Question about BC methods... Fundies?

[VeraAnne]

Ecological breastfeeding is very effective if, and only if, you meet all the criteria.

1) Exclusively breastfeeding. No supplements.

2) Less than 6 months post partum

3) No return of menses

This is actually a recognized form of birthcontrol called LAM.

You continue to have reduced fertility as long as you are not having a period, but chances of pregnancy go up significantly after 6 months.

[pixydust]

I was taught, in my crazy fundie teen days, that condoms are ok, but then it changed to nothing is ok except NFP.

[Austin]

Ecological breastfeeding is very effective if, and only if, you meet all the criteria.

1) Exclusively breastfeeding. No supplements.

2) Less than 6 months post partum

3) No return of menses

This is actually a recognized form of birthcontrol called LAM.

You continue to have reduced fertility as long as you are not having a period, but chances of pregnancy go up significantly after 6 months.

Did you read what Lissar posted from DocSharon, an OB/GYN and a practicing Catholic regarding your assertion about oral contraception and the morning after pill?

edited for clarity

[Austin]

Our chosen method is withdrawal. Were it to fail, we would be okay with that. Condoms would be fine too, we just don't like em. ; )

When we are done with kids for sure, vasectomy is what we'll go with.

Withdrawal sounds delightful. :roll:

If condoms would be okay but your hero just doesn't like them, why don't you get a diaphragm? It's a barrier method, just like condoms.

[ilovetchotchkes]

My son is a boob monster and I didn't get my period back til month 13 pp.

You know fundies and birth control really make me laugh. Most Christians believe in a virgin birth, so if the almighty can supposedly make a virgin pregnant but he can't get around some othotrycyclin or a piece of rubber?

[Sinister Rouge]

... until I mentioned "spermicide" and then she told me she felt it was "really wrong to kill the sperm like that". I didn't even know what to say. The next day she told me they had decided to use condoms. I looked at her and said "do you think you are somehow saving the sperm's lives by using condoms?" She told me she did.

I realized at that point she was bat-shit crazy and there was no point in telling her anything.

What does she do, pour them into a ribbon-wrapped mason jar and keep them as little pets? Feed 'em some fish food now and then so they don't die?

Are there really living, breathing people out there who can't reason beyond the next 2 minutes? :confusion-waiting:

[VeraAnne]

Yes, I read the information that lissar posted, but even birth contol inserts explain that changing in uterine lining and implantation disruption are secondary effects of hormonal birth control. I can't post links on my phone, but there was a study done in the past year that addresses the number of implantation failures that can be attributed to hormonal birth control or iud.

[FlorenceHamilton]

The troubling thing to me is that QF people do not practice what they preach at all. The Organic meathod is not foolproof. However, it truly would keep you in line with the idea of not interfering with what god provides. What fries me most about the QF people is that they deliberately stop breastfeeding early to encourage a pregnancy way too soon, way too many times. Then they approach menopause and use all sorts of technology to create more babies than their bodies naturally would have.

This is not the same as taking what god (nature) provides.

[VeraAnne]

I agree Florence, although I would say that many QF individuals do not rush weaning or use reproductive technology.

Also someone earlier mentioned birth control for uses other than contraception. That would fall under the law of double effect, however most QF and Catholics would probably choose NaPro.technology for themselves first before starting hormonal contraception.

[Austin]

Yes, I read the information that lissar posted, but even birth contol inserts explain that changing in uterine lining and implantation disruption are secondary effects of hormonal birth control. I can't post links on my phone, but there was a study done in the past year that addresses the number of implantation failures that can be attributed to hormonal birth control or iud.

I've heard it all before. It boils down that you and your ilk are going to keep spreading the lie misinformation that oral contraceptives, particularly the morning after pill, is abortion.

While something can theoretically happen, it doesn't mean that it does, or does with any significant statistical frequency. DocSharon conceded that, as do the manufacturers of oral contraceptives, which is why it appears on oral contraceptive packaging inserts. When it comes to human reproduction (or any reproduction), lots of things can happen. There is even an argument that NFP could cause a fertilized egg not to implant. It just gets down to being "silly season" crap.

I think you all should have funeral services over your maxi pads every month, because who knows? Maybe something you did/drank/ate/took (as in medication) made your womb hostile to a fertilized egg and your period is actually an "abortion". 'Cause you never really know, do you?

