural Family Planning and says it's more effective than the most effective contraceptive. More effective! He cites studies from, of all places, Calcutta. And you know who it is who is teaching Natural Family Planning in Calcutta? A diminutive Catholic nun. The author has found out that most of those whom she teaches are Muslims and Hindus.
Natural family planning has what is called, a virtual zero pregnancy rate,. Still, such information doesn't seem to convince people. I will give a review course on them in a minute. The second reason that couples are afraid is the abstinence that is required. They think the abstinence will just be too hard. It's mostly the women who are afraid of it and they're afraid of it because of the males. He'll be removed and distant and won't be affectionate and will stay away from me during that time.
And, how will we make up our fights? And, how will we talk? And I'm nervous about what's going to happen. It's not right. That's not what I got married for. Those who have used contraception before marriage and used contraception within marriage are very frightened of the abstinence because sex has become key to their relationship. They think that when you take the sex out of a relationship, where's the love going to be? Where's the intimacy going to be? Couples who've abstained before marriage, have little or no problem with Natural Family Planning.
Little or no problem. In fact, they think that abstinence is a way of expressing love. It's not this huge deprivation. The reason that they abstained before marriage was not because they weren't attracted to each other, not because the hormones weren't raging, but because they loved each other.
I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to have a stronger commitment than I've made here. I don't want to put us in danger of having a baby when we haven't really prepared for that baby.
Marriage is preparation for those bonds and marriage is preparation for that baby. And I love you and I can wait. That's how much I love you.
We can abstain. We did it before. We know how to show our affection at this time. We know how to be loving to each other at this time because we've done it before. Women who use Natural Family Planning have an amazing sense of self-respect and well-being. They think that their fertility is revered by their husbands and they think that they've got themselves particularly good husbands. He's a wonderful man. He's got high moral standards. He doesn't treat me like a sex object. I can trust him.
He likes me even when we're not having sex together. He's a great guy. I got myself a good one. They don't want to damage her body. The don't want her to take all these pills and use these devices. I love her. I wouldn't put her through those risks. And this willingness to have a baby for me, that's a wonderful thing. What a woman puts herself through! And I am going to respect that.
And NFP doesn't say no to God. I made the fertile time for bringing forth new human life. If you engage in the sexual act, I want My option of making new human life. But I gave you a half of a month, three quarters of a month, where you're infertile and if you want to pursue the bonding power of the sexual act without babies, do it then.
I'm asleep. I'm out of town. I don't expect to be invited at that time. I'm not around. You can't even make Me come. I won't come. I can't. I made your body in a certain way.
NFP couples respect the fertile period as if they're on sacred ground. You don't walk there unless you're prepared for the consequences. People say Natural Family Planning is like dieting. We have this phenomenon now of bulimia. People eat and they throw up. That's a bit like contraception. You want the pleasure but you don't want the consequences. You engage in the act and you violate the act. Whereas Natural Family Planning is a lot like dieting but a lot better.
When you diet, you can't eat the chocolate cake; you have carrots and celery. Sex during the infertile time apparently is a lot better than carrots and celery. The options are better. There's a pinch in it. It's difficult, but it's not impossible and it does great things for marriage. Couples will tell you, they've always told me this, you read this in all the NFP literature: Those who use Natural Family Planning communicate better with each other. I've always wondered what that meant. Does it mean that people are either having sex or talking, but not both and because they're not having sex during the fertile time does that mean they're talking more?
But there's something to that. I read somewhere that couples, I'm not married and, of course, I'm envious in many respects of marriage, especially for companionship, but you read something like people say there's twenty-seven minutes a week on the average that couples talk to each other.
But, anyway, these Natural Family Planning couples must use that twenty-seven minutes well. I've figured this out, what they're talking about. It goes something like this.
They have this conversation once a month maybe twelve times a year. And it happens on that weekend when the mother-in-law takes the children or you have a nice little business trip and you're looking forward to this nice weekend together. A little quiet lunch, maybe some shopping, a movie, a romantic dinner, and a nice evening of relaxed lovemaking with no children, no stress, just a nice night.
The weekend is not going to be everything they thought it would be. Why are we abstaining? You've got too many little ones or you've got a job now and you're really fatigued and you really can't imagine having another child.
