Why Natural Family Planning?
The short answer to this question is “because natural family planning (NFP) is a morally, spiritually and medically healthy method of practicing responsible parenthood that enables spouses to both avoid and achieve pregnancies in a manner that cooperates with God’s design for human sexuality.” So, in order to explain “Why use NFP?” instead of other means of avoiding or achieving pregnancy, we first need to place NFP in the context of God’s design for married love. There are four truths that can help us understand this design.
First, we are not our own. St. Paul tells us this in 1 Cor 6:16-19, where he addresses sexual sin and exhorts us to glorify God in our bodies. Everything we are and everything we have comes from God, including our bodies and our sexuality. We belong to God before we belong to ourselves, which means we don’t have the right to do whatever we want with our bodies and our sexuality. This is hard for us to accept until we realize that the God to whom we belong loves us more than we could ever love ourselves, and He wants our happiness more than we could ever want it. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by handing ourselves over to God and His plan for sexual love – He created it after all.
Second, according to God’s design, sexual intercourse, which is most properly called the marital act, is about forming a communion of persons in marriage. Human sexuality involves the entirety of the human person, and masculinity or femininity permeates the entirety of the human person in the intimate union of body and soul (CCC 2332). The complementarity of masculinity and femininity allows for a husband and wife to form a communion of persons through their bodies, which means the marital act is never just a union of bodies but an intimate communion of persons.
Third, as spouses solidify a communion of persons through the marital act, this act is about giving and receiving, not taking. Each spouse freely makes a gift of self to the other and in turn receives the other’s gift. Pope St. John Paul II said that in the marital act God has designed the human body to “speak” a “language,” and this language is the language of self-gift and reception (Theology of the Body 103:4-6). The “language of the body” is supposed to be the language of unconditional love that is spoken in the wedding vows. Spouses should want to speak through their bodies – “I come here freely, to give myself to you and only you, all of me until death do us part, open to receiving children from God.”
Fourth, in God’s plan, as spouses form a communion of persons through mutual personal giving and receiving in the marital act, this act is also designed to give and receive life and love. This is the concrete measuring stick for determining the morality of any proposed sexual act. We can ascertain through reason that sexual intercourse is designed for babies and bonding, which means that any use of sexual intercourse that intentionally opposes the procreative or the unitive aspects of the act is opposed to God’s design, is not good for us, and if done knowingly and willingly is sinful.
Understanding God’s plan for sexual loving, spouses may decide to have more children or not to have more children based upon their circumstances and their responsibility to God, to each other, to their already existing children, and to society (Humanae Vitae 10). John Paul II notes, “If we assume that the reasons for deciding not to procreate are morally right, the moral problem of the way of acting in such a case remains” (TOB 122:3). So, the question is, how do spouses truly act responsibly as they plan their families?
First, we can say that morally wrong is “every action which, either in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible” (HV 14). This is the definition of a contraceptive act. Further, we can say that responsible family planning means observing “the innermost structure of the conjugal act” and “the inseparable connection between the two meanings of the conjugal act” (HV 12).
NFP is the only truly responsible, and natural, method of family planning because NFP respects the nature of the marital act and the nature of the spouses. A couple using NFP to avoid a pregnancy for physical, psychological, financial or other just reasons never does anything before, during or after any marital act to make procreation impossible. Tracking the wife’s biological markers of fertility, if an NFP-using couple needs to avoid a pregnancy they abstain from the marital act during the fertile days of the wife’s cycle. When this couple comes together in the marital act during the days that are known to be infertile, their acts of intercourse are not contraceptive (acting against conception); instead, they are simply non-conceptive, just as are acts of intercourse after a wife goes through menopause.
Additionally, NFP couples always speak the fullness of the truth of the “language of the body.” In each of their marital acts, they give all of themselves, holding nothing back. However, in an act of contracepted intercourse the bodies of spouses say, “I come here freely, to give all of myself to you, except … my fertility, and I also don’t really want … your fertility.” Objectively, the spouses are choosing not to give and receive the fullness of themselves. This is why John Paul II says contraception (along with extra-marital sex) falsifies the language of the body and causes the body to speak a lie (TOB 123:6).
