You'll have kids and you'll damn well pretend you like it!

[emmiedahl]

When contraception is widely available, when it is embraced as normal, when births are planned and scheduled, when deliberation replaces surrender, when convenience replaces hardship and struggle, every child seems like a choice, the product of human will and desire. This delusion represents immense hubris. No child is chosen. What is chosen in this face? It’s a gift too good to be true.

I will always choose deliberation over surrender, convenience over needless hardship and struggle. Always. Also, does TH know that this argument has been used against NFP?

That said, all of my children have been actively planned against via birth control, proof that God indeed can make it happen if He is so inclined.

[casterly]

But then if that's the case why do the Housewife and her church endorse the Natural Family Planning method (popularly known as the rhythm method)? Why is that okay but not the pill or an IUD or a condom???? Any Catholics here with any insight on the rationale?

Just playing devil's advocate, since I was raised Catholic-- I'm pretty sure the "argument" against the pill, etc., is that it can keep an already-fertilized egg from attaching to the uteran wall. It's expanding on the idea that, since "life begins at conception" and whatnot, using the pill is tantamount to terminating a pregnancy. :roll:

ETA: Same with condoms and so on. It's the idea that those sperm could have been a life, but you're keeping them from fertilizing any eggs because of the condom (same concept with masturbation). This stuff makes my head spin.

[2xx1xy1JD]

[ukool23]

Im Catholic and from what i remember from church / school, sex is for a married couple so no need for contraception as people get maried to start a family.

Its such a out dated way of thinking.

[Trynn]

Just playing devil's advocate, since I was raised Catholic-- I'm pretty sure the "argument" against the pill, etc., is that it can keep an already-fertilized egg from attaching to the uteran wall. It's expanding on the idea that, since "life begins at conception" and whatnot, using the pill is tantamount to terminating a pregnancy. :roll:

ETA: Same with condoms and so on. It's the idea that those sperm could have been a life, but you're keeping them from fertilizing any eggs because of the condom (same concept with masturbation). This stuff makes my head spin.

But if you take that logic a step further, every time I refrain from having sex, I am preventing eggs from being fertilized. I therefore need to go out and have as much sex as possible to make loads and loads of lovely babies....oh wait, but unless I'm married that's a sin...

Dangit, I can't win!

[Boltingmadonna]

casterly said:

I'm pretty sure the "argument" against the pill, etc., is that it can keep an already-fertilized egg from attaching to the uteran wall.

I was raised Catholic too, and I suspect this argument is bullshit. (Not that you are bullshitting, casterly--just that the Church is pulling stuff out of its ass as usual.) Because when I was a kid, they didn't even have any idea this could possibly happen, yet they were still against contraception. They made that up later. When Catholics started disobeying them and using BC anyway, they had to up the ante, so they were all like, "but it's ABOOOOORRTION!" Abortion being the worst thing possible, if they could compare the Pill to abortion, they figured they would surely force women to obey them. It hasn't worked yet, but they keep trying.

I don't get this whole idea that contraception stops some speshul snowflake from being born, therefore, woe! woe! somehow you have destroyed a child that never was. Because pregnancy stops kids from being born, too. For every pregnancy a woman chooses to carry, there are more eggs that have to sit the game out and never have a chance to get fertilized. And if you have sex while pregnant, all those sperm are just going to be wasted. Every child that's conceived stops innumerable other children from ever coming into being. That's just the way it works. You have 300,000 eggs at puberty, and most of them are doomed. Every child is "chosen" over some other child that could have been born. Not very nice of God to leave all those sweet, innocent little pre-zygotes to wither up and die, trapped in some heartless woman-creature's ovaries. Won't somebody think of the eggs??!

[bananacat]

Wow. THIS topic is so sensitive even inside the Church.

1st -Catholic can use the pill for medical reasons, even for clearing up pimples or mood swings. It's very liberal. Even to help to get pregnant.

Why the Church doesn't allow for contraception is hard to explain. When asked by the Church " are we are willing to accept children into our life", we agreed.For me it means not to hinder life so there is no room for God. I guess we "leave room for the holy spirit." It also is a reminder of the vows we said to each other and our commitment to the Church.

That being said. We have no kids blessings, married a year and half.

It works for US. :)

BC pills can't help you get pregnant. Any regulation of cycles will stop as soon as you stop taking the pills. The pills regulate bleeding, but it's not a "true" menstruation anyway since the pill suppresses ovulation. It doesn't make ovulation more regular because it only suppresses ovulation.

[bananacat]

I asked my priest once about birth control. He did indicate that it can be used for medical reasons and the health of the mother. Included in this... is mental health.

As someone who suffers from post partum depression and just depression in general, it would not be healthy for me or the babies if i was to allow myself to pump them out in great numbers. I would end up like Yates and having a run in with a large body of water.

