An Over-Population Rebuttal

Although, I realize this article is long, it is important for understanding the non-existant over-population problem and the Catholic answer to it.

Take a break, and enjoy the article "Planet Un-Parenthood: The Myths of Overpopulation" by Fr. Frank Pavone.

Open to Life: Closing Remarks

For a list of all posts in the series and for links to all documents used, visit: Open to Life Series: Introduction.

To read the series from the beginning, see: What is Openness to Life?

This is a final note for my series.

To be open to life is of the greatest importance, whether Catholic, Protestant, or non-Christian. Life is important and must be valued and protected from the moment of natural conception until the moment of natural death. Within our time on Earth, suffering is almost in inevitable and with that is the need for compassion, mercy, sympathy, and healing - not euthanasia, suicide, abortion, or PGD. Be a light for this world by living out the important call: to be For LIFE.

I am not perfect and I do not claim to be. I hope that throughout this series no one has thought of me as preaching from my soapbox. I have made many mistakes in my life and will continue to make mistakes in the future. All I can do is ask God for his mercy and forgiveness through the confessional and help others to live their lives through Christ by teaching Catholic doctrine.

I hope that this series has helped at least one person come closer to Christ and His Church. If it has, I thank God for working through me with the Holy Spirit.


My next series is equally important and I am eagerly awaiting its debut, but I need a short break so that I can research, read, and write ahead as well as get my house in order for our upcoming move. I have a few posts scheduled so there will still be something to read in the meantime. Please stay with me through this transition!

Open to Life: The Population Myth

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?

This Open to Life series would not be complete without a statement (or two) about the so-called “over-population problem”. Let me begin, by saying that there is no over-population problem. This myth/theory has been and still is purported as fact (just like evolution)!

The world today makes more food, more efficiently than it ever has. Better farming practices and machinery have made this possible. We actually make more food per person today than we used to—and we do it on less land. There is no food shortage. The world is large enough to produce food for all people. This is not to say that people do not starve because of lack of food. They certainly do. I am simply saying that the world can and does make enough food for everyone; it is just that some governments sadly withhold food from their citizens and many people waste large amounts of food (that theoretically could have gone to feed others).

As far as destroying/polluting the environment, if every person lived as a good steward of the earth through buying local and in season meat, eggs, and produce; gardening where possible; and using energy efficiently, population would be a non-issue. The fact that people destroy the environment through their selfish practices is the only reason why “pollution” and “nature” come into play while talking about over-population. (See my endnote and read my Back to Nature series for a more on this.)

If you do not believe me, do your own research—but make sure you get the facts not the myths. For the best information on this, watch Demographic Bomb and Demographic Winter. These movies really put everything into perspective for Robert and me. There are trailers on the websites, but you have to purchase the DVDs to see them. To get some statistics without purchasing a movie, this page talks about the issue.

Endnote: Please realize, I am not saying that if you do not garden and you buy strawberries in February you are being selfish. I am merely saying that the practices I mentioned help us to be good stewards of the earth, which we are called by God to do.


Up Next: Open to Life Closing Remarks

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Eugenics and Abortion

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


Last time I talked about eugenics and IVF. If that did not wake you up to the Truth of the world, I hope that this post will.

Prenatal testing is now commonplace. According to Physicians for Life, “an estimated 70% of all pregnant women in the United States will choose to have prenatal screening tests.” One of the main purposes of this testing is to abort diseased, disordered, or imperfect children. This is not just my opinion: “Recent US studies have indicated that when Down syndrome is diagnosed prenatally, 84% to 91% of those babies will be killed by abortion. This trend is not isolated to the United States. In England, a 2004 study showed that 94% of babies who were diagnosed prenatally with Down syndrome were subsequently aborted” (Physicians for Life). This post from Accepting Abundance also discusses the issue.

In my post about Planned Parenthood’s beginnings, I talked about how Planned Parenthood claims to help the poor … by not helping them. In other words, they are just strictly pro-abortion and we can “only guess” as to their motives (if we really need to). Their statements in this recent Fox News article advance this idea further:

After a law scheduled to go into effect July 1 will require women to wait 72 hours and consult a crisis pregnancy center adviser before getting an abortion, Planned Parenthood argues that it violates First Amendment rights. They (PP) say that HB 1217 aims to misinform pregnant women with the intent of dissuading them from getting an abortion. They further argue, “Under the law, these crisis pregnancy centers must have as their central mission a desire to dissuade a woman from having an abortion, no matter what her particular risks or circumstances.”

Really … What could they possibly be so afraid of from fewer women deciding to have abortions unless they have ulterior motives?

In addition, let us not forget about the abortions in other countries and possibly in the U.S. when the child is not the “correct” sex. Especially with China’s one-child policy and parents wanting males who will take care of them in old age.

The only way we can stop the madness of eugenics by another name is by setting a Christian example, especially by being Open to Life, advocating for these innocent babies, and teaching our children—living as a light to the world.


Up Next: The Population Myth

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Eugenics and IVF

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


After reading my last post, you might think eugenics is ancient history and not even worth discussing. But if you remember the quote from Chesterton, “I know that it [eugenics] means very different things to different people; but that is only because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity,” (emphasis mine) you might think twice.

Today, that I know of, there are two extreme forms of eugenics going on openly in this country and everywhere else around the world. One way, IVF and the term “preimplantation genetic diagnosis”, I will discuss now. The other way, abortion, I will save for my next post.

According to Assisted Reproductive Technology and the Family, “Increasing numbers of clinics are also offering … pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for weeding out embryos with certain genes or of a certain sex, “selective reduction” for destroying developing unborn children in multiple-gestation pregnancies, and even custom-designed embryos for clients seeking children with certain levels of beauty and/or accomplishment.” If this is not the proper definition of eugenics, I do not know what is!

Many things that I have read about IVF openly state that only the “best” embryos are implanted. What this means is that most embryos conceived in a dish are then tested for abnormalities, deformities, deficiencies, and disorders and if anything is found in the genetic tests, those embryos are then destroyed. In other words, babies are made every day in labs, and then if found to be imperfect, they are killed.

