By Revd. Fr. Udo J. M. Iwuji, SDV
Prelude
It is a statement of fact that sexual intercourse is a gift from God and consequently, it needs to be respected and used in accord with its design and purpose. But often times many are misled by unfounded teachings. In our present-day society, there are many unfounded things done due to ignorance and some done with full knowledge of the gravity but under pretense.
A woman had sex and soon takes pills {drugs} and she calls it Family Planning. In her own estimation it is good, there is nothing bad about it because what she has carried out is just Family Planning; she has no qualms of conscience because she understands it not to be bad.
Some have even gone to the extent of having or rather establishing a permanent way of avoiding conception {perpetual contraception}-sterilization. By so doing the conjugal union is trampled on. It is necessary to know that any act that impedes or hinders life remains an evil act hence, “to justify conjugal acts made intentionally infertile, one cannot invoke as valid reasons the lesser evil” {Humanae Vitae # 14}. This is evil because by so doing the human person deifies himself or herself and God is at an end point, at a corner.
We call to mind that, “if life is a gift, man and woman are not its masters. They are its beneficiaries, its administrators; they are called to transmit it, aware not only of its natural dimensions, God reserves to himself to fulfill and develop” {St. Pope John Paul II Address to Bishops of Emilia – Romagna Region on Occasion of their Ad Limina Visit, 1 March 1991}.
Considering the many evils perpetrated in the cover of Family Planning, the Church as a Mother and Teacher has come up with various scientific methods to enhance family planning using the natural methods or processes. From my interactions with people I have come to realize that many individuals are not aware some of the scientific methods of Natural Family Planning that the Church approved and recommends for her children; from every indication the one most people are aware of is the Mucus Method which is popularly known and called the Billings Method. In this presentation we will see what these methods are and why they are recommended by the Church.
Clarification of Terms
In order to avoid misunderstandings, let us have a cursory look at some key words and a few terminological {expressions} clarifications within the context of our discussion. Our clarifications will focus on the following:
i. Scientific Methods ii. Natural iii. Family iv. Planning
Scientific Methods
When we talk about scientific method our minds go to the process by which science is carried out. It also points to systematic way of acquiring knowledge. To arrive at a scientific method some procedures are involved. There are always a systematic and careful observation, measurement, experiment, formulation, testing and modification of hypotheses.
The online English Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia {November, 2019} succinctly puts it thus: “The scientific method is an empirical method of acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century. It involves careful observation, applying rigorous skepticism about what is observed, given that cognitive assumptions can distort how one interprets the observation.
The pillar of any scientific method is criticism. From constructive criticisms scientific methods improve and stand the test of time hence, “criticism is the backbone of the scientific method”
Natural
When we say that something is natural it points to the fact that it is as nature has made it. Simply put there is no artificial in it. It also means that a thing is not made by humankind.
Family
Broadly speaking the family is seen to be children; a group descended from a common ancestor; household; one‘s own flesh and blood … The Free Encyclopedia defines family, in the human context as ―a group of people affiliated by consanguinity, affinity, or co-residence. A nuclear family, also referred to as a conjugal ‘family – husband, wife, and unmarried children who are not of age. The Catechism of the Catholic Church sees family as ―a man and a woman united in marriage, together with their children. {Catechism of the Catholic Church #. 2202}. What interests us more here is the nuclear family which is the nucleus or the first cell of the Society. From the African perspective, the family embraces both nuclear and extended since the upbringing and formation of children, though primarily the duty of the nuclear family, is equally the responsibility of the extended family, and even the clan, bearing in mind the principle of subsidiarity.
Planning
Ordinarily this points to activities required to achieve a desired goal or objective. This is doing things in an orderly manner. The contrary will be unplanned.
Various Scientific Methods of Natural Family Planning
I. The Mucus Method
The Mucus Method is popularly known and called the Billings Method. This is because of the inventor. This method goes to the merit of Dr, John J Billings and his wife Dr. Evelyn Billings. This method is based or observed on the observation of cervical mucus. The mucus days or period is also known as ‘wet’ days or unsafe days or white menstruation. This is so because the mucus is necessary for the sperm to survive, hence when the mucus is present there is easy or rather more chances of conception. “Mucus is necessary for the life and ascent of the sperm as rain is for the life and growth of seeds sown in the ground” {Quoted in Pastoral Guide Vol. II, 1246}
Indeed, this method seeks to teach women how to recognize their own fertility patterns, so they can choose when to avoid sexual contact {to prevent pregnancy} or initiate sexual contact {in the attempt to conceive}.