[VeraAnne]

It isn't just a theoretical risk, it is a stated secondary effect. There are other things that can effevt omplantation such as nursing and even sexual timing.

People should be aware of how their contraception works, especially if they are personally prolife. The best way to avoid implantation failure is to use a barrier method or be sterilized.

Edit to add that implantation disruption is statistically significant. Ill try to get on my home computer to get a link up to the study I'm thinking of.

[VeraAnne]

This wasn't exactly what I was looking for, but when I was trying to find the study I found this about Plan B (high dose levonorgestrel)

Comparison to control specimens displayed marked restructuralization of the endometrium. As a main feature, the number of ciliated cells were reduced, and cilia disappeared in the proliferative and periovulatory phase. In the secretory phase, pinopodia disappeared and the endometrial integrity broke down. The contraceptive effect of levonorgestrel seems to be accomplished by alteration of the endometrial surface and, therefore, receptivity.

Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science Inc.

PMID: 12499036 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Scanning electron microscopic (SEM) changes of the endometrium in women taking high doses of levonorgestrel as emergency postcoital contraception.

Ugocsai G, Rózsa M, Ugocsai P.

SourceDepartment of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Academic Teaching Hospital, H-5900 Orosháza, Könd 59, Hungary.

[Guest Anonymous]

It isn't just a theoretical risk, it is a stated secondary effect. There are other things that can effevt omplantation such as nursing and even sexual timing.

People should be aware of how their contraception works, especially if they are personally prolife. The best way to avoid implantation failure is to use a barrier method or be sterilized.

Edit to add that implantation disruption is statistically significant. Ill try to get on my home computer to get a link up to the study I'm thinking of.

It's pointless to talk to you, but I'm going to respond anyway for people who might be swayed by facts. Using *no* birth control results in at minimum just as many failed implantations than using the pill, and possibly more.

This "birth control pills cause abortions" nonsense is just the end of a wedge that people with evil intentions are using to try to limit women's access to the things that allow them to control their fertility. Newsflash, if women don't have the pill more of them will get pregnant and more of them will have abortions - whether they are legal or not. If they're not legal women will get dangerous abortions and they'll die for it. This "pro-life" business is not pro-life. It's pro-controlling women and it's bullshit. If this was about saving potential baby lives VeraAnne there would be standing on a street corner flinging BCP and condoms at every woman over the age of 18 that walked by. But it's not about that.

It's about making sure that women don't dare to have sex outside of the fundies' prescribed arrangements, and if they do, that they get punished for it. Make no mistake, if you're a young single mom these people see a baby as your punishment from God, not as your blessing from him. They'd snatch that child from your arms and give it to someone they consider more worthy in half a second. It's also about keeping married women home and continually pregnant so men can be about the important work of running the world. The deliberate spreading of misinformation is insidious and sickening, and at least in this tiny corner of the internet it will not go unrefuted.

[VeraAnne]

Wow, Lissar. I'm posting factual information, and you're ranting and ascribing wild motives without a shred of evidence.

Information about uterine alterations is important and factual, and many women prolife or politically pro-choice are personally pro-life. It really goes back to informed consent.

In fact, I just found a huge AMA article talking about the very thing, and it concluded that patients are not told about the implantation effects of hormonal contraception on a regular basis, and that physicians should do a better job at presenting this information so that women can make informed decisions about what they are comfortable with.

In fact here you go: "The available evidence supports the hypothesis that when ovulation and fertilization occur in women taking OCs, postfertilization effects are operative on occasion to prevent clinically recognized pregnancy. Physicians should understand and respect the beliefs of patients who consider human life to be present and valuable from the moment of fertilization. Since it would be difficult to predict which patients might object to being given an OC if they were aware of possible postfertilization effects, mentioning the potential for postfertilization effects of OCs to all patients and providing detailed information about the evidence to those who request it is necessary for adequate informed consent."

Postfertilization Effects of Oral Contraceptives

and Their Relationship to Informed Consent

Walter L. Larimore, MD; Joseph B. Stanford, MD, MSPH

[contrary]

dude. i got totally shafted. according to the previously posted definition of 'ecological nursing', i did it twice. with my first baby, despite nursing exclusively for six months, and continued on demand nursing til about 14 mos, i was already knocked up with #2 when she was 11 mos old.