This truly is eugenics at its “finest” and I am sure that all proponents of eugenics including Hitler, would be proud of the “advances” we have made in the field of baby making.


Up Next: Eugenics and Abortion

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Eugenics and Birth Control

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


Chesterton said in Eugenics and Other Evils, “I know that it [eugenics] means very different things to different people; but that is only because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity.” (emphasis mine)

In 1883, Sir Francis Galton coined the term “eugenics” meaning “good birth”. His idea was to use selective breeding (based on his cousin Charles Darwin’s theories) for “the betterment of mankind”. Many people throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s advocated for eugenics. One woman in particular was a true advocate for eugenics in the United States. Her name: Margaret Sanger.

Margaret Sanger (who I talked about briefly before) edited and wrote for a magazine titled The Birth Control Review. In the February 1919 issue, she wrote an article called “Birth Control and Racial Betterment” with this as its opening, “Before eugenists and others who are laboring for racial betterment can succeed, they must first clear the way for Birth Control. Like the advocates of Birth Control, the eugenists, for instance, are seeking to assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit” (p. 11, emphasis mine). This woman is the one who encouraged the Anglican Church (the first church) to accept contraception, and this woman is the one who founded Planned Parenthood – the biggest abortion provider in the nation today.

Now some may say, well that was just the founder of Planned Parenthood. They do not believe those things anymore. My reply to this is simple – where are all Planned Parenthood clinics? Certainly not in rich neighborhoods. What class of people does Planned Parenthood “help” around the whole world? The poor and almost exclusively the poor. However, they “aid” the poor by giving them contraceptives and abortions, by taking away their children, not by eliminating their poverty.

We now have a whole class of people that are unwanted: babies. Innocent children are being slaughtered for “women’s rights”, “choice”, and “population control”. In other words, for “the betterment of mankind”. (Sound familiar? Reread above.) We need to realize that preventing the birth of a child is an evil thing. Most people have always known this, but it is made to sound harmless with the words “eugenic”, “birth control”, or “reproductive freedom”.

If we want to turn this around, we must know where we left the right path.Birth control has led to the decline in our society (see this post and this one). Speak out against abortion. Use and advocate for natural family planning. Vote for politicians who will overturn Roe v. Wade, make euthanasia illegal, and keep marriage between a man and woman. Do not assume that others will lead the way. Everyone must do his or her part.


Up Next: Eugenics and IVF

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Prophesies in Papal Encyclicals

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


God has naturally ordered all things for reasons that we may not understand, but when we start to interfere with them, evil consequences are automatic. The Church has always known the dangers of not following her teachings. And in 1968 when many people wanted the Church to “change” her teaching on birth control (something impossible for the Church since it does not change any teaching on faith and morals), Pope Paul VI disappointed the masses with his encyclical Humanae Vitae. In it, he prophesied what would happen with the world if it chose artificial methods over God’s plan. All four of his prophesies came true and as chilling as it might seem, many people predicted these same or similar outcomes, because this is the natural order of tampering with God.

In his encyclical, Pope Paul VI wrote:

“Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. [1]Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and [2]a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. [3]Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

“Finally, [4]careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.” (17, emphasis mine)

Will anyone disagree that we have an exponential increase in marital infidelity, a true lowering of all moral standards, disrespect for women and them seen as objects, and governments using birth control to control its people (think China and India)?

The Bishops also draw attention to this in their 2006 letter Married Love and the Gift of Life.

“Many would likely be surprised at how long all Christian churches agreed on this teaching against contraception. It was only in 1930 that some Protestant denominations began to reject this long-held position. Those opposed to this trend predicted an increase in premarital sex, adultery, acceptance of divorce, and abortion. Later, in 1968, Pope Paul VI warned that the use of contraception would allow one spouse to treat the other more like an object than a person, and that in time governments would be tempted to impose laws limiting family size. Pope John Paul II called attention to the close association between contraception and abortion, noting that “the negative values inherent in the ‘contraceptive mentality’ . . . are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation [to abortion] when an unwanted life is conceived” (Evangelium Vitae, 13, emphasis mine).

“These predictions have come true. Today we see a pandemic of sexually transmitted diseases, an enormous rise in cohabitation, one in three children born outside of marriage, and abortion used by many when contraception fails. A failure to respect married love’s power to help create new life has eroded respect for life and for the sanctity of marriage.”

Up Next: Eugenics and Birth Control

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: What is Wrong with Fornication?

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


I talked about sex before marriage briefly in my last post: Theology of the Body.

Our society talks about and occasionally even teaches “abstinence”. Although abstinence is called for, without the moral and religious meaning behind it—it is just abstaining, but for what? Society teaches it as a form of “birth control”, but this is not the reason that God made sex solely for marriage! Catholics and some Protestants teach chastity. Although chastity is so much more than waiting until marriage, I am restricting my discussion to that aspect alone.

In The Contraceptive Revolution and Its Fruits, John Bruchalski links fornication to birth control and even abortion.

“To me, the teaching that sexual intercourse is reserved for marriage, that partners in marriage must respect one another, and that marriage involves the total giving of oneself to one's spouse in love, in family life, and in sexual intercourse, is a very powerful and positive teaching. It allows us to be open to life, open to love.

“Its antithesis is the idea that has been adopted by our culture: that individuals have a right to sexual relationships outside of marriage, and that, whether single or married, individuals have a right to sexual intercourse free from any concern that a child might result. Taken one step further, this provides a foundation for the mentality that accepts abortion: if a child results from sexual activity, whether inside or outside marriage, the right not to have to ‘deal’ with that comes into play.” (emphasis original)

Fornication and living together before marriage are wrong. But why? God gave us this supreme act of love so that we could express and image His love. One cannot do this with anyone other than their spouse to whom they have committed their lives and hearts. The Bishops teach, “Sexual intercourse is meant to express the total and unrestricted gift of self that takes place in married love. To have sexual intercourse outside the covenant of marriage is gravely immoral because it communicates physically the gift of oneself to another when, at the same time, one is not willing or able to make a total and permanent commitment” (Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan). Katrina Zeno in “Living Together Before Marriage” uses the same teaching and states, “Pope John Paul II once said that the opposite of love is not to hate another, but to “use” another as an object. When we “take” sexual pleasure from another without “giving” ourselves totally—past, present, and future in a bond of permanent love that is open to new life—we are actually using this person."

