Humanae vitae - 30 years: NFP and contraception: a world of difference exists between the two.

Many people still say they cannot see any essential difference between contraception and Natural Family Planning (NFP). "After all, they both have the same aim - to avoid pregnancy. They just choose different methods," it is said. There is actually a world of difference.

It is as though someone said "Citizen, this aristocrat asked me for a couple of aspirins. But I thought, why not the guillotine? We both want to cure his headache. But it's just that we have different methods."

The fact is that moral assessment depends not only on our intentions but also on the actions we take. Contraception either alters the nature of intercourse in an essential way or it disrupts the reproductive mechanism, even if only temporarily. And these things we are not permitted to do.

Remaining open to new life

NFP, on the other hand, takes advantage of the natural fluctuations of fertility and sterility during the course of any one menstrual cycle. Married couples are free to have intercourse or to abstain whenever they wish. The fact that pregnancy does not result on this or other occasions is of secondary importance.

Pope Paul VI emphasized the principles governing marital sexuality in Humanae vitae (1968): ". . . each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life." In this brief but brilliant sentence, he showed the plan of the Creator in every circumstance of married life - in normal fertility or in conditions of sterility (after hysterectomy, after the menopause, during pregnancy, or on the infertile days of the menstrual cycle). In all these cases, only normal intercourse is permissible. The act remains open to transmitting the life-giving nature of the sperm cells, even if we know in advance that pregnancy is actually impossible.

A logical progression

One of the sinister aspects of contraception which is often not realized is that it leads on inevitably to sterilization and then to abortion. The reason for this is that it is essentially anti-natal (opposed to fertility and birth). Therefore sterilization and abortion are its logical progression because what they offer is sterile sex.

By a strange paradox NFP is actually frontal; that is, it respects fertility and birth, even if on this particular occasion intercourse happens to be infertile.

The various methods of contraception, moreover, offend against morality in different ways. Barrier methods (condoms, diaphragms) convert the male and female anatomy into sexually "indifferent" organs and therefore involve impure acts which are in essence no different from masturbation. The IUD, the pill, and other hormone methods act either through sterilization (temporary) or early abortion.

NFP avoids these pitfalls and in a mysterious way fosters love, purity, sexual control, and respect for nascent life. It is obviously the design of the Creator for the human race, a plan hidden for a million years but now revealed by science at this time when it will save many marriages from disaster.

Dr. H. Patrick Dunn, an ob/gyn from New Zealand, is the author of Ethics for Doctors, Nurses and Patients, which can be ordered from Human Life International, Vanier, ON. Tel.: [phone] or 613-237-6728. This article is a reprint from HLI Reports, December 1996.