What do you know about China's one child policy?

I frequently hear people dismiss China's one child policy as something that is in the past.  They talk of it as if it's no big deal.  An entire nation forcing its women to be injected with Depo Provera or to have babies aborted all the way up to nine months of pregnancy is tragic, inhumane and something we cannot continue ignoring.  

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In college, I was able to read "A Mother's Ordeal: One Woman's Fight Against China's One Child Policy," which I would recommend to anyone who would like to know what the "policy" is really like.  It reads like a novel, but it is tragically non-fiction.  

Rep. Chris Smith, who has long fought for the rights of the Chinese people, recently wrote about current United States legislative efforts to fight the one-child policy, which he describes in part as:

For more than three decades, most brothers and sisters have been illegal. And the price for failing to conform to the limit of one child per couple is staggering. A Chinese woman who becomes pregnant without a government permit will be put under mind-bending pressure to abort. She knows that “out-of-plan” illegal children are denied education, health care, and marriage, and that fines for bearing a child without a birth permit can be ten times the average annual income of two parents. Families who can’t or won’t pay are jailed, or their homes are smashed.

If the brave woman still refuses to submit, she may be held in a punishment cell. If she flees, her relatives may be held and, very often, beaten. Group punishments will be used to socially ostracize her. Often, her colleagues and neighbors will be denied birth permits. If the woman is, by some miracle, still able to resist this pressure, she may be physically dragged to the operating table and forced to undergo an abortion.

The result of this policy is a nightmarish “brave new world” with no precedent in human history, where women are psychologically wounded, girls are the victims of sex-selective abortion, and children grow up without brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, or cousins. The United States government must take active steps to fight this atrocity.

Rep. Smith goes on to outline his efforts in Congress currently, as well as the support for the one-child policy given by the current administration (and, by extension, our taxes).  It's important to read and to know what is happening in China. 

It's not just China, however, that is choosing who should have children and how many.  Kenyan bishops recently drew attention to a puzzling tetanus vaccine campaign in their country (emphasis added):

According to reports from CISA agency in Nairobi, during a press conference in Nairobi, His Exc. Mgr. Paul Kariuki Njiru, Bishop of Embu and Chairman of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops Catholic Health Commission of Kenya, questioned why the national tetanus campaign is aimed at girls and women aged between 14 to 49, excluding girls under the age of 13, in addition to the male population. Mgr. Kariuki Njiru reported the church had conducted laboratory tests on the vaccine used in the Tetanus campaign of March 2014 and found out that it contained the Beta HCG sub unit. HCG according to the findings is necessary for pregnancy. This substance, combined with the tetanus vaccine, actually becomes a vaccine against pregnancy. A similar methodology was used in previous tetanus campaigns in the Philippines, Nicaragua and Mexico.

This morning, I learned that in India this week ten women died and dozens more were critically injured during a government-sponsored sterilization campaign.  The women were pressured by the promise of $23 if they agreed to be sterilized.  The medical conditions were unsanitary, rushed and not remotely patient-centered.  And women died.

Why don't we hear more about this very real "war on women?"  Why instead are we as a nation concerned with who is going to pay for women's birth control pills, when women around the world are being mutilated and their children destroyed?  We have been silent for years as families suffer.  We turn a blind eye rather than learn what is really occurring.  It's uncomfortable to know.  But we really must ask what is really happening in China, India, Kenya and other nations.  And then we must ask what we can do to stop it. 

The future of fertility?

Professor Carl Djerassi, a chemist who contributed to the development of the birth control pill, recently spoke to Britan's "The Telegraph" about his predictions for the future of sex, babies and their connection (or lack thereof).

According to Djerassi, by perhaps 2050, the majority of women will choose to freeze their eggs in their early twenties, thus "freeing" them to experience their careers without the worries of a baby interfering.  

Source

Next, these women will be sterilized, thereby "freeing" them to live life without the specter of an unexpected pregnancy haunting their limitless sexual encounters.

And, finally, when women are ready to check "motherhood" off of their to-do list, IVF will be performed (possibly with frozen sperm, but that needs to be experimented with and researched first).  Genetic screening will become standard.

Sex will officially be "just for fun."  No one will have to worry about having an "unwanted" child.  Daily Pill-popping and abortion will be no more.

Apparently, Pro. Djerassi is unfamiliar with the number of women who have aborted their children who were "wanted" and conceived by IVF after they changed their minds.

