Commentary: The Small Family Mentality

Some years ago the Vatican drew attention to a demographic trend which has become increasingly evident over the past 30 years or so. In now more than 60 countries, fertility is already below replacement level. In at least 15 of these countries the number of deaths per year is even higher than the number of births. An erroneous popular view was voiced, according to which the world was seen as threatened by a demographic explosion which is and always has been apodictic mythology. The claim that the world’s people are all seriously threatened by death from starvation unless restriction of population growth is enforced, is probably the greatest untruth circulated at any time in the twentieth century.

Unfortunately, some agencies of the United Nations have invested huge financial resources in order to compel many countries to reduce their birth-rate. This has been accompanied by the development of various forms of chemical contraception, direct sterilization and abortion on demand, even compulsory sterilization and abortion. These programs are causing disastrous social problems in all of those countries where the availability of these methods of preventing births have been embraced by a majority of people of reproductive age.

More than half the countries of the world are no longer able to replace their population, despite various efforts made by governments to increase the size of families. This situation is now evident in North America, Asia, Oceania and almost all the countries of Europe. A major factor has been the separation of the unitive and procreative elements of conjugal love, leading to a rejection of parenthood and a selfish pursuit of sexual gratification.

These effects do not flow from the use of natural methods of regulating fertility; on the contrary, these methods engender a true giving of self on the part of both husband and wife, increasing their love for each other, fidelity within the marriage which protects them from sexually-transmitted diseases, a desire to seek the union of the two-in-one flesh manifested in their children and the necessary generosity to continue to strengthen their marriage day by day by sharing the burdens and sorrows of family life, whatever they may be. There is a critical need in the modern world to replace those harmful forms of birth control by bringing into their lives the knowledge of an effective natural method of determining the desired family size.

The decision made by parents regarding the size of their family is a decision which at the human level belongs to them alone. No-one can fully understand all the factors impinging on the husband and wife as they discuss the possibility of another child. Even when the public authorities in a particular region consider that they have a demographic problem. “No solution to these difficulties is acceptable which does violence to man’s essential dignity and is based only on an utterly materialistic conception of man himself and of his life. The only possible solution to this question is one that envisages the social and economic progress both of individuals and of the whole of human society and which respects and promotes true human values.” (Humanae Vitae n. 23). The Billings Ovulation Method teachers will never tell a couple that they “ought” to have more children. One has to modify that statement by pointing out that as a doctor one may encounter an obligation to warn a woman of serious risks involved in a further pregnancy. In discussion with parents of a one-child family, perhaps asking for advice about the unruly behaviour of their child, one may gently ask them have they thought of having another child, as this would be likely to be of great benefit in improving the behaviour of the child they have already. It is reasonable for the teacher of natural family planning to speak freely about the value of the child; in poor countries husbands and wives are usually united in their conviction that their children are their greatest treasures.  Sometimes they may feel that if they should make an error with the BOM, resulting in pregnancy, the teacher may be angry with them, so one explains that all our teachers love babies, that is a quality which quickly develops in people who teach the BOM, as has been so often observed.

Most of our teachers have had more than one experience at the first visit of a new couple or just a woman alone, of hearing the woman say “Now, first of all, I want you to understand that I don’t want to get pregnant again”. She may even add,“ If I do get pregnant again I will have an abortion”. A few teachers without much experience will sometimes feel that they cannot teach a woman who says that, but we do not refuse to do so. On the contrary, we know that the best way to help the woman to develop greater love for babies and particularly for another child of her own, is to encourage her and her husband to live their married life with the BOM, seeing that they are at the present time determined to avoid pregnancy. In many cases after a short time an extraordinary result is observed. At a follow-up visit the teacher notices that the couple has begun to depart from a strict adherence to the guidelines for the postponement of pregnancy. The teacher draws the woman’s attention to that, as she has an obligation to do, and the woman will then say something like, “Oh, well, my husband and I have been talking about it and we are just thinking perhaps we will have another baby”. And so they do.

There is no form of contraception that will have that effect on its own. Contraception involves an action undertaken to prevent the sperm meeting the ovum thereby abrogating an authority that belongs to God alone. He has created the woman in such a way that she has a limited time of fertility in her cycle where the Creator’s intent is that sexual intercourse may now cause conception. Worse than that contraception seeks to damage or destroy some elements of the physiology of the fertility of woman, or sometimes of men. Natural fertility regulation is completely different. The couple learns to recognize the time within the woman’s cycle when she is able to become pregnant, and if they feel that they have a reason to avoid pregnancy for the time being or permanently, they do not engage in any genital contact for that fertile time. There is no method of contraception or sterilization that is more effective in avoiding pregnancy than the BOM.