How does it work? The Billings ovulation method is based on your interpretation of your cervical mucus. Generally speaking, over the course of each menstrual cycle, cervical mucus changes in predictable ways. Specifically, cervical mucus often becomes clear and elastic about six days prior to ovulation {due to the influence of estrogen.} Ovulation is likely to occur on the last day that cervical mucus shows these properties.
After ovulation, cervical mucus is affected by the production of progesterone and becomes thick, sticky and opaque.
What Does This Method have to Offer? The Billings method teaches you how to understand your individual fertility pattern by analyzing your cervical mucus each month. This is easily done by taking a cervical mucus sample {by hand} every day and recording its quantity, appearance, and feel {as well as noting any other fertility/physical signs} on a daily chart. The appearance or feel of your cervical mucus may be described as dry, watery, sticky, creamy, watery, or egg-white like depending on where you are in your cycle.
The Billings ovulation method allows for you to identify the fertile phase of your menstrual cycle by the presence of cervical mucus, and the sensation it produces at the vulva in the days leading up to ovulation.
The Rules for Mucus Method {the Billings Method: For a good result there are four rules guiding the Mucus Method {the Billings Method}. We have what is called the three early day rules and the peak rule.
The early day rules have to do with the days leading up to ovulation. During this time, the cervical mucus tells you that you have begun your fertile phase. The peak rule applies once the peak day {ovulation} has been identified.
The peak day is often characterized by being the last day of “lubricative sensation” and occurs extremely close to the time of ovulation. According to the Billings ovulation method, you may be fertile for another three days, and menstruation should occur 11 to 16 days later.
The Billings ovulation method doesn’t require any form of rhythm counting, temperature taking, hormonal drugs or devices and allows couples to share in the responsibility of natural family planning. This natural birth control method can also be used from puberty to menopause while breastfeeding, and in women who don’t have regular menstrual cycles.
II. Safe Period Method
This is popularly known as or rather called, “the Calendar or Rhythm Method. This method is done based on calculation. Calculation is made and as it is varied among women. According to findings, menstrual cycle varies between 21 to 35 days. Average {most women} has 28-day cycle. Cycles may be regular or irregular {when it varies-this month 28, next 29}. But at any rate, we have generally or rather averagely 28-day cycle and 29-day cycle.
Before anything, it is good to establish that the calculation is done before, during, and after menstruation. It is so as to asserting the safe time. The need for this calculation and observation is very important and necessary because ovulation or menstruation is generally governed by biological rules or laws not physical. When this is done for some time, a woman can now say with a certain level of certainty which group she belongs to, 28/29 cycle. We say some level of certainty because it may change due to some biological factors. This is one of the reasons why some cycles may extend to even 35 days. Even though lately it is seen to be normal.
For a woman of 28 days cycle, we have this calculation, 28-19 = 9; 28-12 = 16. Only from ninth till sixteenth day after the appearance of the menstruation, she can conceive. For a woman of 29 days cycle, we have this calculation, 29- 19 = 10, 29-12 = 17. Only from tenth till the seventeenth day after the appearance of the menstruation can a woman conceive. It is good to note or call to mind that menstruation is the beginning of a new biological cycle not the end of it.
III. NaProTECHNOLOGY
This method severs dual purposes. It is considered a Major breakthrough in monitoring and maintaining a woman’s Reproductive and Gynecological Health
NaProTECHNOLOGY means Natural Procreative Technology. It is a new women’s health science that monitors and maintains a woman’s reproductive and gynecological health. It provides medical and surgical treatments that cooperate completely with the reproductive system.
This method is thirty years of scientific research in the study of the normal and abnormal states of the menstrual and fertility cycles in women.
Outside bringing solution to birth control, the NaProTECHNOLOGY has helped to provide real solution to some real and challenging health problems in women such as infertility, menstrual cramps, premenstrual syndrome {PMS}, ovarian cysts, irregular or abnormal bleeding, and polycystic ovarian disease. Others are: repetitive miscarriage, postpartum depression, prematurity prevention, hormonal abnormalities, chronic discharges among others.
Indeed, this is the first women’s health science to network family planning with reproductive health monitoring and maintenance. It is a fertility-care based medical approach rather than a fertility-control approach to family planning and gynecological health. This method is a brainchild of Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers. Thomas W. Hilgers, MD, is the director of the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction and the National Center for Women’s Health in Omaha, Nebraska. Dr. Hilgers is currently a senior medical consultant in obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive medicine and surgery at the Pope Paul VI Institute.