Surprisingly, he did not mention artificial wombs entering into the equation, thereby "freeing" women from the biological constraints and responsibilities of pregnancy.  Such an arrangement would also give men equal womb access, which would give the equality-as-sameness that the Pill seeks.

A brave new world indeed!  Where is the beauty of the mystery of fruitfulness, rooted in something (Someone) greater than ourselves?  Where is child-as-gift instead of child-as-commodity?  It's staggering to consider how detrimental this would be to society.  More than ever we would say, "We've forgotten who we are."

If I had five minutes to present at the Extraordinary Synod ...

Now I know that I am not, nor ever will be, an invited guest at the Synod.  There are married couples present in the discussions right now from around the world.  Most, if not all, of the couples have been married for decades and lead various marriage preparation or enrichment programs across the globe.  They have all been given a few minutes to speak to the Holy Father and the 200 or so bishops in attendance.  Their statements have also been disseminated to the public through the Vatican Press Office.

Knowing that I am not a national or world marriage leader, nor a veteran of a marriage spanning decades, as the Synod unfolds, there are still a few things I wish I could say -- that someone would say -- to the Synod fathers.  It would be something like this ...

Holy Father Pope Francis, Cardinals and Bishops of the world -- thank you for making marriage and the family such a priority that you are dedicating two Synods -- an "extraordinary" and an "ordinary" -- to these topics.  Thank you for wanting to bring the beautiful truth of these teachings to the world.  Thank you for recognizing the struggles and graces of family life and seeking to better understand so as to articulate the incredible identity of the family.

It is certainly no secret that marriage and the family are under great attack in our world.  This is manifested in differing ways by continent, country and region.  I believe, however, that all of these attacks have one thing at heart.  It is what St. John Paul II referred to in his encyclical letter, "Evangelium Vitae" as the "eclipse of the sense of God and of man."

The crisis of marriage and family is fundamentally, I believe, a crisis of anthropology.  We do not know who we are.  Formed strongly by the industrial, sexual and technological revolutions, we think we are what we do, the pleasure we obtain and the speed at which we can obtain objects and pleasure.  We, as a culture, as a world, are massively confused about what it means to be human; what love, freedom, sacrifice, truth, suffering, conscience, sexuality, our very bodies are and mean.  

It's a common misconception that the Church's "rules" are arbitrary and perhaps even vindictive sentences from a group of celibate men.  It is widely believed that Church teaching is not rooted in anything, is not valid or thoughtful or for our own good.  

This is what we need you to teach and preach and live and encourage.  The world needs to know that because of who we are -- and because of who God is -- we are called and invited to live accordingly.  We need to know that the Church doesn't give us arbitrary rules but a beautiful plan to be authentically human.  We need to know that openness to life isn't something we should grit our teeth and bear, but something we are blessed to receive.  We need to know that same-sex attraction doesn't make a person evil or undermine their dignity, but that same-sex sexual encounters cannot fulfill us.  We need to know that cohabitation isn't "test driving" commitment, but instead that we are capable of the radical risk of giving our life to our spouse.

We don't just need to hear about controversial teachings, though these are important.  We need to hear that marriage is a Sacrament, a vocation, a path to holiness.  We need to hear that marriage is a privileged way of revealing God's love to the world.  We need to hear the stories of married saints whose family life was heroically lived.  We need to hear Mass petitions for families.  We need to be sent forth with confidence that God's grace makes love possible.

We need to be challenged.  We live in a culture of mediocrity.  We are told consistently not to strive for higher things -- in fact, that we are incapable of higher things.  The Church is the lone voice stating confidently, "You are called to be more!"  This is a compliment, not an insult.  We need to hear it, to know it, to believe it.

We need mercy, yes, but we also need truth.  In fact, the two belong together.  To receive both of these, we need to know who we are.  And this brings us back to the beginning (literally, to the beginning of these thoughts and to the "beginning" of Genesis).  Holy Father, Cardinals and Bishops, you have been entrusted with so much goodness and beauty -- promoting and safeguarding the Catholic faith in the world today.  We need you to remind us of who we are, who the family is, who God is, and what He is calling each of us to live.  We don't need the truth to be watered down; we need it to be lovingly expressed.  

Please don't forget that the Church's teaching on marriage and family is beautiful.  What a gift to the world if you could remind us of that, encourage us to embrace that beauty and renew our confidence that this beauty is possible.  