More than that, it is wonderful for a woman to learn to understand more about her own body. This has all kinds of good results, including the fact that a good understanding of her cycle will help to draw attention to the development of abnormalities, including some very serious abnormalities which require early diagnosis and treatment to effect a cure. Again, many examples of the protection of women’s reproductive health by the BOM are encountered.

What we have been able to do is protect thousands of women from the damaging complications of the technological methods of birth control. It is important to remember that many of the commercial methods of birth-control such as the intra-uterine device, the contraceptive pill, implants and injections will at times depend upon their abortifacient potential to prevent births. This is therefore another serious reason for teaching the BOM to every woman and every couple who want to understand it, because they feel they have a responsibility to postpone a further pregnancy at the present time or may encounter the need to do so in the future.

Gradually, perhaps sooner than most people imagine and despite the false, destructive criticism of the BOM, more and more people will learn the truth that the Billings Ovulation Method is a harmless, highly effective method for the postponement of pregnancy and unlike contraception or direct sterilization is very helpful in the management of difficulty in achieving the pregnancy. The method therefore is in every way appropriate to the couple striving to make truly responsible decisions regarding the size of their family.

There is yet another element to recognize. It is that when a woman comes to understand her fertility she has a better sense of her own dignity, because all that is involved in the physiology of fertility and conception is truly wonderful. The effect on the adolescent girl to begin to perceive what her body is telling her is remarkable. In particular, the woman comes to love her fertility and this brings her to love the child.  It also teaches her that to suppress or destroy fertility is wrong.

At the present time contraception, sterilization and abortion are tolerated, even approved, all around the world. Those who condemn people who use a natural method when they consider that they have a serious reason to avoid pregnancy forget that all the people who use natural methods have a very serious reason that the natural method enables them not to use contraception or sterilization or abortion.

We know that the married couple has a responsibility to make a decision that recognizes fully “their own duties towards God, towards themselves, towards the family and towards society, in a correct hierarchy of values” (Humanae Vitae n. 10) As Pope Paul VI went on the say, “the Church, calling men back to the observance of the norms of the natural law, as interpreted by her constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life” (Humanae Vitae n.11) The generality of Catholic couples wants to be at peace with God and to follow the official teaching of the Catholic Church. In the modern world, it is true that having a family and striving to bring them to adulthood with loyalty to the Church, is very difficult. Instead of making harsh judgements of husbands and wives, let us first of all teach them to live their married life in such a way that each and every marriage act does  remain open to the transmission of life.

All good teachers of natural fertility regulation observe that when couples take the method into their marriage it exercises a  beneficent influence upon the conjugal relationship, thereby promoting solidarity and fidelity within the family, with progressive deepening of the love the husband and wife have for each other and a more complete gift of themselves to each other which they pledged on their wedding day. As well as that, many of them remark that they feel that God is now closer to them than every before. This is accompanied by a deeper appreciation of the fact that children are the supreme gift of married life. Which means that each child is treasured and loved by a father and mother who love each other. The peace and happiness which they have earned and now enjoy, perhaps after being persuaded to avoid forever the corruption of the love within the family by the use of methods not found in Nature help them to see clearly that their child would greatly benefit by having a brother and a sister.

Pope Paul VI asked upright men to “reflect on the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality … It is also to be feared that the man … may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.” (Humane Vitae n. 17). The short message is this:  if you want to overcome the Small Family Mentality, teach couples the BOM.

It should be recognized and acknowledged that the insertion of a foreign device into the uterus in order to prevent births is essentially directed to damage the endometrium of the uterus, whatever chemicals are also included in the device to damage sperm or even inhibit ovulation. The technique is therefore not only immoral, it is contrary to traditional medical ethics based on Hippocratic principles and good medical practise. In the case of chemical contraception, whether effected by pills, implants or injections, the intention is to damage or destroy normal fertility. This too is contrary to Hippocratic principles, especially what is perhaps the most important principle, Primum non nocere (First do no harm). The description of the chemicals involved as “hormones” is untrue: they are synthetic chemicals which have some of the actions of ovarian hormones, but exercise toxicity within and also outside the reproductive system as well, damaging metabolic processes which are not directly related to fertility. The latest “third generation” pills contain gestogens (deceptively called progesterone which they are not) which are more toxic and therefore more likely to produce complications, but are still unable to prevent all pregnancies. All varieties of these agents used to prevent births are contrary to sound medical principles, they have always been wrong, in the future they will continue to be wrong and will always be productive of serious physical disorders in a substantial proportion of those who accept them for their own use.