I'm sure it's really important to you to have this rationalization, but honestly, why should you even need a reason? Why not be allowed to use birth control simply because you don't want more kids or you don't want them right now? It's really none of the priest's business. This is just a control issue where the Church likes to throw its weight around.

[FlorenceHamilton]

BC pills can't help you get pregnant. Any regulation of cycles will stop as soon as you stop taking the pills. The pills regulate bleeding, but it's not a "true" menstruation anyway since the pill suppresses ovulation. It doesn't make ovulation more regular because it only suppresses ovulation.

Actually BC, taking the pill can promote fertility in women who have polycystic ovaries. The process of ovulating is a process of forming cysts...the follicular cysts that begin to swell in the weeks before ovulation and the luteal cysts that remain and swell up after ovulation. All women have cysts on their ovaries. It is normal. In some women, the cysts don't swell and shrink properly and the result is overly large cysts that mess up the hormonal pattern and leak and scar up the ovaries. By recognizing this in young women and putting her on the pill, you prevent her from creating these large destructive cysts as her body keeps trying to ovulate. Then, her ovaries are healthier when she stops the pill and conception (even if it required some hormonal manipulation) is much easier. When her body tries to ovulate, there are not big scars to prevent the ovum from being released into the fallopian tube.

So the pill can protect future fertility in a fairly common population of women.

Edited for spelling

[MrsKay]

Ditto for endometriosis. BCP before/between pregnancies can suppress scarring etc. that can make it difficult or impossible to get pregnant.

[Rosa]

She had reflux and refused to sleep at night, but through the exhaustion I remembered the horrible nights of longing for a baby in my arms.

This.

Sometimes, parenting is really, really hard. Just regular parenting, kids get sick, you get sick, you get tired. Sometimes, it gets a lot harder than that, even - terminal illness, injury, every tragedy under the sun.

I don't know how people do it, if they don't have that desire to get them through. A lot of people do, but not everyone manages. How many little children do we just throw away (including the ones thrown away in the fundy manner, beaten and despised and treated like devils incarnate, then shunned when they grow up and show some individuality anyway?)

[casterly]

casterly said:

I was raised Catholic too, and I suspect this argument is bullshit. (Not that you are bullshitting, casterly--just that the Church is pulling stuff out of its ass as usual.) Because when I was a kid, they didn't even have any idea this could possibly happen, yet they were still against contraception. They made that up later. When Catholics started disobeying them and using BC anyway, they had to up the ante, so they were all like, "but it's ABOOOOORRTION!" Abortion being the worst thing possible, if they could compare the Pill to abortion, they figured they would surely force women to obey them. It hasn't worked yet, but they keep trying.

I don't get this whole idea that contraception stops some speshul snowflake from being born, therefore, woe! woe! somehow you have destroyed a child that never was. Because pregnancy stops kids from being born, too. For every pregnancy a woman chooses to carry, there are more eggs that have to sit the game out and never have a chance to get fertilized. And if you have sex while pregnant, all those sperm are just going to be wasted. Every child that's conceived stops innumerable other children from ever coming into being. That's just the way it works. You have 300,000 eggs at puberty, and most of them are doomed. Every child is "chosen" over some other child that could have been born. Not very nice of God to leave all those sweet, innocent little pre-zygotes to wither up and die, trapped in some heartless woman-creature's ovaries. Won't somebody think of the eggs??!

:lol: I agree. They're always like, "Well what if that egg/fetus could've been the next Leonardo da Vinci? HMMM?" Well, so could that one that gets flushed out during your period. So.

Other probable ulterior motive: make the prospect of sex as pleasureless, joyless, and mechanic as possible. SEX IS ONLY TO MAKE THE BABIES DAMMIT. You don't want a kid right now? LOL TOO BAD IT'S NFP OR NOTHING.

[FakePigtails]

In a post she just put up, TH says:

This is the anti-bc rationale in a nutshell. I just cannot for the life of me see why hardship and struggle are to be preferred for their own sake. Or why it is so horrible for a child to be chosen.

I also wonder if the idea TH expresses really represents the primal source of most misogyny -- the fear that women have the power of life and death. It seems weird. It's not really a fear I can relate to. But you see a lot of anti-choice, anti-BCers arguing freaking out at the idea that their mothers could have chosen not to have them.

Over at CAF, and on some blogs by posters there, I've seen this type of attitude, that suffering is this thing we're sometimes called to and having children when you're not ready, well that's part of that plan. It's kind of frightening to read women saying that. So children are a blessing, yet if you have one when you're not ready . . . God didn't promise us an easy life. So what does that make the child? Doesn't sound like a blessing much to me, but I'm a heathen contracepting Protestant.

[Conuly]

That said, all of my children have been actively planned against via birth control, proof that God indeed can make it happen if He is so inclined.