How do you summarize contraception in a few sentences?

Ten priests gave their answers, among which is Fr. Ezra Sullivan, OP's:

The purpose of contraception is to allow a man and woman to experience sexual pleasure without experiencing the full effects of the sexual act. It is very much like chewing food without allowing it nourish one’s body. Therefore, contraception is a sort of “sexual bulimia.” It leads to malnourishment of individuals, couples, and society.

Read them all here.

Good (?) news and bad news

After years of the majority of studies pointing to a link between the birth control pill and breast cancer yet not being reported, I was shocked to see Newsweek acknowledge a new study that affirms the link once again.  That'st the "good" news ... good that they are reporting it, but can we really call the finding itself good?

But in the article I found this line: 

However, physicians suggest that the potential benefits of birth control pills outweigh the risk, although all women react differently to taking the pill. Orally ingested pills are the leading contraceptive method in the United States and currently stand as the most effective method of preventing pregnancy.

So, the "potential benefit" of preventing new children from entering the world outweighs the risk of breast cancer?  Is preventing life really the benefit one wants to risk her own life to achieve? 

A great post for NFP Awareness Week

Update: The link now works!

What I should do is share my own post for NFP Awareness Week, but with the likelihood that I will not have time to pen my thoughts before the week is out, I want to share this post by Rita Buettner, which beautifully articulates why NFP is not birth control ... in fact, that it's not about being "in control" at all.

NFP says to God, "We recognize that we are not in control. We are going to do the best we can to make what we feel are the best decisions for our family, but we are also leaving this in Your hands. You are the giver of life, the One who knows better than we do what we can handle, what lies ahead, what plans you have for us."

NFP says, "Jesus, we place our trust in You. And we will be grateful for any gift you give, especially the gift of life."

God sent our children to us in a different way. And we endured years of infertility before we started down the road to adoption.

- See how God worked in the Buettners' lives here: http://www.catholicreview.org/blogs/open-window/2014/07/23/nfp-is-not-just-birth-control-how-infertility-deepened-my-appreciation-for-natural-family-planning#sthash.CiyEaStq.dpuf

Hobby Lobby's degradation of women

This just in -- women in the United States are being victimized, humiliated and reduced to an all new low.  Perhaps you've heard about it?  Blaring across headlines, news shows and all of blogdom is the persistent idea that who women are involves one thing, and one thing only, and what women want is one thing, and one thing only.  


The tale, it is told, is that women's biggest interest in life is sex.  And what women want, nay, what they need more than anything in the world is love contraception.  Make that free contraception.  To give them less than free contraception is to deny their dignity, goodness and humanity.  Shall we treat them like women-persons who must supress their fertility on the company dime and give them free contraception, or shall we treat them like an object that is capable of bringing forth new life and force them to do so by rejecting their pleas for monthly free trips to the pharmacy?  That's the message we've been given.

You know what's ironic about it?  The idea that women are solely interested in sexual encounters with "freedom" from pregnancy, the idea that women require free contraception to be happy, fulfilled or even to be themselves is, in truth, what is objectifying, victimizing and humiliating.  Women have been reduced to their ability to engage in sex, and a broken sort of sex at that -- an intentionally sterile sex that uses hormones or copper or metal impants to reverse what is perfectly healthy.  If an alien were to come to earth and hope to learn what this strange creature, "woman" is, he would spend five minutes listening to Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Boxer or nearly any reporter and conclude that a woman is a sex-enjoying machine who relies on the government to give her the medicine she needs to ensure that this act remain on a superficial, inconsequential level.


How is this not insulting?  The alternative to the vision of women embraced so wholeheartedly by the government, the media and so many unsuspecting, not-truly-listening Americans is not to see women as baby-making machines.  The alternative does not demand that all women be cooped up in little shacks, stirring broth to feed their 22 children, each a year apart.  No, the alternative, ironically, sees women as persons, not as machines.  It sees women as unique, unrepeatable creatures whose greatest need -- and what they most deserve -- is love.  It sees women as possessing an inherent language of their bodies that allows them to speak love.  It sees the potential to give life as so beautiful and feminine that every woman is called to bear and nourish life spiritually.


Women have bodies, even in some sense are their bodies, but their bodies aren't just a necessary object for sex.  And women are not just their bodies.  They have a rich, interior landscape.  Women have feelings, emotions, desires (not just sexual!), talents, fears, joys, struggles, thoughts.