[Guest Anonymous]

That was one study only on emergency contraception. Here's the combined results of 45 studies, also about EC. Link unbroken because it's to a Princeton PDF.

http://ec.princeton.edu/questions/MOA.pdf

The reduced efficacy with a delay in treatment, even when use is adjusted for cycle day of unprotected intercourse, suggests that interference with implantation is likely not an important effect of ECPs. If ECPs did prevent all implantations, then delays in use should not reduce their efficacy as long as they are used before implantation. Results of a simulation model demonstrated that the levonorgestrel regimen could not be effective on average when started after 96 hours without a post-fertilization effect, because with increasing delay, a greater proportion of women would be too near to ovulation.

While some find the existing human and animal studies adequate to conclude that levonorgestrel ECPs have no post-fertilization effect, others may always feel that this question has not been unequivocally answered. The best available evidence indicates that levonorgestrel ECPs prevent pregnancy by mechanisms that do not involve interference with post-fertilization events.

[CanticleoftheTurning]

I don't presume to know exactly what my parents did, but they may have used NFP. I don't know. But they spent years trying to conceive after me and Bro #1, and then had four more kids, and then my mom's uterus/ovaries went wild and she needed a hysterectomy. She had endo and PCOS. So, I presume they never used anything to try to prevent pregnancy.

I do remember my mom taking pregnancy tests when she needed to take a pain pill for a headache, because she didn't want to accidentally harm any embryos. But yes, condoms were a definite no-go. In the words of one of my super-duper-Catholic friends, "condoms are abortion," which in her eyes, meant murder.

I do remember my mom telling me once that she asked a priest about the Pill while pregnant, for medical reasons like the constant heavy bleeding she had, and that the priest said while the primary intention is to treat a disease, then the Pill is morally acceptable.

Still, I do get fed up with the total fixation on NFP on part of Catholics. It sure seems that some people think NFP is meant to try to have babies, and not used for avoidance. :roll: Above-mentioned friend is getting married this month. I'm expecting her to give birth no later than August or September.

Anywho, I tried to use NFP methods for the longest time to work with my cycles naturally. I tried Creighton Model, and that was the best to simply track where my fertile times are for avoidance. I also taught myself Marquette model, which is basically Creighton Model rolled together with the ovulation prediction machine, ClearBlue. During marriage prep, we took another NFP class which was pointless with my PCOS and weird cycles--no matter how much this other superduper Catholic friend who actually teaches the CCL version of NFP says, it is still too "predictive" to work for me.

Only 3-4 months ago i finally gave up on NFP, went on the pill just so I can get my uterus to shed its lining (bled for a frikkin month after I did that). Since it was progest-only, I was concerned about the very minute risk of accidental abortions, so I went with condoms as well. Now I realize that the rate of spontaneous abortions is the same as without the pill, but I'm still working on my scrupulosity. soon I'll have the progest implant and don't have to worry about missing any pills. I don't dare tell any of my Catholic friends and acquaintances, though for fear of them getting on my case. Judgemental bunch, my super duper Catholic friends from my fundie-lite stage.

I changed. They didn't. Tricky stuff.

[VeraAnne]

Yeah, after 6 months the reliablity goes down a lot.

If you do not want to get pregnant again until after a year, I would say a barrier method would be wise after 6 months if you don't want to go on the pill or shot. Fertility is still reduced after 6 months, but pregnancy is definitely possible.

Of course, as I've said above, nursing can also alter the lining of the uterus. This is more of a concern past 6 months when ovulation may be returning. If implantation failure is a concern a barrier method can also help to make sure that no implantation failures are occuring.

I'm a little on the fence about that point, actually. I'm pretty Kantian with my ethics system, and IMO the goal of nursing is nutrition for the baby, not specifically contraception. From a religious standpoint, it can also be argued that God designed our bodies in such a way that caring for the nursing child takes a priority over another pregnancy.

However, from a more emotional standpoint, I do find it difficult to accept taking a known risk when a solution exists that could reduce those risks. I guess in the end, I'm just for people having as much information about everything as possible and then they can make the decision that they're comfortable with given the information available.

[emmiedahl]

This probably makes me a terrible person, but after several hormonal bc failures I got the copper IUD. It ended up having to be removed due to problems, but I don't even consider an unimplanted egg to be worth the thought.