However, many, if not most, couples use contraceptives not because they understand and reject God’s design for the marital act but simply because contraceptives are so prevalent and accepted in our culture. Let’s be clear, it’s not that couples using contraception don’t love each other. Rather, they don’t realize that they are not allowing themselves to experience the fullness of personal love that God wants for them. So, without realizing it, couples using contraception not only work against the life-giving aspect of the marital act, but they also prevent the fullness of self-giving love.
Contraception and NFP involve two different moral acts. Using NFP, a couple avoids a pregnancy by refraining from the marital act altogether, thereby reverencing the truth that each act of intercourse is designed to give and receive love and life. When NFP-using couples engage in the marital act, they maintain the intrinsic connection of each marital act to life (HV 11), and they always give the fullness of themselves to each other, including their procreative potential. Therefore, the NFP couple’s behavior does not oppose life or love. Even if a couple uses NFP to avoid pregnancies without a good reason, while they can be guilty of selfishness, even serious selfishness, they are not guilty of an act of contraception, which opposes the life-giving potential of the marital act, trying to change its nature to be what we want it to be.
Additionally, NFP is good medicine! It understands fertility as a healthy condition and by tracking a woman’s cycle it can be used to help promote overall reproductive health, sometimes identifying anomalies in a woman’s cycle that are signs of more significant problems. In contrast, contraceptive “medicine” looks at a properly functioning system of the body, the reproductive system, and tries to make it function improperly. This is the opposite of the purpose of medicine, and we should expect negative side effects to result when we work against bodily health.
Also, it is important to realize that NFP can be used to accomplish a goal that contraception is incapable of accomplishing – achieving a pregnancy. Using NFP can help a couple identify problems with their fertility, so the couple can then seek treatments to heal any maladies and help them conceive through the marital act, as God has designed. This is very different from certain artificial reproductive technologies that seek to “produce” a child apart from the marital act (like IVF and artificial insemination), therefore severing the intrinsic connection between babies and bonding. God has pledged himself to create a human person when the biological conditions are apt for creating life. However, we can bring about those conditions according to God’s design, or not.
For those married couples who are hesitant to try NFP, you have nothing to fear. Modern methods of NFP are effective at helping couples achieve pregnancies, or if a just need arises, to avoid pregnancies as well. If thinking about using NFP, you find yourself afraid to take that step, ask yourself what is behind that fear. Is it a fear of letting go of perceived control? Is it the fear of the periodic abstinence that is necessary if you need to avoid a pregnancy? Is it a fear of not having sex on-demand? Is it a fear that not having sex-on-demand might have negative effects on your marriage? Or, is it some other fear? Be honest and sincere in identifying this fear and present it to the Lord in prayer. After all, one of the most often stated commandments in the Bible is the Lord telling us, “Be not afraid!”
There are other benefits to practicing NFP that cannot be achieved with contraception. NFP has the potential to promote better communication in marriage, it promotes pure and chaste sexual loving, it promotes the mastery of desires instead of allowing our desires to control us, it can help spouses love each other as persons and not treat each other as objects for sexual satisfaction, it can be used to knowingly and consciously co-create a child with God, and it can open couples up to more holistic intimacy beyond sexual intimacy, like spiritual, intellectual, emotional and broader physical intimacy. NFP also promotes reverence for God, for God’s design for sexual love, and for each other.
We need to remember that loving in a fallen world will always involve effort and sacrifice. So, truly responsible parenthood can never be effort free. Before a couple decides to avoid a pregnancy, it would be good for them to go before Jesus in prayer and say, “Dear Jesus, we don’t think we can welcome another child into the world right now because … ” What follows the “because” will help to clarify whether or not the couple is being generous enough with the Lord. The Lord will not ask anything of us that we cannot bear. We need to remember that God’s moral laws are for our happiness. In effect, he provides us with instructions for the healthy functioning of our humanity. Only by following His instructions, which are instructions of love, can we realize the deepest desires of our hearts – hence, this is, “Why NFP?”
Perry Cahall, Ph.D., is the Academic Dean, Theology, and Dean of Institutional Planning, Assessment and Accreditation at the Pontifical College Josephinum.