The Rosaries in the Ovaries

In spite of the Catholic Church's continued and unwavering stance against birth control, it turns out that most American Catholics are, not surprisingly, hypocrites.  According to the National Survey of Family Growth, about 98% have used a form of contraception banned by the Vatican at some point in their lives, and 40% identify as pro-choice.  No word yet on whether these sins come up during Confession.

http://puzzledponderer.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/most-ridiculous-catholic-clothing-ever/

Yet in the developing world, particularly in Latin America and Africa, the Pope's anti-birth control, anti-condom opinions are taken more seriously.  In Catholic nations such as the DR Congo, Peru, and Haiti, rates of birth control use are negligible, and are inversely correlated with rates of HIV infection and unwanted pregnancy.  In Kenya, there have even been widely-reported instances of condom-burnings at the behest of Catholic bishops.

Now, even Pope Paul VI, composer of the treatise Humanae Vitae, acknowledged that couples might "decide not to have additional children" after giving due consideration to "physical, economic, psychological, and social conditions."  And so, to "keep up with the times," ta-da! - thus was born the Catholic institution of Natural Family Planning.  NFP is a complicated system of tracking fertility by taking one's temperature, recording daily levels of cervical mucus secretions, and filling out charts.  This enables a Catholic couple to attempt to avoid pregnancy by abstaining from sex on likely fertile days, while not "perverting the purpose of the marital act."

http://www.learkentfool.com/?p=1678

First, let's be honest:  NFP is birth control.  It's just complicated and ineffective birth control.  Second, Catholicism seems to be very arbitrary with its endorsement of all things "natural:" naturalness is something to be embraced in contraception, but to be shunned when keeping PVS patients alive for decades via ventilators and feeding tubes.

Third, I don't see how this birth control method stands up even to Catholic logic.  The line of reasoning seems to go:  "Sex that isn't open to procreation is wrong.  If I use a condom then God will be displeased, because I'm trying to prevent pregnancy.  But if I have sex according to an intricately-designed calendar, God won't be able to see through my intention.  God wants me to have babies whenever he chooses.  God can do anything.  But he can't surmount a latex barrier even when he really, really wants to."

http://babymakingmachine.blogspot.com/2009/04/natural-family-planning-techinique.html

Sure gets me all hot and bothered.

Anyway.  Couples hoping to marry in a Catholic church are now required to attend four-month classes in Natural Family Planning, to learn the ins and outs of cervical mucus charting and the evils of secular methods of birth control.  For those unable to attend a class, the marriage requirement can be fulfilled with a "home study" class for just $161.  Nevertheless, NFP use is not very common in the developed world, even among Catholic women.  In fact, only about 3.6% of Catholics practice NFP.  Still, for the very high and holy, Natural Family Planning is the one and only way to go.

Given that the Catholic stance against birth control is so often criticized for the plight of starving, HIV-ravaged third world countries, I was curious to see whether NFP had made its way to Latin America and Africa.  Surely, since the Church acknowledges that everyone might not want to procreate constantly, and since it is so concerned with preserving human life, it would try to promote its one approved method of birth control in the third world.  I discovered, however, that NFP courses are available - in English and Spanish only - in all of fifteen nations worldwide.  The majority of these nations (the US, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Argentina, Spain, South Africa, and inexplicably, China) are already highly developed.  NFP classes are taught in just six countries total in Africa and Latin America.  Furthermore, according to Natural Family Planning International, current efforts are focused on bringing NFP to the Czech Republic, a country with a fertility rate of 1.24 births per woman, whose people have suffered from "secularism and immorality."  In third-world majority Catholic nations, however, I suppose that the "suffering" has not been so great.

One rare instance I could find of Catholics promoting NFP in the third world comes from my very own Jesuit Georgetown.  A cohort of Jesuits affiliated with the Institute for Reproductive Health is attempting to dispense "cycle beads," rosaries for counting days of the menstrual cycle instead of Hail Marys, in Rwanda, Guatamala, and the DR Congo.  The sad fact is, though, that in the DR Congo, the so-called "rape capital of the world," where girls are often married off at puberty, even a woman's husband is unlikely to respect her wishes to abstain from intercourse during a fertile period.

If Catholic couples truly want to practice Natural Family Planning, then of course that is their right and their choice.  What I'd like to see, however, is some admission that this form of birth control is an elitist luxury, akin to buying organic food or running in Nike Nakeds.  For reasons logistical, economic, and societal, NFP is available almost exclusively in the developed world, while those without easy access are still told that condoms and other forms of "artificial" contraception will drag them down into the depths of Hell.  Yet even faced with these criticisms, the Vatican is as determined as ever not to waver in its resolve.  Pope Benedict XVI, speaking in 2008 on the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, firmly supported his predecessor's treatise, and reminded the world's one billion Catholics that the Church's stance against birth control is "so crucial for humanity's future."

And I would have to agree with him there.