All of the whining and complaining that the Supreme Court just insulted women by saying that certain closely-held employers can avoid paying for contraceptives if it goes against their religious beliefs -- and instead send their employees to the government who will pay for their birth control --almost sounds like an article from The Onion.  The complaint is that women are being mistreated and denied their fundamental rights by 5 justices who clearly have no respect for women.  But isn't it really the other way around?  Isn't the reality that reducing women to the right to free contraception is denying that what women need and deserve most is not a handful of synthetic hormones but authentic love?

The Year of Five Popes

Divine Mercy Sunday this year has been called the "Day of Four Popes" since Pope Francis, with Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI present, canonized Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII. But now, we can begin calling it the "Year of Five Popes."  Pope Paul VI will be beatified this year, likely in October.  

Pope Paul VI and the future Pope John Paul II (source)

That's going to be a beautiful moment!  Here was a man whose last encyclical was written 10 years before his death.  It was "Humanae Vitae."  The persecution and defiance and anger directed toward him after it was written must have been deflating.  The theologians he trusted to examine the issue of whether or not the birth control Pill is contraceptive turned their backs on him, leaked their opinion to the press, and wrote their own version of papal teaching without the pope.  

Everything Pope Paul  VI predicted would occur with widespread contraceptive use has happened, in ways and scope greater than was probably imagined.

But his beatification is not meant to be a "he told us so" kind of a moment.  Rather, it will be a celebration of a man who gave his life to defending the Church.  He was a "white martyr," a man who loved greatly and who put the Church, his spouse, before himself.  There is certainly much we can learn from him today.

Another case of "Don't trust that headline!"

Perhaps you've seen the news that China is "relaxing" or "easing" or "ending" their one-child policy?  Most people don't realize that China still has a one-child policy to which they strictly adhere.  But in any event, upon closer examination, we see that China is not ending their policy.  They are barely "relaxing" it.  Instead, China will now allow couples of whom the mother or father is an only child to have two children.

That's right, it's a modified two child policy.  

Certainly, it's a modified victory for those couples who thought they could only legally have one (and to illegally become pregnant is to face forced abortion, fines and other punishments), but it's no reversal of the hideous policy.  Rather than praise China for their newly found leniency, we should continue to challenge them to embrace life and to see the negative effects of limiting children across the country for now and in the long term.  

The possibility of having two children reintroduces concepts such as, "aunt," "uncle," and "cousin" to the nationwide vocabulary, but it's not good enough, and we can't settle for this "concession" as a massive victory.

Gambling with time -- why wait until the last minute for children?

One of the most read articles on "The Atlantic" right now is entitled, "How Long Can You Wait to Have a Baby?" It's a puzzling question that seems to uncover from the beginning the mentality behind author Jean Twenge's gamble. If the ideal question really is, "How long can I wait to have a baby?" then having a baby is some sort of work project or trophy or item on the to-do list of life that needs to be checked off somewhere along the line.
Indeed, Twenge is adamant that modern women have been sold a bill of goods. Fertility in the late 30s really isn't as bad as people say, she writes. She said the statistics used are flawed, some even stemming from before life without electricity. 

And there are "dangers" with not waiting until the eleventh hour to have a baby, she warns. 

Literally: an analysis by one economist found that, on average, every year a woman postpones having children leads to a 10 percent increase in career earnings.

Yes, women of the 21st century, your goal is to wrangle your life in such a way that enables you to make as much money as possible, while still managing you to have a child before the biological clock sounds its final alarms. 
As I read Twenge's article about how late one can delay childbearing, I kept thinking of all of the unknowns that live in the future. It's not just about one's age. There are other surprises in life -- illnesses, devastating car accidents, the loss of one's spouse -- that can affect whether or not one is able to have children.  The longer one waits, the more these great unknowns continue to loom.  In other words, there are no guarantees.

Source

And if someone does have a reproductive illness, like endometriosis, it is far better to treat it early than to allow it to continue its work in the body.  Twenge suggests that women in their late 30s see a fertility specialist after six months of "trying," but wouldn't things like charting one's cycle, healing endometriosis or fibroids be far better to begin as soon as possible, rather than ask a doctor for IVF information or fertility drugs?

