Natural Family Planning
The rising price of contraceptives is one of the most positive things American Congressmen can do to help support our family life. There are other alternatives besides birth control that can be used to help promote a healthy and very positive family life for the future.
Condoms and other forms of birth control only limit the effects of the intended bonding that should occur between a man and a woman through intercourse. The alternative is Natural Family Planning (NFP).
NFP promotes periodic abstinence during the fertile periods of the menstrual cycle. It is the most complete and safest way to practice having a martial bond between sexes, yet it does not limit the effects of what the man and woman were made to do. Not only that, but it has also been proven by the Roman Catholic Church to be 98 percent accurate.
According to a review done on condoms and their effectiveness, without user error, condoms already have a 3 percent failure rate. However, because people don’t typically use condoms as carefully as they should, that percentage jumps to a failure rate of about 14 percent. Birth control pills also have a much lower effectiveness than otherwise assumed. Because most people who take birth control pills don’t use them accurately, their effectiveness in reality is only around 87 percent.
Aside from NFP’s low rates of failure, there is another plus to it: amazingly, it is very affordable. The price for a chart to get started on the program starts around $8.00, as compared to birth control pills that cost $40 to $50 per month.
Since contraceptives have been legalized in the United States, you can see an interesting and direct correlation in divorce rates between when contraceptives were established and the present. Our divorce rates in America are reaching (if not exceeding) the 50 percent mark.
That means that of the estimated 13,000 students on campus with you right now (considering they all get married), 6,500 of them will end their marriage with a divorce. That is an outstanding number – a number that I hope will not include me.
Why so many divorces? I believe that it has a lot to do with the use of contraceptives. When you get married, you make a vow to your spouse that you will give your complete self to him/her – that is what a marriage signifies. It is about giving yourself totally to the other person, which includes your sexual desires and your sexual bond of producing a child.
When you limit that bonding and use birth control of whatever sort, you are saying, “You can have all of me, but just not that part, I want that part for myself.” Eventually, greed seeps in, and we are left in a state of sin.
Yes, this does mean that a person needs to have planned periods of abstinence, but that period of abstinence is truly a period of growth. It is like a period when a person and their spouse can engage in other activities that promote their love for each other, such as kissing, holding hands and not thinking about mounting each other in a hormone induced sexual explosion. This is a very important part of a bond between a man and a woman. If this is avoided, it can lead to one partner feeling like they have been used for the other partner’s pleasures, which can lead to divorce.
It may sound like I am against sex, but that is not the case; I am not against sex, and the past Pope, John Paul II was not against sex. In fact, he wrote 129 different speeches to the general public about sex and about the true presence of it. Christopher West, author and speaker has changed the lives of many people across America in his book entitled, “The Good News about Sex and Marriage.” I encourage all of you to read this and to take a positive stance on life and the true meaning of sex.
Dan is a senior studying child development and family science as well as president of collegians for life.