Comments on: Because It’s All About The Babies…Right?

By: Kyra

Kyra — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 02:14:38 +0000

“If you hand out contraception to single women, we’re saying promiscuity is OK as a state, and I am not in support of that,”

No, dummy dummy dummy.

You’re saying “promiscuous sex that doesn’t cause lots of abortions is better than promiscuous sex that does cause a lot of abortions.” In any case, you have no business, as a state, saying promiscuity is not OK. My faith says it’s fine as long as its consensual and safe and otherwise unharmful. Hers presumeably says something different, and she’s welcome to abide by it, but she has no business using it to try to blackmail people into abstinence with the threat of unwanted pregnancies.

By: Julie

Julie — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 22:14:31 +0000

NFP can wonderful for many, many people. However, it is extremely unreliable for people who have PCOS (poly cystic ovarian syndrome), asks people to refrain from sex when they desire it the most (i.e. when a woman is most fertile) and does require a good memory (when we were trying to conceive and temping/charting, I can’t tell you how many mornings I got out of bed and realized I had forgotten my temperature whereas I took the pill for three years without issue). Also, you have to do it for a few months before you can do any sort of real NFP, because you don’t detect ovulation until three days of raised temperatures are observed, which happens as you are ovulating. By the time you detect it, it’s already over. Without a baseline, it’s much harder to do. I have no problem teaching and encouraging women to try it, but it does take a lot of time and commitment and I think it’s far from realistic to expect everyone to do it. Especially if you are working varied shifts, that can throw off your temperature readings as well.
I know for myself, I am extremely regular and the month I conceived my son (we were trying, so I was charting) I had what looked like an ovulation jump and I actually ended up ovulating ten days later. I didn’t realize it until I had a consistent pattern of three raised temperatures. I had all the symptoms the first time, but my temp jump was much more pronounced the second time. The ovulation/conception date was also verified by ultrasound. Had I been trying to prevent pregnancy, I would have been very comfortable having sex that weekend, thinking I had already ovulated, when in fact I hadn’t and I would be expecting an unplanned and perhaps unwanted child instead of the very much wanted little boy I am carrying now.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 20:49:06 +0000

Yes, Prefer. The woman used bad grammar in a verbal statement.

I’ll alert the media. You prepare the concentration camp.

By: prefer not to say

prefer not to say — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 20:46:39 +0000

Ah, my friend — but it doesn’t MEAN that, because if it did, “as a state” would have come immediately before or after “we’re saying” — which it does not.

This isn’t a comment about the state of Missouri. It’s a comment about the state of promiscuity. Somebody tell Betsy Ross to bust out another star.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 20:41:07 +0000

“as a state, we’re saying promiscuity is OK”

By: prefer not to say

prefer not to say — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 20:38:28 +0000

Time out for the misplaced modifier police:

“If you hand out contraception to single women, we’re saying promiscuity is OK as a state, and I am not in support of that,”

Bad grammar rarely produces good policy. “Promiscuity is ok as a state”? What does that even MEAN???

By: Kyra

Kyra — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 20:13:51 +0000

I find myself hoping some other pro-lifer accuses this nut of trying to increase business for the “abortion industry.”

By: Kyra

Kyra — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 20:13:28 +0000

Natural Family Planning, or the Sympto-Thermal method, is the natural method of spacing births approved by the Catholic Church. The great thing is – once trained, its essentially free.

It’s not free. It requires you to abstian from sex for several days out of the month, or use condoms (which, last I checked, were not free), and takes some calculating and measuring and thinking, much more than is required to remember a pill every day (which, I’m not sure how people forget, if you can just take it in the morning when you brush your teeth or something. Plus, I’d always be wondering whether NFP worked or not. It’s very much not free.

Isn’t it odd – the only sure-fire way to avoid pregnancy seems to be ….

A hysterectomy.

By: F-Words

F-Words — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 19:40:18 +0000

The Roe Effect vs. the Ho Effect

…those who voted against funding contraception for low-income women are quite literally breeding more votes against themselves. I like to call it the “ho effect.”

By: Marian

Marian — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 19:22:30 +0000

I charted my cycle using NFP for several years, although for many of those years, I was trying to get pregnant. But I don’t trust myself to do it rigorously enough to avoid pregnancy, and certainly there are other methods that are less easy to botch. Since I am now in an avoiding pregnancy mode, I am using an IUD. And if other methods are available and can work for a woman, I would recommend those instead.

Or when you’re super-susceptible to stress the way I am. I am generally fairly regular, but my system shuts off for virtually every reason possible–plane travel, exam stress, emotional or job instability, even the Blackout of 2003 shut me down for a bit, and only because I didn’t eat or sleep right for 24 hours only. That’s nothing, but it still affected me!

If I were using NFP, I’d probably end up either pregnant or having to abstain for the next couple of months. The reason is that my trip to India caused me to go without good sleep on the plane and adjust to a new environment, and thus miss March. If things don’t turn around by April, it’ll be back to Provera again just to jumpstart it.

But if Provera, related to the Pill, is considered “an abortion,” and someone doesn’t want to give it to me, AND my only option is NFP or nothing at all, I’d be in trouble.

Anti-contraception folks I have brought this up to claim it is no excuse; that you can still tell when you’re fertile. Then why do I apparently ovulate 3 times when under stress, but no period? I even heard one argument that a woman “prayerful” enough will stay regular. *eyeroll*

Man, some days I question whether I’m even still a conservative!! (Hi Jill!) :-)