But the heart of the article is really the unsaid in the article.  Twenge's attitude and question presuppose an idea of children as object to be acquired, not as gift to be received.  To ask, "How long can I wait to have a child?" is almost like the high school or college student who asks, "How late can I wait to study for the test and still get a passing grade?"  Children aren't like that, though.

The fruitfulness of marriage is first a spiritual fruitfulness.  This can become visible through a child, but the couple is asked to be fruitful from the very first moment of their wedding vows.  The nature of authentic love is that it cannot help but give.  And give the couple must.  If their focus is the self and the stockpiling of money, accolades, career, material items, etc., then there's something wrong.  It's not that a couple cannot have these things, but if the focus of the marriage is on acquiring, even if it's together, this is vastly different from a marriage where the focus is on giving.

So, to ask the question of how late to delay childbearing is to misunderstand what marriage is, what generosity and fruitfulness are, and therefore what love truly is.  With a proper understanding of these, the right question to ask would be, "How soon can we have a child?" The attitude and lifestyle behind this question is vastly different from, "How can I have my cake, eat it too, and check off a child or two on my to-do list?"

I read several of the comments to the article, expecting to hear from some women who regretted having waited to try to have children.  Shockingly, most of the comments I saw were arguing that this question shouldn't be asked because not all women want to have children.  To even further the underlying attitude of the article, these commentors were expressing the idea that children are extrinsic to marriage and are only good insofar as you choose to have them.  If a woman wants to be a careerist, then no one should be telling her that she might later regret having children.  So they argue.

And it all points to the unhappy contraceptive mentality of our culture, which has not only changed our idea of love and marriage, but of children themselves.  

The world is upside down

As always, Anthony Esolen has a way with words. His column, "Welcome to the Mental Ward" is an excellent depiction of the craziness of our nation and world right now.
A taste:

On the next Monday—for the lunacy outlasts the phases of the moon—we are told that a pregnant woman is, emotionally, a tender flower, who must be protected against people praying for her and her child as she enters the abortuary. On Tuesday, we are derided for being impossibly old-fashioned if we suggest that it might not be a good thing for women who are possibly pregnant to be crawling on their bellies on a battlefield, where men will be shouting things much more terrifying than the Hail Mary. On Wednesday we are told that a church’s failure to provide free contraceptives to its employees is a terrible sin against the common good. On Friday, we are told that the notion of the “common good” is trumped by the individual’s supposed right to be antisocial in matters of sex.

On Saturday, we are told that no man is an island. On Sunday, we are told that every woman is an island. On Monday, a bad man is sued to support a child conceived out of wedlock. On Tuesday, a good man is told to shut up when he sues to support his child conceived within wedlock, rather than have it aborted. On Wednesday, we complain that there are no good men to marry. On Thursday, we make sure to destroy the last institution that made for good men.

Read it all here.

Changing our NFP vocabulary

One of my soap box issues is the way in which we talk about Natural Family Planning. People talk about NFP's "failure rate" and they talk about having _____# of children, "all of whom were planned." It starts to sound rather like the contraceptive mentality that fuels birth control pills, implants and patches. The general idea is that I am 100% in control, that children happen on my terms and that NFP is natural birth control because it doesn't use any sort of chemical or foreign substance.

But should we talk about NFP that way? Should children be "mistakes," "accidents" and "failures" of the system? Did the parents of all of the children who were "planned" literally choose that at this particular moment pregnancy WOULD occur, and by some incredible miracle God looked at the couple and said, "Yes, ma'am, here's your third child. Coming right up!"

The truth is, "planning" is not 100% control. A couple may be aware of fertility from charting, but the couple does not tell God when to send a child. God chooses, in His great love, to co-create with the parents, and to allow them the gift of sharing in parenthood with Him. 

Dwija at House Unseen, Life Unscripted has penned a great reflection on the language we use to describe NFP. Is a couple terrible at NFP because they have multiple children?

Source

Recently I shared this little NFP interview that Haley at Carrots for Michaelmas published. Do you know how long ago she sent me those questions? A long, long, long time ago. But it took forever for me to respond. And do you know why? Because I kept thinking "No one is gonna want to hear what I have to say about NFP because, like, look at all these kids I have. They're gonna think it doesn't work." I was embarrassed to act like I'm some kind of ambassador for natural family planning what with the fact that, I don't know, we have a family and all.

Friends of mine have said and written things like "Well, obviously I suck at NFP because I keep getting pregnant."

Articles I read say things like "But does NFP work?"