Are you still tired? As a matter of fact, I'm not too tired right now. The younger ones are a little bit older and you know I think I may be able to handle another baby. Let's take a risk. Let's really enjoy this day in the way we planned. You never help. You said you'd give the kids a bath; you don't give them a bath. You said you'd let me have Saturday afternoons free; I've never had a Saturday afternoon free. Of course I'm still tired. You can't imagine supporting the family we already have, let alone any more.
Are you still financially burdened? We refinanced the house and I was kind-of panicking. I'm getting a promotion. Things are OK. Your friend, Jane, gets a fence around the house, you have to have a fence around the house. Your friend, Jane, gets a new kitchen, you need a new kitchen. Your friend, Jane, gets new dishes, you need new dishes. And how their life is going together and are they sharing the burdens or not.
Couples using contraception tell me they can go for a very long time without having that conversation.
And they go apart. They go to their jobs and come back for dinner and go to their jobs and come back for dinner. And that's about all there is. So I'm saying Natural Family Planning does not have bad social consequences. It's very difficult to use outside of marriage. It does not say no to God in His procreative act.
It treasures a woman's fertility and it enhances, not alienates, the relationship between spouses. It is not subject to the same objections as contraception. Now, I'll close with one final story and then give you a chance to ask some questions.
I give talks on premarital sex to my students with some frequency, and I've discovered that they are absolutely terrified at the notion of divorce. They hate divorce because they've either been children of divorced households and have experienced the pain and trauma themselves or they've seen their friends go through it.
And they don't want it. When they get married, they want to be married for good and they're not all convinced it can happen, because they've seen so much divorce around them. I have a brother-in-law who is the son of a divorced household. When he was very young, his father left the family. My parents have been married now for coming up on fifty years. And he follows my father around. My father is this huge curiosity to my brother-in-law.
You know, like where did this man come from who could be married to the same woman for fifty years? And how did he do it? So, I make my students this offer, and either someday I'm going to be a very poor woman or I'm going to be hailed as a prophet in my own time. That's not necessary, but it helps. But these are the four things you need to do if you want to get married and never get divorced.
First of all, you can't have sex before marriage. If you've started, stop. And stop for at least a year and a half to two years before you get married and start thinking about sex and what it's all about and why it's a good idea not to have sex before you get married.
Secondly, when you get married, get married in a church and go to church every Sunday and pray while you're there. Get married in a church. Go to church. Thirdly, use Natural Family Planning and do not contracept within marriage. I'm only through about the second step in the twelve step program in our non-stop talkers support group. What I would like to say, again, our culture thinks that contraception is one of the greatest things going.
It's very hard to escape that perspective in the culture in which we live. But when one sees the deeper reality that the Church sees, you can begin to see why the Church has an explanation for the chaos that has resulted because of a contraceptive society and the rest of the world can't even see the chaos, let alone know what the causal connections are.
I thank you very much and I'd like to take any questions you might have. Thank you for being so patient. How is your message received by Catholic clergy? The Catholic clergy. How am I received by the Catholic clergy? That's rather a sad question. They're my hardest group to talk to.
I've received maybe half a dozen to ten invitations to address Catholic clergy and deacons and this is the mandate of their bishop.
Now, even in these meetings, a lot of the ones who are really opposed to me, don't show up, so I'm already starting out with a fairly sympathetic audience. I could be cynical. I think there are reasons for their lack of support. Reasons why they might not be as culpable as we might judge them to be. Priests who were trained before Humanae Vitae were not trained to defend the Church's teaching or explain it. They were simply taught to assert it and Catholics, for the most part, accepted it.
After , very quickly dissenters got control over most of the seminaries and most priests who taught after were taught that the Church was going to change it's teaching someday and that Catholics in good conscience could dissent from the Church if their conscience told them this was all right. The question of conscience is a whole other question. I mean, how many Catholics have really consulted their conscience on this issue, but let's leave it at that.
And I can feel a real resistance from the priests when I start out, to say the least. In fact, usually, the priests who support the Church's teaching, I can identify them quite quickly. They're marginalized and they actually sit on the margin. I can find them. I often find that about twenty minutes into my talk, I sense this real drop of certain defenses and this could be entirely subjective on my part, but it's what I experience.
I better listen to this. She's really starting to make sense. Maybe I'd better be nicer to those couples who use Natural Family Planning and give them more support. I've found that they are much more likely to be supportive of the Church's teaching on this topic. Partly because they have seen the consequences of a contraceptive culture.
