Starving Mothers in Africa Should Just Abstain from Sex

[dawbs]

For those who saw this post then it disappeared--sorry. We all know that FreeJinger tries to avoid deleting things but there was one of those whoops moments where the wrong button is clicked

So feel free to re-create the discussion, all around.

OP was GeoBQN

Bonnie at A Knotted Life responds to a comment (from another blog) asking what advice she would give mothers in developing countries if they were already having babies they couldn't take care of. If she advises NFP, what is wrong with suggesting condoms? The commenter has lived and worked in African countries and seen what happens when a mother has too many children.

Bonnie's response:

.

aknottedlife.com/2014/05/on-starving-babies-orphans-and-natural.html

If Bonnie is such an expert on NFP, then does she know that it only works when a woman has equal status in the relationship? In Michelle Goldberg's The Means of Reproduction, she related a story from when the George W. Bush administration tried to move aid organizations to promoting NFP instead of artificial contraception. One NGO worker asked the NFP expert what a wife was supposed to do if her husband came home drunk and demanding sex. The NFP expert replied, with complete seriousness, that the wife could stay at her mother's house for the night or give her husband money to go to a prostitute.

[smittykins]

Of course, these are the same people whose solution for the AIDS crisis is "remain a virgin until marriage, marry a virgin, and stay faithful to each other." :roll:

[Hane]

Back when I was a practicing Catholic, I met a priest who had done social work in the slums of Lima, Peru. He stated that contraception wasn't the answer to poor people's problems--that they loved their children, etc., etc. I wasn't in a position where I could tell him, "Maybe not, but it would be a damn good start!"

[Jinger Jar]

Bonnie needs to understand that oftentimes women don't get to choose when, how, and with whom they have sex.

Back when I was a practicing Catholic, I met a priest who had done social work in the slums of Lima, Peru. He stated that contraception wasn't the answer to poor people's problems--that they loved their children, etc., etc. I wasn't in a position where I could tell him, "Maybe not, but it would be a damn good start!"

I heard a priest back in December discussing the legalization of contraception in the Philippines. His lament was that large families in slums will disappear. :cray-cray:

[FloraKitty35]

Bonnie needs to understand that oftentimes women don't get to choose when, how, and with whom they have sex.

I heard a priest back in December discussing the legalization of contraception in the Philippines. His lament was that large families in slums will disappear. :cray-cray:

Easy for the priest to say he isn't taking care of those kids.

[micatite]

Finally, I want to stress something that wasn't brought up by you but I think it needs to be said. Babies are gifts. They are only gifts and they are always gifts. Sometimes they don't feel like the gift you wanted just then, but it does not change the basic fact that they are gifts. Only and always

A gift is something one can REFUSE to accept. Otherwise it's a burden.

I know the religious answer to that is, well give the baby up for adoption and it's the adoptive parents' gift from God. But I always think then that perhaps God should have damn well dialed direct instead of demanding assistance via an unwilling operator.

[FakePigtails]

(apologies in advance for my mishmash of thoughts from the old thread)

IME, it's thought that NFP will fix everything, including the issues of consent to sex. I have yet to see anyone address how women should cope in the meantime, how widespread teaching would even occur, and how (as another poster said last night), checking of cervical fluid in places without proper sanitation would work out (though I'm sure the response would be "that's why we need to spend money on clean water access instead of pills and condoms"). The latter also ties in to the obnoxious notion I've seen in NFP crowds that women should all be comfortable with such things as checking cervical fluid and if they aren't, it's because they've been damaged by our culture.

I've seen the promotion of contraceptives described as "cultural imperialism" which makes so sense since pushing NFP as the only reproductive choice option seems to be the same. This site is seen as a prime example of how birth control's not wanted: cultureoflifeafrica.org/index.html

I do think NFP would be a good thing to teach but only as one option alongside other birth control methods so women could decide what's best for them.