Dude, these people believe that God can make a VIRGIN have children. (And yet, they're big on abstinence before marriage. Guys, Mary should prove it's not 100%!)

And they think that their own omnipotent deity is really going to be stopped by the pill? There's nothing at all stopping the big guy from making the pill not work and the mother not realize she's pregnant until the third trimester or right up until birth. (Not everybody who gets that far without realizing what's going on is young and in deep denial, although I have no doubt that those conditions don't help. If the baby's positioned oddly you might not feel kicking. If there are multiples, they can't move around much, so you won't feel them. If you always have had irregular or light periods, and/or continue to have spotting through your pregnancy, you're not going to go "Oh, hey, it's stopped!" as soon. If your period hasn't come back yet after giving birth, and you get pregnant on your first ovulation, same deal. If your husband has had a vasectomy AND you're on the pill (and also monogamous), it's almost certainly not going to be the first thought going through your head (and yet, vasectomies do have a small failure rate). But I digress.)

When we're talking about "arrogance" and "hubris", the people who think it's possible to thwart God's plan have got to be at the top of the list.

They're always like, "Well what if that egg/fetus could've been the next Leonardo da Vinci? HMMM?"

It's like they think they're clever and unique! Bless their little hearts. :roll: What if that fetus could've been the next Hitler, HMM? Oh hey, great news, I just saved twelve million lives by aborting a fetus! What if my first existing child* could've been the next da Vinci, but won't be because I insisted on having a second and third and tenth child afterwards and her creative talents never were nurtured? HMM?

* Hypothetical existing child

[fundifugee]

I have been thinking lately about the value of human life, which I suspect we can all agree is intrinsic. However, if you've ever lived in a place where poverty is endemic, you realize that human life is cheap in some places. When I lived in East Africa (two years), death was commonplace. It is everywhere, but it was far more obvious there; here in the northern hemisphere we also die but tend to do it out of sight in hospitals and that. At any rate, there, and in South America, infant death, child death, vehicle crashes, violence, infectious disease, etc. were prevalent and none of it came with the shock and horror and outrage that it does here.

So I have been wondering if these no-family-planning-every-sperm-is-sacred folks are really undermining their supposed value of human life. Perhaps the advent of fertility control (not to mention public health and safety measures) are part of why we value human life so much in our part of the world. Perhaps it is a luxury and a bourgeois value, when compared to the women who have no choice but to have baby after baby in a place where each birth constitutes a 10% chance of mortality for mother, baby, or both.

I don't think I've expressed myself well but thought I would put the idea out there for those of you with more social sciences background than I. I wonder if there is any sociological/anthropological/other work on the way cultures regard death and whether the ability to control fertility affects that.

[ellerigby]

Everything in my personal and professional experience shows me that desire to be a parent DOES matter.

...

To me, it's not selfish to be honest enough to admit that you may not be able to cope. It's only selfish to proceed to have children when you know that you and/or your partner may not cope well, but you want approval from your family or community/want to prevent a partner from leaving you/want a baby to cuddle even if your partner has poor control of their mental illness/don't want to bother with birth control or face anyone's disapproval for using it, etc.

QFT. I'm an attorney in the special victim's unit of my city's DA's office, dealing mostly with child abuse cases. I have always been staunchly pro-choice and pro-BC, but my line of work has seriously strengthened my beliefs. The number of children who are born to parents who don't want them, can't handle them, and/or are unprepared to be parents is staggering. I get so angry when I hear of groups trying to limit access to BC and abortion and then are unwilling to provide support to young/poor families and children in the system.

[bananacat]

:lol: I agree. They're always like, "Well what if that egg/fetus could've been the next Leonardo da Vinci? HMMM?" Well, so could that one that gets flushed out during your period. So.

Other probable ulterior motive: make the prospect of sex as pleasureless, joyless, and mechanic as possible. SEX IS ONLY TO MAKE THE BABIES DAMMIT. You don't want a kid right now? LOL TOO BAD IT'S NFP OR NOTHING.

The problem with the "next da Vinci" is something we see with the Duggars too. They think one of their kids is gonna cure cancer, but they refuse to provide the tools for any of their children to really be successful and creative. They seem to think that your achievements in life are assigned at birth, lottery-style, and it doesn't take anything else. And this is where the real fatal flaw in their plan is: they don't believe that the pregnant woman herself could ever accomplish anything more than birthing a son who could do something great (or birthing a girl who could go on to have important sons). What if a woman is pregnant in college and deciding what to do. If she has the baby, she might have to drop out of school but the baby could cure cancer. Or if she has an abortion maybe she can stay in school and cure cancer herself. Nobody ever considers what the actual woman can do and how an unwanted pregnancy could change that. The whole "potential" argument is just silly because it basically boils down to "if things had been different then, things would be different now".