The thing about bc control: It does not thwart God's will. If you believe that God wills every pregnancy, then you have to acknowledge that he gets around bc quite often.

[Kitty]

This probably makes me a terrible person, but after several hormonal bc failures I got the copper IUD. It ended up having to be removed due to problems, but I don't even consider an unimplanted egg to be worth the thought.

The thing about bc control: It does not thwart God's will. If you believe that God wills every pregnancy, then you have to acknowledge that he gets around bc quite often.

Indeed, if he could get around Mary being a virgin, why would some extra estrogen and progesterone slow him down? Or a bit of latex, for that matter?

[VeraAnne]

No, not a terrible person emmiedahl. For one thing, the primary function of the copper IUD is to alter sperm function making fertilization unlikely. For another, it is difficult to say how often increased implantation failure happens in relation to nature. It just really boils down to what you're comfortable with, risk wise.

If you wanted to be 100% sure that no miscarriage would ever happen, you'd have to stop having sex all together.

Of course, the best news is that new shot that they came up with for men. They inject it directly into the vas deferens and it makes sperm unable to fertilize the egg. Another shot reverses it. As long as it doesn't cause mutant sperm that are going to end up causing uterine cancer or something, I'm looking forward to that development.

[Austin]

From the 11-year-old article:

Medical colleagues have suggested to us [authors] that postfertilization loss attributed to OCs would not need to be included in informed consent until it is either definitely proven to exist or proven to be a common event. However, rare but important events are an essential part of other informed consent discussions in medicine, primarily when the rare possibility would be judged by the patient to be important. For example, anesthesia-related deaths are extremely rare for elective surgery (<1:25,000 cases); nevertheless, it is considered appropriate and legally necessary to discuss this rare possibility with patients before such surgery because the possibility of death is so important. Therefore, for women to whom the induced loss of a preembryo or embryo is important, failure to discuss this possibility, even if the possibility is judged to be remote, would be a failure of informed consent.

The authors even concede that while this is a theoretical possibility, it has never been "proven to exist or be a common event". These authors are simply arguing the case for informed consent (which is the insert that comes with oral contraceptives - bada-bing: patient is informed).

[NurseNell]

Here's the Pissing Preacher's words on the pill:

youtube.com/watch?v=T2g_JrAz1DE&feature=player_embedded#at=101

We knew when we married we wanted children, and chose not to use birth control. This was in 1970 and the pill at that time was much stronger than it is now. I'd seen several young women with blood clots in their lungs from the pill and was with one when she died. So I was scared to death of using the pill. If I was a young woman today I'd probably choose the pill. When we didn't get pregnant after a year we started using NFP to try to achieve a pregnancy. Another year went by. An infertility work-up showed male sterility and that the only way I'd ever get pregnant was to do AI with donor sperm. I couldn't accept that so we adopted instead. We were married 8 years when we welcomed our first child into our family.

Catholic fundies would likely only use NFP or similar methods to avoid pregnancies. I think other fundies are OK with barrier methods though from the blogs I follow most just leave it all up to the Lord.

[NurseNell]

Of course, the best news is that new shot that they came up with for men. They inject it directly into the vas deferens and it makes sperm unable to fertilize the egg. Another shot reverses it. As long as it doesn't cause mutant sperm that are going to end up causing uterine cancer or something, I'm looking forward to that development.

Like men are going to line up for that shot! :think: I can't tell you how many women I've known who've had a tubal ligation because the man wouldn't get a vasectomy. Never mind that tubal ligation involves far more risk than a vasectomy.

[VeraAnne]

These authors are simply arguing the case for informed consent (which is the insert that comes with oral contraceptives - bada-bing: patient is informed).

That's not how informed consent works in the medical profession. You can't just send the paper work home and assume that the patient is informed. Doctors don't just assume that the patient will read the information on increased blood clot risk and not smoking, and they typically explain that the Pill stops ovulation. Why leave off other mechanisms?

Oh, and from personal experience, although the article is 11 years old, doctors still do not give that information. I've been on the pill various times in my life,starting about 10 years ago, and I've never had a doctor mention the post-fertilization effects. Clearly, some doctors are still not following the guidelines laid out in the article.

It may not matter to you, but it does matter to a lot of women who, as the article points out, feel anger and betrayal about not be told about these risks. There is absolutely no reason to leave them in the dark.