Lay movements XIII: The Natural Family Planning Association: a family affair.

Toronto--My mother, Isabel Graham, first introduced me to natural family planning when I became engaged in 1970. She even had in her possession the little blue book originally written by Drs. Ogino and Knaus, developers of the Rhythm Method. My husband and I added temperature to our tracking of fertility and two years after we married, I successfully delivered our firstborn. This was the occasion of my mother revisiting the topic: "You are going to need something else during breast feeding," she told me, "and I think this might be it." She was referring to the Ovulation Method which could be learned at St. Patrick's Church in Mississauga. I followed up on her suggestion and indeed found that the Ovulation Method had overcome the limitations of earlier natural methods, particularly with respect to breast feeding, premenopause, and long irregular cycles. Within a year I was taking the training to become an instructor.

In the meantime, my mother was busy networking among her contacts to determine interest in learning more about this method. With funding from the Knights of Columbus, she organized a workshop on the Ovulation Method. This was instrumental in developing the first corps of teachers in the Toronto area. Thus began her long career of organizing and promoting the Ovulation Method, helping it spread throughout Ontario and later initiating an organization meeting for Canada. Her work resulted in the incorporation of The Natural Family Planning Association as a service in the archdiocese of Toronto and later as an agency within Catholic Charities. All the instructors take professional training that meets the World Organization of the Ovulation Method standards. They offer service at no charge to the public in order that financial barriers not be a disincentive for couples to learning a natural method.

The wellspring of Mother's interest in natural family planning was Church teaching. It was further heightened by the publication of Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae. Her feeling was that if the Church was going to teach that married couples use only natural methods to regulate their family size, we, the Church, needed to help couples by providing the means to do this and that we had an obligation to provide the most cutting-edge scientific information available. She used the more generic title for the organization because she thought it would leave the organization free to adapt to any new discoveries that might lie in the future.

As clinic work developed so did requests for speakers. Marriage preparation was an obvious and important adjunct to the service. Then requests from schools began. This gave rise to our Fertility Awareness program for grade 9-10 girls and our co-ed introduction to Natural Family Planning for grades 12-13. The importance of having up-to-date and well-informed priests with respect to natural family planning led to the development of our seminary program. Helping parents with the delicate task of educating their daughters in the area of Christian sexuality led to our Mothers and Daughters program. Recently we have added a fertility awareness program for single mothers to assist agencies dedicated to the support of these young women.

Over the years, both my sisters have opted for the Ovulation Method in their marriages, one swelling the ranks of instructors and the other being our computer guru and helping to document the agency programs. Although our mother has been brought low by the depredations of Alzheimer's, I have picked up her torch as Executive Director. I can only hope to live up to her example of service.

Ovulation Method clinics are available in Ontario at Toronto, Mississauga, Pickering and Oshawa, and personal instruction by appointment in Barrie, Burlington and Orillia; they are also widely available throughout Canada.

Further information can be obtained from the Natural Family Planning Association at 3050 Yonge St., Suite 205, Toronto, ON, M4N 2K4, telephone [phone], The website is (www.naturalfamilyplanning.on.ca).