Just yesterday we posted a link to a BBC report announcing the discovery by medical experts that the media's portrayal of young women as sex objects harms young girls' mental and physical health. After reflecting long and profoundly on that announcement, our comment was: "Well ... duh!"
Today BBC has done it yet again, with a report that natural family planning is actually "as effective as the contraceptive pill." The BBC report, "Natural contraception 'effective'," (Feb. 21, 2007), describes the effectiveness of the symptothermal method (STM) traditionally used by Catholics to space children, as "comparable to the effectiveness of modern contraceptive methods such as oral contraceptives, and is an effective and acceptable method of family planning."
Well, whoop-de-doo! While the motives for using NFP (Natural Family Planning) commended by the Catholic Church are not contraceptive -- since the objective isn't to have contraceptive sex but to abstain from sex during fertile periods when there is substantial reason -- this breaking discovery about the effectiveness of NFP hardly comes as news to Catholics hoary with tradition. Mother Teresa was effectively teaching it among the illiterate women of Calcutta, according to an article of the British Medical Journal (Sept. 18, 1993), by R.E.J. Ryder, which reported a study of "19,843 predominantly poor women in Calcutta ... [among whom the] pregnancy rate was similar to that with the combined contraceptive pill --0.2 pregnancies/100 women users yearly."
[Acknowledgements: on Mother Teresa's use of NFP in Calcutta, among other sources, see A PRIMER ON NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING]
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