Why I Don’t Use Birth Control (my Natural Family Planning Experience) 

Thank you so much!! I really appreciate that!! 💗

@@KatherineCimorelli Hi my name is suha raza I am from village and I love watching all of your videos

Thank you for your encouragement! Really appreciate it!! 💗💗

Thank you so much for your comment!! I LOVE theology of the body. It has truly changed my life! I would love to talk about it but I want to make sure I’m properly educated as it’s such a deep, rich message. Thank you again for your comment!! 💗

❤️❤️❤️

The Christian churches only changed their minds on this in the mid 20th Century. Before that everyone was on the same page that it is morally illicit

Hormonal birth control or the barrier method blocks fertility and prevents giving yourself completely to your spouse at any point in a women's cycle. NFP uses what God created (a women's cycle) . Working with our natural cycle, you can avoid having sex on fertile days to try and avoid conception. Being married in the church, we make a promise to be open to life, so avoiding pregnancy should only be done for health reasons, spacing out children and other important means. It is complex and can be a hard pill to swallow, especially in the secular world. But basically, hormones block out God while NFP is working with God. Idk if I make any sense.

Disclaimer: I'm neither Catholic or a doctor but this is my understanding. 1. Catholics believe all children are a gift from God, and taking hormonal birth control is basically overriding the will of God and making it much harder to get pregnant. Using NFP, there's no barrier to you getting pregnant. Some people using NFP will use condoms during their fertile window, others will just abstain during that time, but there are no changes happening in your body that prevent pregnancy. You can still very much get pregnant. The real-world success rate of using NFP to prevent is about 75%, meaning 1 in 4 people practicing NFP will get pregnant. 2. Birth control methods work in different ways. Some methods, like the pill, basically trick your body into think you're pregnant so you don't ovulate. No ovulation=no chance for pregnancy. Other forms thicken the cervical mucus to make to near impossible for sperm to get into the uterus to fertilize an egg that's been ovulated. The problem comes with the third thing some methods do which is thin the uterine lining so a fertilized egg can't implant, which prevents pregnancy. All these things happen naturally in our bodies. There is a reason people don't get pregnant their first month of trying every single time. However, Catholics believe life begins when sperm meets egg, they view this as an abortion, which is a no-no. Medically, this isn't an abortion because you aren't pregnant until the embryo implants, and birth control cannot end a pregnancy after implantation occurs. However, everyone has different moral views for a whole bunch of different reasons about when life begins and what reproductive choices are acceptable when, and that is the line that Catholics (and other Christian denominations) draw for themselves.

Someone once explained it to me like this and I saved the text because I thought it was an insightful explanation: "Is there a difference between having sex and not having sex? Then there is a difference between contracepting in the fertile time and abstaining in the fertile time. You can lose weight by dieting or by purging. We seem to understand in our culture that it is disordered to eat for pleasure without restraint --that we must make choices in the types of food or quantities of food we eat to achieve good health. God made eating pleasureful so that we wouldn't starve to death, but we are supposed to control ourselves. So too, God gave us the gift of sex, for use only in marriage, with our spouse, ordered to the ends of life and love. The act is the consummation of the marriage vows. He made it pleasureful to insure the propagation of the species. If we choose for a just reason that it is not prudent to have another child right now, there is no rule that we must have sex every day. We simply choose not to use the gift. But if we do use the gift, it is disordered to try to wrest the pleasure out of it while rejecting how the act is ordered. Fertility is part of the design, not a flaw. In His goodness, God did design us to be able to tell our times of fertility, so that if prudence dictates that we not have a child, there are still days to show conjugal love, without insulting Him by destroying the integrity of the act. And having a tubal ligation or vasectomy is taking a healthy, properly functioning bodily organ and intentionally rendering it non-functioning. Nowhere else in medicine is this considered ethical. This is beneath our dignity as human beings, like "fixing" an animal that has instinct and not free will. We are capable of disciplining ourselves for the good outcomes we desire. It is not easy, but it is how we have integrity."

@@abjws love this! Thanks for sharing!

There are two main reasons Catholics are against birth control. 1)A couple using birth control is withholding their fertility from one another. Marriage is the total gift of self, and when you use artificial birth control you are saying "no" to part of that. 2) It says "no" to God to being open to life. The two ends of sex are for the union of the spouses and the procreation of children, and using birth control shuts down half of that. A couple other reasons are certain forms of birth control are abortifacients, meaning they cause an early abortion, and certain forms are very harmful to a woman's health.

My sister got pregnant with both her kids while on BC. I just got off BC because of hyperthyroidism. I'm learning the NFP method. I missed my cycle for 2 months now they are back after being on thyroid meds. My goal is to avoid hormonal BC if possible. Married for 16 years and we don't want kids. I have other many health issues and can't even afford proper medical care. I need to get mammogram but can even afford that so I'm just gonna a chance here so I can even imagine getting pregnant now.

As far as I know she's Roman Catholic. The use of contraception or direct sterilization to prevent pregnancy in marriage is not allowed for Catholics, as taught by the Magisterium of the Church and defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) paragraph 2399 and 2370. That said, under the principle of double effect, a married Catholic woman could use the birth control pill for medical reasons (ie. some women use it for epliepsy) and it would be moral provided that preventing pregnancy was an unintended side effect of its use. There are so many great RU-vid videos on this topic explaining it more in depth such as from Trent Horn or Jackie Angel.

Unfortunately, due to poor catechesis and lack of resources, many Catholics have never heard of this. But this is very much mainstream Catholic teaching!

Hi! Thanks for your comment. Was wondering where you’re gathering this data from as I’m not finding these numbers on efficacy. There shouldn’t be a single number on the efficacy of NFP as there are multiple methods and each one is different. Here is a published study showing efficacy of Marquette which is the method I use.. hope this helps! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18997569/

@@KatherineCimorelli RU-vid does not allow me to post a link but I used data from the NIH. This study you posted here still does not show a higher or same typical use rate than BC pills. Typical use should always be used for contraceptives- using the perfect use rate is a misunderstanding of the science. The rate in the study you posted is similar to BC pills, but that is the rate found in one sample of ~200 women. The NIH data uses multiple data sets and studies, it is more reliable data. Without replication, an efficacy rate taken from 1 study is not sufficient evidence for anything- again, that is a misunderstanding of the science. You did not specify in the video when you made the claim that NFP is just as effective as BC. NFP can be a good method for some people, but to claim that it is just as effective as BC pills is wrong and dangerous when talking to an audience who a) will take your advice over medical professionals because of your religious authority (weather you intend it or not) and b) do not have the same resources you do to deal with an unplanned pregnancy. I highly recommend watching MamaDoctorJones video about Brett Cooper where she breaks down the myths Cooper uses to villainize BC (which you are not doing but the information is important) and more importantly discusses the actual efficacy of NFP and how to interpret it. MDJ is a board certified OB/GYN in multiple countries and has used NFP herself.

@@ButterSandwich Doctor here. data from NIH does not account for those who are using NFP TO conceive as opposed to prevent pregnancy. So the numbers are quite skewed.

@@ButterSandwichalso not a true claim that various forms of BC aren’t abortifacient. For many, chief mechanism is prevention of implantation. This is indeed abortifacient given that life begins at conception.

@@SamanthaRossiMusic I do not believe that you are a doctor, at least not a physician. Because both of your responses are blatant falsehoods.