You guys, we have fallen into a hole. We've fallen into the hole of defining life the way corporations want us to define it. "Family planning" has come to mean "child prevention" and we simply accept that, "natural" has come to mean "non-chemical" and we simply accept that and I, for one, am tired. I'm tired of feeling obligated to feel embarrassed that our family contains children. I'm tired of my friends having to tell the world that they "suck" at NFP because their families contain children. I'm tired of everyone I know who knows about NFP having to constantly justify marriages resulting in children.


Stop the crazy train of poor definitions! I wanna get off!

Read the rest here.  It's an excellent read.

These are conversations that we really must be having. When a contracepting couple asks about NFP -- online, in real life, in any number of situations -- I often hear the answer, "Well, it's just as effective as the Pill. Yes, we have four children, but all of them were planned."

Is NFP really just the natural version of the Pill?  Is Natural Family Planning really about planning or is it about cultivating hearts that are ready to receive?  Is it more about control or more about allowing God to guide me in His plan?  Is it primarily about saying no or about saying yes?

There are plenty of questions we need to be asking.  Instead of borrowing the same terms of the contraceptive culture, let's start building a vocabulary that adequately describes who the human person is, who children are, and what the relationship between life and love truly is.

Same-sex "marriage" and a fifty-year-old pill

It's nice to see a secular site pointing out the link between same-sex "marriage" and birth control. Damon Linker writes:

Permitting gay marriage will not lead Americans to stop thinking of marriage as a conjugal union. Quite the reverse: Gay marriage has come to be widely accepted because our society stopped thinking of marriage as a conjugal union decades ago.

Between five and six decades ago, to be precise. That's when the birth control pill — first made available to consumers for the treatment of menstrual disorders in 1957 and approved by the FDA for contraceptive use three years later — began to transform sexual relationships, and hence marriage, in the United States. Once pregnancy was decoupled from intercourse, pre-marital sex became far more common, which removed one powerful incentive to marry young (or marry at all). It likewise became far more common for newlyweds to give themselves an extended childless honeymoon (with some couples choosing never to have kids).

In all of these ways, and many more, the widespread availability of contraception transformed marriage from a conjugal union into a relationship based to a considerable degree on the emotional and sexual fulfillment of its members — with childrearing often, though not always, a part of the equation. And it is because same-sex couples are obviously just as capable as heterosexual couples of forming relationships based on emotional and sexual fulfillment that gay marriage has come to be accepted so widely and so quickly in our culture. (If marriage were still considered a conjugal union, the idea of gay marriage could never have gained the support it currently enjoys. On the contrary, it would be considered ridiculous — as it remains today among members of religious groups that continue to affirm more traditional, conjugal views of marriage.)

Read the rest here at The Week.

Contraception's effect on children

Tom Hoopes has a sobering reflection on contraception's emotional effect on children whose parents use it.

I still remember the day I found out that I, the third child in three years, was never meant to exist at all. And I wouldn’t exist, at all, if pharmacies in Tucson kept later hours on Saturdays in the 1960s.

Read it all here.

"What NFP Isn't"

As always, Jenny of, "Mama Needs Coffee" has an incredible way with words. She was recently a guest blogger on Camp Patton, contemplating the ways in which we frequently misunderstand Natural Family Planning.

It is a wonderful piece -- intelligent, articulate, funny, thought-provoking all in one.

The point is, with NFP a couple is confronted with reality. It isn’t masked by a thin sheath of plastic or suppressed by a precise blend of synthetic hormones. It’s right there, staring them in the face once each month in the form of undeniable signs screaming out: “Hey, you’re fertile! If you have sex right now, you might make another person … isn’t that wild?”

Contraception denies the reality of sex. And it isn’t that it must lead to new life each and every time, but that it is ultimately designed to do so. And not necessarily at our beckoning.

NFP says to nature – and to God – “We bow our heads before this great mystery, and we choose either abstinence or possible parenthood.”

Contraception throws a paper bag over the mystery, believing that what you can’t see can’t hurt you. Except the truth is still there. And sometimes, paper bags tear.

You can read the rest of Jenny's thoughts on the topic here.

Mandatory free sterilization coverage for college women

Does the headline sound like it comes from a Communist country, or perhaps Nazi experimentation in concentration camps? No, not this time.

It's our own country. Apparently, last Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that free sterilization must be offered to all women of college-age (enrolled in college or not).