Christopher West, in “Living Together Before Marriage”, brings up an important issue. He says,

“If you are having sex with your fiancé now, there’s one thing you know about him or her. He or she is willing to have sex with someone he or she is not married to. … It shouldn’t surprise us in the least that those who are sexually active before marriage have much higher rates of infidelity during marriage. These are the logical consequences of failing to understand the inherently marital meaning of sex.” (emphasis original)

Up Next: Prophesies in Papal Encyclicals

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Theology of the Body

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


Most quotes from this post are from Theology of the Body for Beginners. The numbers in parentheses are page numbers. I thoroughly enjoyed the book both times I read it, but I have to admit, this post is written from my notes I took from the book a few years ago. It is currently packed away in boxes. I wish I had the time to get it out and reread it for this post.

I would like to focus on just a few sections. The whole book is greatly important, and Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body is even more important, but I chose only the most relevant parts to include here.

The first is Spousal Love as Prayer: “The internal goal of every marriage is for the spouses to ensure that what they express subjectively in their sexual union confirms the objective truth of God’s plan. … Simply getting married is not enough to make sexual union something holy and beautiful” (99). Many engaged couples would ask, “What is wrong with having sex now if we’re going to be married in a few weeks (months, etc.)?” Christopher West answers this exact question in “Living Together Before Marriage”. There is no difference. “What you are doing now is not marital and—unless you have a change of heart before the wedding—what you’ll be doing then won’t be marital either” (9). The marital union can only be fully realized the way God intended within marriage and with a pure heart.

The second section is an interesting one. It is entitled Respect for Procreation. On page 104, Christopher West tells us that “even Sigmund Freud recognized [that respect for the procreative function of sexual union is the linchpin of all sexual morality]. In Freud’s book Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis he wrote, “Abandonment of the reproductive function is the common feature of all perversions. We actually describe a sexual activity as perverse if it has given up the aim of reproduction and pursues the attainment of pleasure as an aim independent of it.” Even the atheist psychologist understood the importance of openness to life.

I will lump the next two sections together, as they are very similar (“Birth Control” and the Purpose of Contraception). “The Church has always recognized that the only method of ‘birth control’ that respects the language of divine love is ‘self-control’” (111). Chesterton has a similar quote that I shared earlier. To fully understand this, we must realize that the purpose of contraception is not to prevent pregnancy—abstinence was around long before contraception, is 100% effective and 100% safe. “Contraception was invented because of lack of self-control; contraception was invented to serve the indulgence of lust” (113).

The last two sections (Lust and Sex and True Freedom and Sex) are so important. In his book Love and Responsibility, Karol Wojityla (Pope John Paul II) wrote, “If sexual intimacy results from nothing more than lust, it is not love.” This is so true today. Many people do not even know what true love is. I have heard multiple TV show characters that are getting divorced say, “I still love you.” How can you love someone and leave him or her? What does this teach society? I want to finish with a few final quotes from the book:

• “What distinguishes us from the animals? Freedom!”
• “God gave us freedom as the capacity to love. Contraception negates this freedom.”
• “Contraception not only attacks the procreative meaning of sex, ‘it also ceases to be an act of love’ (TOB 123:6). If you cannot say no to sex, what does your ‘yes’ mean?” (emphasis original)
• “Only the person who is free with the freedom for which Christ set us free (see Gal 5:1) is capable of authentic love.”

Up Next: What is Wrong with Fornication?

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: ARTs Related to IVF

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


These procedures are all related to in vitro fertilization. There are more procedures than I have listed below, but these are currently the most common. Since this post is strictly for medical information and so I do not have to keep repeating myself, know that the Catholic Church teaches that ALL of the below procedures are immoral.

Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI)
A procedure commonly used today in IVF clinics is ICSI. This is the direct injection of a sperm into the egg. It is used to boost success rates but by doing so, it “bypasses all the natural safeguards that prevent damaged or defective sperm from reaching the egg in a woman’s body” (In Vitro Fertilization: The Human Cost).

Cryopreservation
Embryos not used are frozen so they can be preserved if the couple (woman) decides they want more children. Some of these embryos remain in a frozen state indefinitely, considered “excess” or “spare”. Some people have even considered “donating” embryos to couples who cannot have children. The large quantity of “spare” embryos has been a temptation for researches and as such, many others are destroyed for research purposes.

Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)

In my mind, the only "thing" who could degrade
human life to this extent is of course the Devil.

PGD is a process used to select the “most viable” or “desired” embryos for implantation. This process is eugenics by another name. I will talk more about this in a later post. In Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology, the Bishops warn, “IVF divides the decision to welcome a new child into two separate decisions: whether to conceive this new human being, and whether to transfer him or her to the mother’s womb. This has tempted fertility doctors and couples to exercise various forms of so-called “quality control” through genetic screening, so that only the embryos who seem most viable or have the most desired traits are given an opportunity to implant in their mother’s womb. The embryos not selected are destroyed.”

Human Cloning
The Bishops’ warning speaks for itself when they state, “Human cloning is the most extreme reduction of human procreation to a manufacturing process. … The goal is to produce—or even mass-produce—new embryonic human beings who are valued not for their own unique identities, but for the particular traits they may share with the donor of the body cell. The cloned human embryo is a living human being who deserves to be treated with full moral respect; yet in the act of being created not for his or her own sake but as a “copy” of someone else, he or she is treated as a thing or even a commodity, not as a person. This is a gross violation of human dignity” (Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology). The process of cloning is truly asexual reproduction as it requires the use of an egg but not sperm. Also, the egg is used without its DNA so it may even be attempted using an animal egg rather than one from a woman.

