It worked so well for for Catholics....

Some Protestants find spiritual appeal in natural family planning
Taking a page from Catholic doctrine, Protestants are avoiding artificial contraception for religious reasons
By Eileen E. Flynn

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, August 10, 2008

Phaedra Taylor abstained from sex until marriage. But she began researching birth control methods before she was even engaged, and by the time she married David Taylor, she was already charting her fertility.

Taylor, a fresh-faced 28-year-old who would blend in easily with South Austin bohemians, ruled out taking birth control pills after reading a book that claimed the pill could, in some cases, make the uterus uninhabitable after conception occurred. She viewed that as abortion, which she opposes.

"I just wasn't willing to risk it," she said.

Taylor wanted her faith to guide her sexual and reproductive decisions after marriage. Natural family planning felt like the best way to honor God, she said.

The Taylors are one of several couples at Hope Chapel ?- a nondenominational church where David Taylor, 36, was the arts minister for 12 years ?- who practice natural family planning. Christian scholars say they may reflect a growing trend among non-Catholic Christians who are increasingly seeking out natural alternatives to artificial contraception.

Natural family planning is frequently dismissed by Protestants as an outmoded Catholic practice that most Catholics don't even follow anymore. But 40 years after Pope Paul VI released Humanae Vitae, the document outlining the church's position on marital sex and procreation, the method and the theology behind it are earning respect among some young Protestants, according to Christian scholars.

The 1968 papal encyclical explains the church's interpretation of the moral and natural laws, which includes a prohibition against artificial contraception but allows couples who want to plan their children to "take advantage of the natural cycles immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse ... during those times that are infertile."

This approach, for years known as the rhythm method because it relied on a calendar to track a woman's ovulation based on past cycles, underwent improvements over the years, becoming a more reliable system known as natural family planning.

The natural family planning movement among Protestants is difficult to quantify, but there appears to be growing interest, said the Rev. Amy Laura Hall, a Methodist minister and associate professor at Duke Divinity School. Because she's one of the few Protestant scholars writing about reproductive issues ?- her latest book is called "Conceiving Parenthood" ?- Hall frequently fields questions from Christians about family planning at conferences and by e-mail.

She said they ask questions like whether it's truly Christian to be preoccupied with finances and getting children into the right schools rather than welcoming children as gifts on loan from God ?- even if they don't fit into the parents' ideal life plan.

Alexis Dobson, an instructor with the Fertility Care Center of Central Texas, said she's noticed more people who say they are Protestants enrolling in classes, joining the standard flock of Catholic couples required to take at least one class to have a church wedding. Dobson has worked with the Taylors and other couples from Hope, helping them not only avoid pregnancy but achieve conception as well.

Usually, she says, women hear about the method from a friend. That's how it happened for Katie Fox, 31, another Hope Chapel member. After learning about the method from an acquaintance, she researched her options.

Before getting married, she took the pill to regulate her menstrual cycle, but she said it had negative side effects. Other forms of birth control such as condoms didn't appeal to her. When she got married, she and her husband used natural family planning.

Failure rates can be as low as 1 percent but can rise to as high as 25 percent when people do not follow the method perfectly, experts say.

Overcoming hurdles to faith

Fox was raised Catholic but said her mother didn't agree with the church's stance on contraception. Only after she became an adult and left Catholicism did she begin to appreciate that part of church teaching, she said.

"I feel like it really works in harmony with the way that God designed our bodies to work," she said. "In contrast with the pill, which works by altering and suppressing our natural systems, NFP works by supporting those systems in harmony with their functions. It goes with the flow, so to speak. There is a wisdom and a rightness to that which I really appreciate."

She now is a nondenominational Christian and has a 1-year-old daughter. The method worked, she said, until she and her husband got lazy one month and had sex during Fox's fertile period. But the pregnancy, she said, helped remind them that God was ultimately in charge.

Megan Tietz, a 31-year-old mother of two who has written about her family planning choices on her blog Sorta Crunchy, said she and her husband also sought to put their trust in God. Although Tietz, a Baptist who lives in Oklahoma, said she doesn't believe today's birth control pill causes abortions, she does see it as a hurdle to her faith.

"The only spiritual objection I have to birth control is that for me, using hormonal birth control indicates that I don't really trust God with every area of my life," she wrote in an e-mail. "It is an effort on my part to control something that I really believe God can be trusted with."

For David Taylor, the question of how best to faithfully plan families reveals "a fascinating examination of God's sovereignty and human free will."

With a pill, he said, people are in control. But "what does it mean to submit your physical bodies to God's sovereign care? ... God has given us power and freedom to exercise that decision. We can say, 'God, we're going to respect the rhythms you have given us.' "

For Phaedra Taylor, avoiding artificial contraception falls in line with her efforts to eat foods that are in season and grown locally and to be a good steward of the Earth.

And they both said the method draws them closer. At a coffee shop near her home in North Austin recently, Phaedra Taylor pulled out a chart covered with an assortment of red, green and white stickers indicating when she and her husband can have sex and when they must abstain to avoid pregnancy. The two are planning to move in January for David's graduate school work and want to wait a few months before trying to conceive.

The method doesn't work for everyone.

Five years after writing "Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Rethinks Contraception," Sam and Bethany Torode, then parents of three, changed their minds about natural family planning. In a letter on the Web, www.torodedesign.com/NEW/embrace.html, they wrote: "Our personal experience in the past five years has shown that we had a lot to learn about NFP, and that there is a dark side we weren't aware of."

Though the book said that natural family planning only involved a short period of abstinence, the couple wrote that they didn't know that during breast-feeding cycles it often involves month-long periods of abstinence and what they called intense stress. "During such times (as well as during menopause and stressful life seasons), strict NFP reaches a point where it is more harmful for a marriage than good," they wrote.

Finding unlikely allies

Protestants who choose the natural family planning route often find they are navigating tricky terrain that puts them at odds with older generations and makes them unlikely allies with Catholics.

Historically, Hall said, some of the Protestant perspective on contraception stemmed from an antipathy toward Catholic and fundamentalist families.

The Anglican Communion ?- the worldwide body that includes the Episcopal Church in the United States ?- lifted the ban on contraception in 1930.

In the 1950s, Methodist literature advocated limiting the number of children, Hall said, with the ideal being a two-child, gender-balanced family.

Women's rights activists have also supported contraception in previous generations because they believed limiting the number of children would empower women.

Now, as Protestant couples grapple with spiritual questions surrounding reproduction, many are being told by their pastors that they're "crazy or irresponsible to consider not being on the pill," Hall said.

That can make it doubly intimidating for a woman to try to explain to her pastor that she wants to follow the rhythm of her body, she said, adding with a laugh, "Protestant pastors are not used to talking about vaginal fluids."

The Taylors agree that Protestant pastors need to generate a more robust discussion about family planning and sex within marriage.

"My guess," David Taylor said, "is that most churches are not talking about sexuality."