Pope John Paul has told us that the Catholic Church is in crisis and we must understand that the problems that we are considering regarding the whole area of fertility regulation must be seen in the context of the struggle between good and evil which has existed in the world since the disobedience of Adam and Eve and reached a very high level at the present time, such that Pope John Paul appropriately refers to it as a battle between the culture of life and the culture of death.

The culture of death has seriously damaged the medical profession and has also caused widespread disintegration of family life. The advent of the modern techniques of chemical contraception, the intra-uterine device and surgical sterilization led quickly to the acceptance of induced abortion, all of which effected a loss of the traditional ethic of the medical profession and its consequent corruption.

This corruption is especially evident in the specialities of obstetrics and gynaecology, they being the discipline which are most closely related to fertility, care of the mother and child during pregnancy, careful management of the delivery of the child and assistance in the establishment of breast-feeding after birth, which means all that has to do with reproductive health of women and also of men. The corruption has extended to a lowering of the standards of medical practice amongst a substantial proportion of the medical profession, as has unfortunately become common experience. Pope Paul VI warned us against the danger of acceptance of abortion, and there were many who were quick to perceive that demands for legalized euthanasia would soon follow once abortion came to be tolerated.

Many years before the writing of what many people regard as the two most important encyclicals of the 20^th century, Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae and Pope John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, Blessed John Henry Newman predicted that the Church was in serious danger of the rejection of ecclesial authority and of a demand that people would decide for themselves what is right and what is wrong.

The advent of modern birth-control techniques promoted the personal selfishness which has been manifested in this rejection of all lawful authority, a denial of the value of every individual human life from conception until natural death and a lack of appreciation of the transcendent destiny of eternal happiness with God who made us because He loves us and instilled in our hearts a vocation to love. A human being has a fundamental longing for love and a desire to give love to others, however much, however sadly, this may be submerged in the culture of death.

The commercial enterprise of birth-control techniques was accompanied by intensive propaganda for sales promotion, in which was incorporated destructive criticism of all forms of natural methods. Many people were deceived, with the result that couples seeking help to space their pregnancies were often given bad advice by doctors or clerics, so that many Catholic doctors lost their influence of good in the community and many couples thought that the Church had failed to assist them in their need. These various factors combined to damage the Church and the family through a lack of faith or courage or plain understanding of what was happening.

The Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et Spes had reminded us that “God himself is the author of marriage and has endowed it with various benefits and ends” (n. 48). The disintegration of family life to varying degrees resulted in infidelity, separation, divorce, one-parent families and even the total abandonment of children already born. Many marriages came to resemble de facto relationships where there is no true gift of self, no commitment but almost always contraception. There should be little wonder that the younger generation tends to see little significance at all in marriage, which they may describe as “just a piece of paper”. Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II have had remarkable perception of the meaning of marriage, the Consortium Totius Vitae (Partnership for the whole of life) which was made to be such a partnership “from the beginning” (cf. Matt 19:8). It was the Creator who implanted in the human heart an inclination, governed by our free will, that one man and one woman should give themselves to each other until death. Every husband and wife should understand that they have two responsibilities in marriage, the responsibility that flows from the total gift of one to the other, and the responsibility involved by accepting the total gift offered by the other. The partnership is formed and maintained in strength by what we call conjugal love, probably the most wonderful form of human love.

God does not leave his people without help and every person can learn to love by the exercise of courage and the humility to ask God and perhaps sometimes to ask other human beings for help and guidance. They learn, as St Paul told us that “love is always patient and kind … it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. Love does not come to and end” (I Corr. 13:4-6).

Paul VI was confident that medical science could help to find a solution appropriate to the dignity and value of every human life, and obedient to the Natural Law implanted in our hearts by God when he created human beings in his own image and likeness. God has now allowed it to be revealed that when he created the first woman, Eve “the mother of all who live” (Gen 3:28) her reproductive physiology would come to be understood in all its complexity and beauty. As is often the case, “God chose the weak to confound the strong”.

The damage caused to marriage and the family by modern birth-control techniques which are not found in Nature must be repaired. This will follow if there is concentration on persuading those people who feel that they have an important reason to avoid pregnancy, at least for the present time, to find a solution in the method created by God in the body of the woman. We mean the most modern and the most scientific of all methods of regulating fertility, what we called the Ovulation Method in 1964 and to which a committee of the World Health Organization applied as a synonym the name of The Billings Method. It is a universal method, which can be used in all the circumstances of the woman’s reproductive life, to help the apparently infertile couples to have the child for which they long, to bind the husband and the wife together in love, fidelity and happiness, teaching them to love their fertility and to love the child, and helping the woman in many instances to recognize by its earliest manifestation any disorder requiring expert diagnosis and treatment.

Every child will then have, as God’s neo-natal gift, a father and mother who love each other and love their children.