In addition, cloning is not without medical risks. The same fertility drugs previously talked about here are used to extract eggs for cloning. “The cloning process is so unnatural and wasteful that it magnifies these risks further. Hundreds of eggs may be needed to produce even one live human embryo; animal trials have produced live-born offspring only very rarely, usually with serious health problems; and any attempt to bring a human child to birth from this procedure would pose grave risks to mother and child” (Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology).

In Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology the Bishops affirm,

“Each of these abuses is a natural outgrowth of the original decision to turn the begetting of a child into a manufacturing process. This threatens to turn what should be the unconditional love and acceptance of parents for their sons and daughters into something more tentative and conditional.

“In this situation a new life may be highly valued—as a way of meeting parents’ goals for family size, or of achieving other goals such as scientific knowledge—but this human life is not respected as human persons deserve to be respected.” [Emphasis original]

Up Next: Theology of the Body

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: What is Wrong with IVF? (II)

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


Because of the multiple problems with in vitro fertilization, I divided the topic into three separate posts. This one discusses the health risks for women and also the potential human error and mix-ups involved in the process. I also want to preface this post with my remarks from the last post:

In Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan, the Bishops remind us that when using technology to “create” human beings, the “[c]hildren begin to be seen less as gifts received in a personal communion of mutual self-giving, and increasingly as a lifestyle choice, a commodity to which all consumers are entitled.”

In vitro fertilization (IVF) in particular is a gravely immoral, dehumanizing, and even a medically risky procedure. “This procedure [IVF] is so far from a loving act of the spouses that it can even be used to conceive a child if neither of them is alive, for the body of neither one is involved in the act of generating this life once sperm and egg are obtained and stored” (Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology). The medical problems range from the extremely high death rate of embryos to the increased risk of birth defects to human error resulting in the doctor implanting someone else’s child in the woman’s uterus.

Health Risks to Women
The main risk to women’s health through the process of IVF is the use of “superovulatory” drugs to stimulate the ovaries to produce multiple eggs at one time for the procedure. “These drugs have been associated with an increased risk of some cancers, and may lead to a condition known as ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), whose effects can include reproductive problems, kidney failure and even death” (In Vitro Fertilization: The Human Cost).


Photo from California IVF: Davis Fertility Center

   With multiple pregnancies (a huge risk with IVF), “mothers are more likely to suffer from complications such as high blood pressure, hemorrhages and preeclampsia” (In Vitro Fertilization: The Human Cost). There are also the risks for cesarean deliveries, which are mandatory with multiple pregnancies.

Human Error/“Mix-ups”
There are so many risks related to human error, but some include the wrong sperm being inseminated into the woman, the wrong sperm used to fertilize the egg(s), the wrong embryos being implanted, and embryos (or eggs and sperm) being lost or accidentally discarded.

“[T]he University of California has paid out more than $24 million for 137 separate incidents in which eggs or embryos were either unaccounted for or given to other women without consent.” (“UCI settles a dozen fertility suits,” The Los Angeles Times, September 11, 2009)

“IVF mix-ups are a regular occurrence at fertility clinics across the UK, an expert has said. Dr. Sammy Lee, a scientific consultant at the Portland Hospital in London, said the case of a white woman giving birth to black twins which hit the headlines earlier this month is probably not an isolated incident…. He said: ‘Every day, someone somewhere in the UK is inadvertently messing up… I am aware of the wrong embryos being transferred to the wrong patients at several [National Health Service] units during the past 10 years. I have also confidentially been told about a number of cases where the wrong sperm were used to inseminate eggs.’” (“IVF mix-ups ‘occur regularly’,” BBC News: Health, July 24, 2002.)

“In the case of mixed-up embryos that caused a white Staten Island woman who underwent in vitro fertilization to give birth to two sons of different races, a state inquiry has concluded that the embryologist knew another couple’s embryos had been implanted but failed to tell anyone at the time or to act to correct his error.” (J. Yardley, “Investigators Say Embryologist Knew He Erred in Egg Mix-Up,” The New York Times, April 17, 1999, p. A13.)

“This is a notoriously unregulated area that some of my colleagues have called the Wild West of medicine,” said [Mark] Rothstein, a lawyer and director of the University of Louisville Institute of Bioethics, Health and Law. “I think it [mix-ups] happens and in many cases we don’t know about it.” (J. Christoffersen, “Experts Troubled by Fertility Mix-Up Case,” Associated Press, July 15, 2004.)


Up Next on Monday: ARTs Related to IVF

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: What is Wrong with IVF? (I)

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


In Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan, the Bishops remind us that when using technology to “create” human beings, the “[c]hildren begin to be seen less as gifts received in a personal communion of mutual self-giving, and increasingly as a lifestyle choice, a commodity to which all consumers are entitled.”

In vitro fertilization (IVF) in particular is a gravely immoral, dehumanizing, and even a medically risky procedure. “This procedure [IVF] is so far from a loving act of the spouses that it can even be used to conceive a child if neither of them is alive, for the body of neither one is involved in the act of generating this life once sperm and egg are obtained and stored” (Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology). The medical problems range from the extremely high death rate of embryos to the increased risk of birth defects to human error resulting in the doctor implanting someone else’s child in the woman’s uterus.