IV. The Creighton Model Fertility Care™ System {CrMS}
The CrMS relies upon the standardized observation and charting of biological markers that are essential to a woman’s health and fertility. These ‘biomarkers” tell the couple when they are naturally fertile and infertile, allowing the couple to use the system either to achieve or to avoid pregnancy. These biomarkers also telegraph abnormalities in a woman’s health. The CrMS allows a woman to unravel the mysteries of the menstrual cycle.
The CrMS is also the basis for the new women’s health science, NaProTECHNOLOGY {natural procreative technology}. The Creighton Model Fertility Care™ System {CrMS} is a standardized modification of the Billings Ovulation Method. It is built on research, education and service.
Research leading to the development of the Creighton Model System began in 1976 and the system was first fully described in 1980. The research on this system has continued up until the present day and it has an extraordinary degree of scientific understanding and validity.
In the CrMS, fertility is observed as a part of health, not disease. It is a system that is specifically not a natural contraceptive. Rather, it is a true method of family planning … a method that can be used in two ways, to achieve, as well as, avoid pregnancy. These principles make this system distinctly different from contraception, artificial or natural.
The CrMS is based upon a couple’s knowledge and understanding of their naturally-occurring phases of fertility and infertility. Through this understanding, the couple is able to make decisions (choices) regarding the achievement or avoidance of pregnancy. This system provides information which deals with the complete dimension of the procreative ability. In addition, it provides women the added benefit of being able to monitor and maintain their procreative and gynecologic health over a lifetime. It is truly the only family planning system which has networked family planning with gynecologic and procreative healthcare and health maintenance. The teachers of the CrMS are trained allied health professionals and specifically-trained physicians have been educated to incorporate the CrMS into their medical practice.
Conclusion
Before the conclusion I wish to quickly say that there is a very important method type of family planning that is Supra Scientific Method. This method is called, Abstinence and Self-Control.
Man (human kind) should not be controlled by Id or Ego. Put in another way humankind should not be slaves to Lust, Concupiscence or Pleasures. He should always maximize the ‘pleasureness’ of his life with some level of transcendence. He should always let some Super Ego be present in his or her life. Man should always make the utmost use of his will. He should always transcend his sensuality and sexuality. He or she should always have control over him or herself, not just to give in to instincts any way and anyhow.
The urge for sexual relationship is always there and we have to be ourselves. Abstain from causal sex, under sex and things of that sort. I recall to mind that advert on sex which goes thus, “zip up sex is worth keeping”. There is need to put a curb to our sexual life, whether married or unmarried. Please there is need for abstinence before and during marriage. To married people, your life is not just for sexual relationship. There should be a time to be alone.
The Church does not support artificial family planning because the practice is immoral and criminal act. It is considered to be immoral and criminal because the intention is to kill or avoid the baby. In the non-natural family planning process, a lot of abortifacients mechanisms {devices} are put into use as to impede, prevent or terminate pregnancy. It is true that so many do not consider these abortifacients and mechanisms {devices} as evil, since their desired aims are achieved, but as we know the golden rule has always been, “we should not do evil so that good may come” They are not the best way to put a check to human population or birth rate.
Finally, I reiterate the fact that what the church opts for you, upholds and teaches as the best way for you to check population growth is regulation through the natural method. Saint Pope John Paul II, addressing a group of medical researchers concisely asserts as follows; “The scientific researches that you carry out and pool in order to acquire more precise knowledge of the female cycle and permit more seen utilization of natural method of regulating births, deserve to be better known, encouraged and effectively proposed for application. I am happy to know that a growing number of persons and organizations, on the international plain, appreciate these efforts for natural regulation.
To these men of science, doctors and specialists, I address all my good wishes and encouragement, for what is at stake is the good of families and societies in their legitimate concern to harmonize human fertility with their possibilities, and provided that an appeal is always made to the virtues of love and continence, it is a question of the progress of human self-mastery in conformity with the creators plan”{ Vatican Publication, L’ Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English N., 3 December 1979,16 as quoted by Thomas Pazhayampallil SDB , in Pastoral Guide Vol. II}
Fr Iwuji is of the Society of Divine Vocations
He can be reached on: iwujiudo@gmail.com
08156198851