First of all, why are we not hearing this? There are a limited number of news services where I have seen the story, and unfortunately, this one, covers the story, but also shares a mostly "uncovered" picture of a celebrity in the margin, which I must warn you of before proceeding.

Secondly, why, oh why, would we ever think that offering 18-23 year olds free sterilization is a good idea? It's demeaning. It's degrading. It's heartbreaking. It says fertility is a major disease. It says we don't believe life is good enough to say yes to in the future. It says we don't want to be generous with love and life. It says we are incapable of self-sacrifice.

It says a lot ... and I could vent about it for a long time. But for now, please know that we must be vigilant about the anthropology of our government -- an anthropology that says I am made for this world and nothing more. Don't we want the beauty of knowing we are called to be more?

A strike that underscores a lack of dignity

In an effort to garner support for mandated contraceptive coverage, a group of women has decided to embark on a strike. A sex strike. No sex for a week, they say, to prove to men that men benefit from women having "reproductive choices"too.

So, what's ironic about this?

Well, to start with, these are the same people who would say that Natural Family Planning is a laughable endeavor because it involves periods of abstinence. Times of abstinence, in fact, that average about a week to ten days each month. So, if they can abstain for a week to prove a point, then why is it "impossible" to abstain for the same duration (or a few days more) every month for a greater purpose?

Secondly, do these women realize what they are saying by this strike? "I realize that you value me for the sex I give you. I am a dispenser of sex, not a unique and unrepeatable woman with dignity." Who wants to be treated as an object? Yet, this is precisely what these women are saying: "I am going to strike against being treated like an object, which ironically proves that I allow myself on a regular basis to be treated like an object." How sad!

Thirdly, what is the vision of men here? Men who make their decisions based on a week without sex? And men who must abstain involuntarily. That's a far cry from women who embrace Natural Family Planning ... they can't go it alone. If it becomes necessary for serious reasons to abstain, then both husband and wife unite together in their abstinence. It's not a matter of one person greedily grabbing for control for some sort of power trip. It's a matter of two people discerning how to love one another and their family in the best way possible. Abstinence doesn't become the lack of a gift; it becomes a gift of self in a different way. For "Liberal Ladies Who Lunch," where are the men with courage, self-control, generous hearts and self-sacrificial desires?

Fourthly, do these women realize what they are saving about sex? It's a bargaining tool. It's something useful that can get me something. Where is the dignity, sacredness and mystery of sex? If sex deserves such flippancy, then why is it worth withholding as a bargaining tool anyway?

So, as the "Liberal Ladies Who Lunch" gather women to strike for a week, I'm left feeling very sorry for them. They see their bodies as objects. They see men as sex-hungry monsters. They see sex as a bargaining tool. And contraception? Well, apparently, they see that as the key to freedom.

Let's talk about women's health

This promises to be a wonderful event. Mark your calendars now.

All the ladies ...

Check out this petition organized by Helen Alvare to allow women who disagree with the new HHS mandate to speak for themselves. As a non-contracepting woman, it is quite insulting to have the government insist that 98% of women are using contraception and loving it. As a friend mentioned he had remarked to his housemate the other day, "Do we know all of the women in the 2%?" It seems a very, very misleading statistic.

But enough of that rant! Please consider signing the petition here. It's a joy just to read the names on the list thus far.

New York Times takes notice

Fr. Roger Landry, a priest in New Bedford, MA, who was also the keynote speaker for Ruah Woods' banquet last year, was profiled in the New York Times for his vocal defense of the Church's teaching concerning contraception.

Father Landry also gives sermons on contraception, something very few priests do. He says he relies on Pope John Paul II’s argument against contraception, which he summarizes. “That God has made us fundamentally for love,” Father Landry said, “and that marriage is supposed to help us to love for real. In order for that to happen, we need to totally give ourselves over to someone else in love, and receive the other’s total self in love.

“What happens in the use of contraception, rather than embracing us totally as God made the other, with the masculine capacity to become a dad, or the feminine capacity to become a mom, we reject that paternal and maternal leaning.”

Father Landry argues that contraception can be the gateway to exploitation: “When that petition is made for contraception, it’s going to make pleasure the point of the act, and any time pleasure becomes the point rather than the fruit of the act, the other person becomes the means to that end. And we’re actually going to hurt the people we love.”

Read the entire article for a glimpse into the passion, dedication and dynamism of Fr. Landry.