Death Rate
The death rate for lab-created embryos is very high. “Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine reported in 2005 that 85% of embryos transferred to a womb in IVF are never born alive.” [Emphasis mine] This does not even account for the embryos not implanted – which include those that are lost, thrown away, die during freezing or thawing, or are killed for research. “The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, reporting annually on IVF clinics across Europe that provide preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to screen out genetically impaired embryos, concludes that in 2004, out of 24,371 embryos fertilized, only 749 (3%) survived to produce a fetal heartbeat.” – Note that is a 97% death rate and this does not even encompass the whole pregnancy through a live-birth! Compare these numbers to the estimated 50-75% of all natural pregnancies that end in miscarriage. (This number includes those who miscarry within the first two weeks of implantation and do not miss a period.) (Quotes from Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology)

Another form of death for embryos that are implanted is through selective reduction (the medical term for the abortion that takes place when too many children grow in their mother’s uterus). Sometimes it is the embryos or fetuses that are not developing as well that get aborted, but other times all look healthy and just the “conveniently positioned” children are chosen to die. This is done to give a better chance of live-birth for the remaining children or because the couple/mother only want one or two children.




Photo from California IVF: Davis Fertility Center

 

Birth defects
Birth defects are also a concern for both intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and IVF. In In Vitro Fertilization: The Human Cost states, “A 2005 study following children conceived at multiple IVF centers up to age 5 found: ‘A higher proportion of ICSI and IVF children required surgery (24% ICSI, 22% IVF, 14% natural conceptions) particularly genitourinary surgery other than circumcision.’ After adjusting for age and country, risks of major malformation were 2.8 times higher for ICSI children and 1.8 times higher for IVF children. Even in the neonatal period, minor malformations had been more common in IVF and ICSI children (15%) than in naturally conceived children (8%).”

Also, in November [2008] the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a paper reporting that "babies conceived with IVF or with a technique in which sperm are injected directly into eggs [ICSI], have a slightly increased risk of several birth defects, including a hole between the two chambers of the heart, a cleft lip or palate, an improperly developed esophagus and a malformed rectum” (In Vitro Fertilization: The Human Cost).


Up Next on Friday: What is Wrong with IVF? (II)

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: What is Wrong with ARTs?

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


I want to start with a quote from Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology:

God is love. Made in God’s image and likeness, we human beings are created by love and for love, called to share God’s unconditional love with each other and the world. … Keeping this vision in mind, we can understand that some aspects of the vocation of marriage and parenthood cannot be delegated to others or replaced with technology. Because we are made in God’s image, we are called to imitate him by letting new life arise from the loving union that makes two persons “one flesh.” Children are not parents’ possessions to manufacture, manipulate, or design; rather, they are fellow persons with full human dignity, and parents are called to accept, care for, and raise them to be new members of God’s family and his Kingdom. Children deserve to be “begotten, not made.” In love, hope, and prayer, then, let us be open to God’s gift of life and love in marriage, with profound respect for the dignity of all God’s children.

6 week old baby (still considered an embryo)



Most forms of assisted reproductive technology are immoral. These include artificial insemination, using donor eggs and/or sperm, surrogate motherhood, in vitro fertilization (IVF), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), cryopreservation, and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).

Artificial insemination replaces the marital act and usually requires illicit means of semen collection. It can even involve donor sperm (and eggs), which brings a third party into the marriage. This certainly dissociates the act of love between husband and wife and is gravely immoral ("Infertility and Reproductive Technologies", 7).

Surrogate motherhood also involves introducing a third party into the marriage. This again dissociates the act of love between husband and wife and is gravely immoral. Sometimes the surrogate is contracted and money is exchanged. “This objectifies the surrogate woman’s body making her into a rented incubator and it likewise reduces the child to a commodity" ("Infertility and Reproductive Technologies", 7).

Because of the many problems (both moral and medical) associated with in vitro fertilization, I will address it separately in my next few posts.


Up Next on Wednesday: What is Wrong with IVF?

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Assisted Reproductive Technologies

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series: What is Openness to Life?


Doing the research for this post completely shocked and saddened me. I only looked up articles and documents related to reproductive technologies on Catholic websites (mainly the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ site). Nevertheless, what I found on there was beyond words.

One of the worst things I read was how New Jersey passed a law in 2004 making it legal to clone embryos, implant them into women, and then abort them for use in research. Yes, you really did read that correctly. Here is the link. There is actually a whole page full of links related to this topic, but I did not have the courage to read them after that.

Why is it that we do not hear of all these “scientific advances” and research studies in the news? Could it really be that no one in the news media cares about these issues?

We must remember that God’s ways are not our ways. There is holy mystery in God’s choosing to bring human life into being in one manner and not another (ART and the Family).

There is a reason why the Catholic Church teaches that it is immoral for technology to replace the marital act and it is not because of where the use of these procedures will lead. It is because life is sacred, the marital act is holy, and nothing should come between the union of man and woman in their sharing of the creation of new life with God. We may think that warnings of future problems will change people’s minds and hearts, but prophetic warnings from Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae did not prevent people from using contraception. (I will talk about this in a coming post.)

Very few assisted reproductive technologies available today are moral. Those that are include medications that help with fertility and surgeries that repair or reconstruct reproductive organs or that remove blockages. Natural family planning charting (using the sympto-thermal method) is one of the best ways to help identify specific fertility issues in women.


Up Next: What is Wrong with ARTs?

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Chesterton and Birth Control

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series What is Openness to Life?


Because I admire Chesterton and his penchant for always writing Truth, I wanted to share what he had to say about birth control. Chesterton was very much against the idea of birth control. He saw what the outcome of its use would be as did many others (including Pope Paul VI who I will talk about later). In The Well and the Shallows, Chesterton said this about propagandists of birth control:

There are not many things that move me to anything like a personal contempt. I do not feel any contempt for an atheist, who is often a man limited and constrained by his own logic to a very sad simplification. I do not feel any contempt for a Bolshevist, who is a man driven to the same negative simplification by a revolt against very positive wrongs. But there is one type of person for whom I feel what I can only call contempt. And that is the popular propagandist of what he or she absurdly describes as Birth-Control.

You may remember a portion of this quote I used to have on my side bar. It comes from an essay entitled “Obstinate Orthodoxy” in his book The Thing: Why I am a Catholic.