Many of these young men have stood on the picket lines protesting abortion and you don't have to stand on that line for long to make the connection between contraception and abortion and then other things start to unfold from that. And a lot of them are much more inclined to think that this Pope has some wisdom and are ready to line up behind him and he has really made the Church's teaching on contraception a major part of his pontificate. So, I think there's hope in both respects.
Priests have become priests because they want to lay down their lives and serve others. They're good souls. Their permitting contraception is not because they want to lead people down the garden path, but because they are actually doing what they've been taught, for the most part, and I think that it's up to the laity to help them see what contraceptives have done to marriages.
Thank you for your question. Is there an impact of the loss of grace for couples who contracept? That's a very good question. Is there an impact of the loss of grace on marriages. I think that those who contracept, even if they're confident that what they're doing is right, can't feel quite as enthusiastic about their Church as otherwise.
They can't be quite racing to be full-fledged members of this Church. You're not confessing contracepting because you don't think it's wrong.
You won't get the healing graces and the empowering graces from confession that you would get. Couples who use Natural Family Planning will tell you that prayer and the sacraments are at the heart of what they do. They need that help to be faithful to what they believe to raise the children that they have. I think that it's always hard to measure the impact of grace because it's an unseen reality. It's there, but to measure it But I think the loss of grace can be seen as far as what is happening with marriages.
Again, I think that if you're around couples who use Natural Family Planning, you really do sense a quite spectacular closeness that they have and self-respect and mutual admiration that I think is not as clearly there in couples who contracept.
I think most contraceptors are what I would call subjectively innocent. Let me just give this little anecdote. I have a friend who has seven brothers and sisters. They were all raised Catholic and very few of them are practicing Catholics now and all of them are contraceptors except one couple. The couple that is not contracepting but using Natural Family Planning, had four children, all planned, etc.
The other couples, again, have no children, all contracepting, two income households, lots of disposable income, lots of time for romance and fun. And one night the eight of them were having a very open discussion about their sex lives. And all of the women, the contracepting women, were complaining that they felt that they were just being used in the sexual act.
They felt that this was just one more thing that was expected of them and they felt used. And the men were complaining. They were complaining that they had been reduced to begging for sex which they found demeaning and that they were engaging in sex with a woman who just wasn't all that engaged.
She might just as well be watching TV. Is sex not interesting? Is sex not as interesting as TV? Begging for sex? I don't know what this is all about. We're doing just fine. Which couples are having a satisfying sex life? It's amazing, but it's the opposite of what one would expect. And I think there's something there, in Natural Family Planning, that causes this kind of closeness and love between a couple that is really the heart and soul of what makes sex good.
It's not having a designer body and designer clothes and lots of disposable income. That won't buy you a good sex life. It's really trust and love and tenderness and really knowing and communicating with the individual with whom you are having sex. And that's what Natural Family Planning brings about. It would be astonishing for the contracepting couples to think that contraception might be the source of the problem in their sexual lives.
But there is good reason to think that maybe, in fact, that is what is making things flat in their relationship. Do you think there should be sex education classes?
Oh, yes. The abstinence message is not enough. Certainly there is the death dealing AIDS, but also some thirty-five other strains now, of sexually transmitted diseases which are extremely damaging. The huge increase in the amount of infertility is mostly traceable to these sexually transmitted diseases.
Women are having sex with more than one partner, getting these diseases, having scarring in their fallopian tubes, etc.
All these things young people should know. They definitely should know all these things. But teaching about chastity is much more than teaching young people to abstain.
Chastity really is understanding what the sexual powers are for and, in a certain sense, ordering one's life in such a way that those sexual powers will be reserved to the time when it's appropriate.
This is something that Natural Family Planning, I think, really helps with. As you've all noticed, our society is absolutely saturated with sexual stimuli.
Absolutely saturated! It's hard to go about an hour in the morning without having something assault your senses. You drive to work and you see three billboards with scantily clad individuals.
You turn on the TV, you see people engaged in some sexual activity. I went to Dillard's, which is a department store, the other day, to buy a coffee pot. In every single aisle, there was a perfume ad with a naked man and woman in this passionate embrace. I do not want to see pornography and here it is. I'm assaulted by this. God did not hang these things from trees.
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