In contrast to all of this, the group Heartline Ministries in Haiti also deals with situations where women don't have a say in their reproductive lives, and they openly provide birth control education and medication for the women they work with: livesayhaiti.com/2014/01/looking-back-year-end-stats-2013-at.html

livesayhaiti.com/2010/10/love-empowers.html

livesayhaiti.com/2014/02/the-locust-effect-please-share.html

[docmom]

I really don't get how planning pregnancies by abstaining during fertile times of the month is any different than planning a pregnancy by determining when you ovulate through use of hormonal contraception. The hard-core NFPers all say it's because they are still open to a pregnancy and god's will. But if god is all powerful, a little thing like hormonal BC should pose no barrier to his will, right?

I do think it's funny that the most vocal NFPers in the blogosphere (Catholic all year's friends) all have a ton of children that they claim they totally planned and NFP works just as well as any hormonal contraceptive.

[Hane]

I really don't get how planning pregnancies by abstaining during fertile times of the month is any different than planning a pregnancy by determining when you ovulate through use of hormonal contraception. The hard-core NFPers all say it's because they are still open to a pregnancy and god's will. But if god is all powerful, a little thing like hormonal BC should pose no barrier to his will, right?

I do think it's funny that the most vocal NFPers in the blogosphere (Catholic all year's friends) all have a ton of children that they claim they totally planned and NFP works just as well as any hormonal contraceptive.

When I went to a Catholic pre-Cana conference (pre-marriage seminar), a couple got up to discuss and endorse NFP. She was hugely pregnant with their second child. They had been married all of THREE YEARS. I said to my (vasectomized long before I met him) fiance, "I know people who WANT kids who don't manage to crank out two within three years!"

[yetanothermeg]

I really don't get how planning pregnancies by abstaining during fertile times of the month is any different than planning a pregnancy by determining when you ovulate through use of hormonal contraception. The hard-core NFPers all say it's because they are still open to a pregnancy and god's will. But if god is all powerful, a little thing like hormonal BC should pose no barrier to his will, right?

I do think it's funny that the most vocal NFPers in the blogosphere (Catholic all year's friends) all have a ton of children that they claim they totally planned and NFP works just as well as any hormonal contraceptive.

This is like the Camp Patton couple. Grace just gave birth to their 4th baby and now they have 4 under 4 years old and her husband just finished his residency as a NFP-only OB-GYN. Not exactly the best advertisement for what he is selling if you ask me.

[dawbs]

I really don't get how planning pregnancies by abstaining during fertile times of the month is any different than planning a pregnancy by determining when you ovulate through use of hormonal contraception. The hard-core NFPers all say it's because they are still open to a pregnancy and god's will. But if god is all powerful, a little thing like hormonal BC should pose no barrier to his will, right?

I do think it's funny that the most vocal NFPers in the blogosphere (Catholic all year's friends) all have a ton of children that they claim they totally planned and NFP works just as well as any hormonal contraceptive.

I've always considered it putting out the fleece and doing it bass-ackwards.

Remember the story of Gideon? God told him to go to war, and he said "uh...I want to make sure I didn't just hae some bad 'shrooms. How about I'll put this fleece here. In the morning, if the ground is dry and the fleece is wet, I'll know this message is supernatural"

So he did. The next day, when Gideon stumbled out of his tent, the ground was dry, the fleece was wet, Gideon was hungover or whatever and while he was wringing the fleece out into a bowl, it occurred to him that the ground would ALWAYS be dry before the fleece was. So it wasn't supernatural, it was just dew.

So Gideon said "uh...God, sorry but, how about one more test. If in the morning the fleece is *dry* and the ground is wet, I'll know the message is supernatural"

Next day, the ground was wet ,the fleece was dry, and Gideon started collecting soldiers.

Well, if you're a fertile couple, and you're having sex without protection, it's not supernaturally necessarily "God's will" when you get pregnant--that's no different than having the sweater be wet when you leave it outside on the picnic table. If, however, you are using contraception and you get knocked up...it's still probably not supernatural, but you could at least chalk it up to being an anomaly, so you won't get an eyeroll from me for saying God's hand was in it.

(Which is something I've taken to answering when people ask me if I'm having more kids. "I'm leaving that up to God"= "We're infertile and I have an IUD because my daily meds don't combine well w/ pregnancy. If I got knocked up, we'd decide what to do about that then")