If those called free-thinkers are sentimentalists, those called free-lovers are open and obvious sentimentalists. We can always convict such people of sentimentalism by their weakness for euphemism. The phrase they use is always softened and suited for journalistic appeals. They talk of free love when they mean something quite different, better defined as free lust. But being sentimentalists they feel bound to simper and coo over the word "love." They insist on talking about Birth Control when they mean less birth and no control. We could smash them to atoms, if we could be as indecent in our language as they are immoral in their conclusions.



Picture Credit:
The American Chesterton Society

From Social Reform versus Birth Control, Chesterton states,

The Birth-Controller does not bother [with high society], for the perfectly simple reason that it is not such people that he wants to control. What he wants to control is the populace, and he practically says so. He always insists that a workman has no right to have so many children, or that a slum is perilous because it is producing so many children. The question he dreads is "Why has not the workman a better wage? Why has not the slum family a better house?" His way of escaping from it is to suggest, not a larger house but a smaller family. The landlord or the employer says in his hearty and handsome fashion: "You really cannot expect me to deprive myself of my money. But I will make a sacrifice; I will deprive myself of your children."

Also from Social Reform versus Birth Control:

The very name of "Birth Control" is a piece of pure humbug. It is one of those blatant euphemisms used in the headlines of the Trust Press. It is like "Tariff Reform." It is like "Free Labour." It is meant to mean nothing, that it may mean anything, and especially some thing totally different from what it says. Everybody believes in birth control, and nearly everybody has exercised some control over the conditions of birth. People do not get married as somnambulists or have children in their sleep. But throughout numberless ages and nations, the normal and real birth control is called self control. If anybody says it cannot possibly work, I say it does. In many classes, in many countries where these quack nostrums are unknown, populations of free men have remained within reasonable limits by sound traditions of thrift and responsibility.

And this prophetic bit (from the same),

The fact is, I think, that I am in revolt against the conditions of industrial capitalism and the advocates of Birth Control are in revolt against the conditions of human life. What their spokesmen can possibly mean by saying that I wage a "class war against mothers" must remain a matter of speculation. If they mean that I do the unpardonable wrong to mothers of thinking they will wish to continue to be mothers, even in a society of greater economic justice and civic equality, then I think they are perfectly right. I doubt whether mothers could escape from motherhood into Socialism. But the advocates of Birth Control seem to want some of them to escape from it into capitalism. They seem to express a sympathy with those who prefer "the right to earn outside the home" or (in other words) the right to be a wage-slave and work under the orders of a total stranger because he happens to be a richer man. By what conceivable contortions of twisted thought this ever came to be considered a freer condition than that of companionship with the man she has herself freely accepted, I never could for the life of me make out. The only sense I can make of it is that the proletarian work, though obviously more senile and subordinate than the parental, is so far safer and more irresponsible because it is not parental. I can easily believe that there are some people who do prefer working in a factory to working in a family; for there are always some people who prefer slavery to freedom, and who especially prefer being governed to governing someone else. But I think their quarrel with motherhood is not like mine, a quarrel with inhuman conditions, but simply a quarrel with life. Given an attempt to escape from the nature of things, I can well believe that it might lead at last to something like "the nursery school for our children staffed by other mothers and single women of expert training."  [emphasis mine]

Up Next: Assisted Reproductive Technologies

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Contraception and Medicine

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series What is Openness to Life?


Contraception is any action, drug, or device that interferes with conception. Many things fall under this blanket, including sterilization, condoms, diaphragms, jellies, IUDs, hormonal birth control, or any act that does not allow conception to take place within the marital union.

There are many reasons not to do engage in these all things, but I will stick with the most popular forms of birth control today. Of all women in America at reproductive age who have been or are sexually active, more than 98% of them have used contraceptives according to the CDC report: “Use of Contraception and Use of Family Planning in the United States 1982-2002”. The most popular form of contraception in the nineties was surgical sterilization (“The Contraceptive Revolution and Its Fruits”). Today the most popular form of birth control is the oral contraceptive pill (CDC).

Sterilization
According to the CDC report, 3.4 million men and 10.3 million women in America have been surgically sterilized. According to multiple studies, many of these people regret the procedure. Of women who are sterilized, up to 73% of accidental pregnancies that occur will be ectopic pregnancies, which result in either a tubal removal and subsequent death of the unborn child or the death of both mother and child. These women are also more likely to have increased menstrual flow and increased pain, and are more likely to be hospitalized for menstrual related disorders (“The Contraceptive Revolution and Its Fruits”).

For men, according to two large studies completed by the Harvard Medical School, those with vasectomies have a 56% increase risk of prostate cancer later in life. In addition, 50% of men with vasectomies will develop antibodies to sperm, and almost 70% of men who have a vasectomy reversal will develop them. Sperm antibodies reduce the amount of sperm available in the testes and subsequently reduce the chance of conception.

Oral Contraceptives

Hormonal contraceptives are the only drugs available that stop a normal human function from working. When makers of “the Pill” made their first formulations, many women actually died – from a pill made of hormones already present in the human body! The solution … lower levels of estrogen, which caused break-through ovulation. The solution to that problem? Add in progesterone, which changes the lining of the uterus making it inhospitable to implantation of a newly conceived child, thereby causing an early abortion. Even with correct use, the breakthrough ovulation rate is 2-5% depending on the pill used. If pills are missed early in the cycle, ovulation can occur in 25-30% of cycles (“The Contraception Revolution and Its Fruits”). (All hormonal contraceptives can cause early abortions. These include the morning-after pill, the patch, implants, shots, and IUDs.)

The Pill is currently the most common contraceptive with 12 million American women and 70 million women worldwide taking it (“The Contraceptive Revolution and Its Fruits”). Nevertheless, it has many annoying and even dangerous side effects. The biggest problem is, even if a side effect only occurs in 1% of the Pill users that amounts to talking about 8.2 million women worldwide.