As for the NFP, I think it is acceptable for Catholics because it is irritating. It's like if you jump through all the hoops, clinically schedule your sex, abstain from it sometimes when you really want it, and still take some risk, then you've done enough work to earn sex without a resulting pregnancy. Other forms of pregnancy prevention are just too easy so you don't really earn it, and nobody deserves to just have a carefree, enjoyable fuck once in a while.

[Lunatic]

What about couples that carry genetically passed diseases like Huntington's? Or some other genetic problems that would guarantee all of their children would live short painful lives. Would the TH recommend that they crank out the babies too? I guess those people should never get married OR have sex since god has obviously cursed them.

[samurai_sarah]

Just playing devil's advocate, since I was raised Catholic-- I'm pretty sure the "argument" against the pill, etc., is that it can keep an already-fertilized egg from attaching to the uteran wall. It's expanding on the idea that, since "life begins at conception" and whatnot, using the pill is tantamount to terminating a pregnancy. :roll:

ETA: Same with condoms and so on. It's the idea that those sperm could have been a life, but you're keeping them from fertilizing any eggs because of the condom (same concept with masturbation). This stuff makes my head spin.

I seem to remember that there was quite a bit of controversy in the RCC about allowing the pill, back in the day. If memory serves, the majority of Catholic pressure groups, and the college of cardinals was FOR allowing the pill, but pope Paul VI (?) pulled the "ex cathedra" stuff, and that was that. And yes, if memory serves, your argument was the one that had him decided. Sorry, I get that you're playing the devil's advocate, I just love that tid-bit about the religion I was raised in as well, because it shows the disconnect that's so inherent within that church. It could have gone so differently...

[kayray]

Well, I am making a CHOICE not to have children, and married and having sex, and using an IUD, so I guess I am doing it all wrong.

And it has nothing to do with feeling that I would not make a good parent. Indeed, I firmly believe my husband and I would both be great parents. My husband is womderful with children and we have nephews and so forth we greatly love. However, that is not the life I want and I would be very resentful of any child that I was "forced" to have out of some idea I do not have a choice.

Having children or not having children IS a choice these days, and I am grateful for it!

[kayray]

Also, if God did not want birth control, he never would have given the mothers and fathers of the inventors and researchers of birth control the "blessed gifts" of their children who developed birth control.

I do not believe in God, but it drives me crazy when God is supposed to know all and have such power...but examples of such lapses are ignored or brushed over!

[Feberin]

Very few Catholics actually stick to the no birth control buisness. Even my super religious MIL (goes to church pretty much daily and most of her closest friends are priests or nuns) had my FIL take permenant measures after five kids. I think the church is just behind everyone else and trying to stick to something that just doesn't work anymore. I also think the most selfish thing to do is to have children that you don't want.

[FakePigtails]

What about couples that carry genetically passed diseases like Huntington's? Or some other genetic problems that would guarantee all of their children would live short painful lives. Would the TH recommend that they crank out the babies too? I guess those people should never get married OR have sex since god has obviously cursed them.

The CAF answer, at least, is that the couple should use extremely careful NFP or abstain completely. That's your cross in life, end of story.

[Boltingmadonna]

I'm not sure the Catholic Church actually cares if your children are going to have some painful, potentially fatal illness. Having a fatally ill child is the next best thing to being fatally ill yourself. It's an opportunity for God to improve your character through suffering, and for you to show how devoted you are to Him by suffering obediently and offering it all up for the salvation of sinners. If you had six or eight children and they all had fatal genetic illnesses, your priest would not suggest that possibly you should refrain from procreation hereafter. Instead, you would be praised because you were willing to let all those precious children have a chance to be born, suffer in an edifying manner for the benefit of others, and then die and go to Heaven where they would undoubtedly receive a great reward. Seriously. That's how they think. Suffering is good. Being happy and healthy might not actually be evil, but it's suspicious because it might lead you to enjoy life too much.

[Georgiana]

I'm Catholic, and the way it has always been taught to me by my parents, priests, and teachers is a balance between accepting God's Will and Stewardship. Children are a blessing entrusted to us by God to care for and raise to the best of our ability. We have a responsibility towards the children that have been entrusted to us to ensure that they are safe, loved, and well provided for. If, for whatever reason, you can only care for so many children before you are no longer able to Steward them responsibly, it is both permissible and encouraged to take preventive measures. Real children and their needs override hypothetical ones.

As for sex, that is part of a healthy marriage and stable home life, and since this is intrinsic to the Stewardship of both the marriage and the raising of children, it ought not to be impeded. Which means that there are cases where BC is acceptable.

Basically, it's between you and God.

Also, my mom is a fundie-lite Catholic, and she wanted me on BC since I was 13.