Tuesday 17 February 2009

The Rhythm of Life

The Independent apparently regards the idea that Natural Family Planning "does not work" as being on par with the idea that exercise is good for you: a statement of the obvious.

But in fact, not only does even the slightest thought demonstrate that, properly practised, NFP must be effective, but its very high reliability, greater than that of any artificial means, is duly admitted even by the World Health Organisation, which is hardly a Vatican puppet, to say the very least.

The problem that NFP's detractors have with it is not that it is ineffective but that it can only be used effectively by a faithful married couple. A couple, moreover, who run next to no risk of divorce, which is as good as unheard among NFP users, something that certainly cannot be said simply of Catholics (which not all NFP users are), even Catholics with strong views on divorce.

This is so far removed from the detractors' own experience that they are intellectually and emotionally unable to cope with it.

Or is it just that women must poison themselves in order to be available constantly for the sexual gratification of men? That is right down there in the depths of misogyny with the suggestion that the preborn child is simultaneously part of a woman's body (indeed, of her very reproductive system) and insentient.

2 comments:

  1. "divorce, which is as good as unheard among NFP users"

    Do you have any evidence for this?

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  2. It is something that everyone who knows anything at all about the suject knows. As Blessed Teresa of Calcutta put it, "They have a honeymoon every month", so they pretty much never divorce. To make NFP work, the level of intimacy has to be so great that the circumstances giving rise to divorce are practically impossible.

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