Some of these side effects include: headache, nausea, weight gain, lowered libido (which may never return even after stopping use), fatigue, breast tenderness, fluid retention, carbohydrate intolerance, spider veins, depression, high blood pressure, cervical ectopia (damage to the lining of the cervix), higher cholesterol, growth of fibroid tumors on the uterus, blood clots, increase risk of heart attack and stroke (for smokers), increase risk of cervical cancer, and 40-1000% increase risk of breast cancer (possibly more aggressive and appearing at a younger age).

The younger a woman is when she starts taking the Pill and the longer she takes it before her first full-term pregnancy, the higher the risk of breast cancer. Women who use the pill for four years or more before their first full-term pregnancy have a 52% increased risk of breast cancer (OSV Newsweekly Article).

Condoms
The third most popular form of birth control according to the CDC is the condom. The only medical side-effect problem associated with condoms is latex intolerance or latex allergy. However, condoms only have an 87% rate of preventing pregnancy and only a 46-82% effectiveness in preventing HIV. They offer no protection from herpes and HPV (a cause of cervical cancer) because these STDs can be transmitted through contact with areas not covered by the condom (“The Contraceptive Revolution and Its Fruits”).

** All unnatural methods of birth control have less obvious but even more serious side effects – spiritual, emotional, marital, and societal.

Natural Family Planning
Ecological breastfeeding gives the best nutrition to babies and costs nothing. Systematic NFP costs only a few dollars for thermometer, charts, and study materials. It can help a woman detect health problems early on, which can allow healing and even returned fertility for some infertile couples.

Natural family planning is natural. In a world caught up on health and the organic, no GMO, natural food craze, it sure seems hypocritical to see those same people engage in unnatural and even chemical forms of family planning.


Up Next: Chesterton and Birth Control

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Contraception and Society

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series What is Openness to Life?

* The rise in:

* Adultery
* Divorce
* Premarital sex
* STDs
* Out-of-wedlock births
* “Fatherless” children
* Poverty
* Crime, drugs, and violence

* “Normalization” of homosexuality
* Legalization and subsequent skyrocketing of abortion

What do all these things have in common? Contraception.

Some of these things may seem obvious, while others might be harder to conceive. There is, however, a connection. One church embarked on this path in 1930 (as mentioned earlier) and the world has been a downhill slide ever since.

* People throughout history have been tempted by adultery, but their main deterrent was always pregnancy. What happens when this consequence is taken away? – A rise in adultery.

* What does adultery generally cause? Divorce (“The Contraception Question” by Christopher West)

* Use the same logic and apply it to premarital sex. What happens? A skyrocketing of fornication.

* With more people engaging in sexual relations, STDs are bound to become a problem. (“The Contraception Question” by Christopher West)

* Since no method of contraception is 100% effective, we now have a huge increase in out-of-wedlock births.

* To follow this further, what happens with the “unwanted” pregnancies? Women now have a “need” for abortion.

Rev. Walter J Schu affirms that “[b]ehind the contraceptive mentality looms a materialistic concept of the human body as an object that can be manipulated. When we live out such a view of the person and human sexuality, it is no surprise that where contraception fails abortion often follows. Sexual intercourse tends to be reduced from an act of personal self-giving to one of mutual sensual gratification freed from any tie to responsibility to new life." ("Contraception and Abortion: The Underlying Link")

* In addition, some fathers are unwilling to support the children who are born, so we now have an increase in “fatherless” children. (“The Contraception Question” by Christopher West)

* With the increase in single mothers from divorce or never having been married, poverty numbers climb. (“The Contraception Question” by Christopher West)

* “Fatherless” children are much more likely to be involved in crime, drugs, and violence. They are also more likely to have children out of wedlock and to divorce (if they marry). (“The Contraception Question” by Christopher West)

* Finally, homosexuality has no rationale against it when the act of procreation is separated from the marital union and any means of sexual pleasure is acceptable.

As stated in Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan, “By using contraception,” married couples “may think that they are avoiding problems or easing tensions, that they are exerting control over their lives.”25 At the same time, they may think that they are doing nothing harmful to their marriages. In reality, the deliberate separation of the procreative and unitive meanings of marriage has the potential to damage or destroy the marriage. Also, it results in many other negative consequences, both personal and social. 25 Married Love and the Gift of Life)


Up Next: Contraception and Medicine

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Contraception and Morality

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series What is Openness to Life?


First off, we must remember natural family planning is not “Catholic birth control”. In NFP: The Complete Approach (6) it states,

Christian marriage is a sacrament in which the spouses are called to be generous to each other and to be generous with God in having children and raising them in the ways of the Lord. Marriage is for family.

Children are gifts from God. Most Christian married couples can assume that much of the time, perhaps even most of the time, God is calling them to be generous and to invite another child to share family life on this earth and to share eternity with Him. The knowledge of systematic NFP is also a gift from God, and couples should use it generously, not selfishly. [emphasis mine]

Keeping this in mind, we can now discuss contraception. Most couples today wonder what type of contraceptive they should use instead of whether they should use it. Contraception has become a part of culture and has been distinguished as the “responsible thing to do”.

However, most people are unaware of contraception’s history. Before 1930, all Christian churches taught that contraception was contrary to God’s design. It was Margaret Sanger (the founder of Planned Parenthood) who lobbied for its use, and the Anglican Church was the first to concede. But it only allowed contraception for married couples with severe difficulties. [I will talk about Margaret Sanger and her mission in a later post.] Because of this, the door opened for all other protestant churches, and within thirty years, almost all denominations accepted and some even promoted birth control.

But in the pamphlet entitled “The Contraception Question”, Christopher West asserts, “In rendering sex sterile, we take the powers of life into our own hands and make ourselves like God.” We are not God and cannot assume to be. Children are not commodities that we can produce when convenient and kill when they are not. [I will talk about science and technologies in later posts.]

Admonitions made by Popes:
Pope John Paul II stated that contraception “is to be judged so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God” (address, Oct. 10 1983).

Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae said “To use this divine gift destroying, even if only partially, its meaning and its purpose is to contradict the nature both of man and of woman and of their most intimate relationship, and therefore it is to contradict also the plan of God and His will. On the other hand, to make use of the gift of conjugal love while respecting the laws of the generative process means to acknowledge oneself not to be the arbiter of the sources of human life, but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator.”

Pope Pius XI said on December 31, 1930, “Any use whatsoever of matrimony [the marriage act] exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin” (Casti Connubii, 56).


Up Next: Contraception and Society

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: Why Use Natural Family Planning?

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series What is Openness to Life?


Most people, when they hear “natural family planning”, think of the old-time, rarely reliable rhythm method. It is important to realize that present-day natural family planning methods differ considerably from the Calendar Rhythm that was taught early in the last century.

Breastfeeding as it is commonly done in the United States has little or no effect on the return of fertility. Even mothers exclusively breastfeeding, but not following any of the other six standards, can have menstruation (and fertility) return within six weeks postpartum. With ecological breastfeeding, the chance of pregnancy is almost zero during the first three months, less than 2% between 3 and 6 months, and about 6% after 6 months (assuming menstruation has not returned). The average return of menstruation is 14 to 15 months postpartum, with 72% of mothers experiencing their first period between 9 and 20 months. (NFP: The Complete Approach, 2) When menstruation returns early, there is a tendency to be infertile for the first few cycles, while those whose menstruation returns late are likely to ovulate before their first postpartum cycle.

Many health agencies, both national and international advise that all babies should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months because of the many health and psychological benefits to both mother and baby. Ecological breastfeeding offers the best opportunity for maintaining good milk supply for the duration of the breastfeeding period. According to NFP: The Complete Approach (6),

Ecological breastfeeding requires close mother-baby contact. This is good for both mother and baby. This best helps babies to thrive. We like to think of it as God’s own plan for baby-care and baby spacing, but it generally precludes working outside the home or being excessively busy with a home-based business. The proper care of babies takes time. The combination of mothering and homemaking is a full-time job. [Sound familiar?]

One of the many advantages of ecological breastfeeding from a purely moral standpoint is, although you need certain conditions to justify additional spacing of babies with systematic NFP, you do not need any sort of “spacing” reasons to breastfeed. When ecologically breastfeeding, you are doing what is best for your baby, and this just happens to postpone the return of fertility as well. Extended infertility is a normal, God-given side effect of following God’s plan for baby care, and it is respectable and appropriate to hope for this along with all the other advantages of breastfeeding.

What about the systematic methods of NFP? When couples follow the guidelines for chaste abstinence during the fertile period using the symptom-thermal method, they have a 99.6% chance of not conceiving based on a German study published in February 2007 (NFP: The Complete Approach, 2). Using systematic NFP to conceive also has benefits. “About 80% of couples with normal fertility conceive within six cycles, frequently one to three cycles. Couples with marginal fertility will usually conceive within six to 12 cycles” (3). This is because accurate charting helps the couple determine the most fertile time of the cycle. Charts can also be useful for getting help with infertility, as most doctors will ask for them.

Some women take the pill for “medical reasons”. However, the pill only masks the symptoms; it does not treat the illness. Many people can go years with a serious reproductive health issue (such as endometriosis), and when they want to conceive, only then will they realize they have a fertility issue. Nevertheless, charting can help explain certain physical symptoms and emotions, as well as help determine abnormalities in a woman’s health. Some women may even identify underlying health problems and find healing with the knowledge gained through charting.


Up Next: God is Love

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction

Open to Life: What is Natural Family Planning?

If you are new to this series, I recommend starting at the beginning: Open to Life Series What is Openness to Life?

Natural family planning (NFP) is a way of using God’s plan and, consequently, respecting Church teaching to achieve or avoid/postpone pregnancy by using the physical methods that God has built into human nature. There are two different types of natural family planning: systematic NFP and ecological breastfeeding.

The first type, ecological breastfeeding, is the form of nursing in which the mother fulfills her baby’s needs for frequent suckling and her full-time presence and the child’s frequent suckling postpones the return of the mother’s fertility (Natural Family Planning: The Complete Approach, 1). Ecological breastfeeding is explained by the seven standards listed below.

Sheila Kippley created the phrase “ecological breastfeeding” to differentiate this natural and traditional form of baby care from “cultural breastfeeding” (the use of bottles, pacifiers, and baby-sitters, which contribute to mother-baby separation and less frequent suckling).

To remain infertile during breastfeeding, you must follow all seven of these standards for ecological breastfeeding. In less developed countries, these practices are customary and therefore babies are frequently spaced two to three years apart without contraception or periodic abstinence.

1. Exclusively breastfeed for the first six months of life (no other liquids and solids). After six months, slowly begin to introduce other liquids and solids.
2. Pacify your baby at your breasts.
3. Do not use bottles and pacifiers.
4. Sleep with your baby for night feedings.
5. Sleep with your baby for a daily-nap feeding.
6. Nurse frequently day and night, and avoid schedules.
7. Avoid any practice that restricts nursing or separates you from your baby. (Breastfeeding and Natural Child Spacing, 4)

According to NFP: The Complete Approach, “The great strength of ecological breastfeeding is that it is truly God’s Own Plan for naturally spacing babies, and it does not require systematic fertility awareness and periodic abstinence. Another great strength is that it encourages extended breastfeeding that carries many benefits for both mother and baby.” It also requires mothers to take full responsibility for the care of their babies instead of designating such responsibilities to others (something I have discussed previously). Its only weakness is the fact it is countercultural in the West and as a result will be difficult without support from the husband, family, and/or friends.

Systematic natural family planning is the method that uses a woman’s natural physical signs to identify the fertile and infertile times of the menstrual cycle. Using this method allows you to “know the most-fertile days in the overall fertile time for achieving pregnancy. All true NFP systems use chaste abstinence during the fertile time as the method for avoiding pregnancy. The use of systematic NFP involves both the knowledge of fertility and putting that knowledge into practice” (NFP: The Complete Approach, 2).


Up Next: Why Use Natural Family Planning?

For full texts of the documents used, see my Open to Life Series: Introduction