Data on the length of the menstrual cycles luteal phase was collected on apparently normal subjects with a specific evaluation of between women and within the same woman variation. 24 women from 20 to 38 years of age participated. The estimated time of ovulation was defined from indirect hormonal parameters. 73 cycles were followed. In each progesterone was produced above the maximum preovulatory level of 2.3 ng/ml during the premenstrual phase. The range in length of the luteal phase was 6 to 17 days. The mean was 13.15 days s.d. 2.18 days. In 90.4% the luteal phase ranged from 11 to 16 days. The mean group variation was 1.6 days. There is remarkable consistency within the same woman. (authors modified)
The purpose of this study was to compare the intimacy, spiritual well being (SWB), and self-esteem of couples using natural family planning (NFP) with those couples using oral contraceptives (OCs). 22 couples who were using the Creighton Model Ovulation Method of NFP for 1 year to avoid pregnancy were matched with 22 couples who were using OCs for a least a 1-year period and administered a SWB, self-esteem, and intimacy inventory. Student t-tests were calculated to determine differences in the mean scores of the 3 inventories between the 2 groups. The results showed that the NFP couples had statistically higher self-esteem (T=3.15, p0.01), SWB (T=4.25. p0.001), and intellectual intimacy (T=2.53, p0.05) than the OC couples. There were no differences in emotional, social, recreational, and sexual intimacy between the groups. Although the results provide some evidence that NFP can enhance a couple's relationship, other factors such as a sampling bias and educational levels could explain the difference.
A study of 29 couples enrolled in an Ovulation Method training program was conducted to determine the level of satisfaction and confidence of participants using this method of family planning. A concurrent analysis was carried out to determine the couples receptivity to an unplanned pregnancy. Each person using the method was assessed at each follow-up visit for level of satisfaction level of confidence and receptivity to an unplanned pregnancy. Results were plotted against the follow-up visit and evaluated based on the sex age educational level and purpose of the respondent using the method. Overall satisfaction and confidence levels increased over time and these increases were found to be statistically significant. Receptivity to unplanned pregnancies decreased overall with time. These trends remained fairly consistent despite the sex age education level or the individuals purpose in using the method. Receptivity to unplanned pregnancies was significantly lower for those using the method to permanently avoid pregnancy and for participants >30 years of age. (authors)
This article discusses in detail the Bishops pastoral letter Many Faces of AIDS: A Gospel Response (MFA). The MFA is commended for teaching compassion for the victims of AIDS and its emphasis on monogamous marital relationships or abstinence as the best and morally correct ways to avoid AIDS. The most controversy surrounding the MFA stems from the following statement: such educational efforts could include accurate information about prophylactic devices or other practices proposed by some medical experts as potential means of preventing AIDS. We are not promoting the use of prophylactics but merely providing information that is part of the factual picture. This statement is assailed for its lack of clarity and the remainder of the article is spent discussing its controversial elements often referring to the writings of prominent church leaders. The author believes that the MFA does not succeed in providing a clear teaching on the proper response to AIDS particularly in regard to suitable educational programs. It is suggested that the bishops reconsider the MFA that they clarify what they mean to be advocating in this document and that they explain clearly which Catholic moral principles justify their position.
The US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has not administered the Title X Family Planning Program consistent with law and regulation and has refused to provide even minimal guidance to insure compliance with Title Xs anti-abortion provisions. Abortion clinics and Title X family planning clinics are commonly co-sited and in grant applications programs where abortion is used as a method of family planning simply exclude their abortion activities. Title X should be enhanced so that it is a program of family planning services which: encourages unmarried teenagers to abstain from premarital sex; assists sexually active persons to utilize family planning methods of their own choosing; provides infertility treatment services; supports women with unintended pregnancies in considering adoption; and assists pregnant women to have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.
Sex education courses in the US should include discussion of what is known about acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and about the threat it poses. We must also adjust our health and public policies to encourage and foster proper action to deal with AIDS. Sexual abstinence should be urged to young people by giving them good fortifying reasons for saying no. Positive reasons for restraint should be stressed; not the denial of sexuality but the mastering of it. In dealing with AIDS sexual abstinence and fidelity save lives. We must do everything possible to find a cure for AIDS to care for its victims to oppose discrimination and eradicate false fears regarding the disease and to protect the uninfected. Opposition to AIDS testing and policies which prevent the disclosure of test results should be seen in the context of broader public policy. The issues are not simply medical or legal and they require honest open and thoughtful debate.
Sex education is about character and the formation of character. A sex education course in which issues of right and wrong are not central is evasive and irresponsible. Statistics indicating sex educations ineffectiveness in reducing teenage sexual activity and pregnancies in the US are used to support these assertions. Though what is known about how to effectively discourage unmarried teenagers from initiating intercourse is not easily measurable or guantifiable we do know how to develop character and reinforce good values. Far from being value-neutral sex may be among the most value-loaded of all human activities. Our children should be taught accordingly. Sex education courses should stress that sex is not simply a physical act. They should speak up for the institution of the family of what it is to be a mother or a father. Courses should welcome parents and other adults as allies and observers and teachers should offer examples of good character by the way they act and by the ideals and convictions they articulate.
References to marriage the rights and obligations of marriage partners and the right of children before and after birth are found in many international instruments issued by the United Nations. The present developments in reproductive technology are considered from an ethical and social perspective. Natural family formation is often handicapped by physical fertility problems and by relationship problems between husbands and wives. AID (artificial insemination by donor) and IVF (in vitro fertilization) using donor gametes are examples of treatments in which the doctor acts as a social accomplice. The major ethical questions underlying programs and services for alternative forms of parenting such as technologically assisted pregnancies include: the nature of medical intervention in the creation of life; whether the community should condone and support the development of unusual conceptions; who should make these decisions? How detached can sperm be? How can the dilemma between the thrust of medical progress and the desire to create babies and research findings and data regarding the needs of the child be resolved? Modern reproductive technologies have made it possible for a child to have multiple parents. Questions about the status value rights and destiny of the human embryo are central to the debate on how far the new reproductive technologies are morally acceptable. The status of the human embryo in the philosophical or moral sense is the same as the status of any other human being. The embryo should not be placed in an unnatural environment for its further development. It has the right to be in its mothers womb.
The family is a fundamental and irreplacable society. This paper explores the following aspects of the family: the key place of the family in African culture; community aspects of the African family; roles within the African family; fertility: love for children; the African family in transition; evangelization of African family values; and some family apostolate programs in the Church in Africa. The family is the normal reference point for the African. The religious dimension is prominent in the traditional celebration of marriage in Africa. The African sees himself as a member of a group. This group is primarily his lineage or extended family. In Africa the family is permeated with a keen sense of community. The family community is marked by a hierarchy of relationships privileges and duties together with an intense sense of solidarity. In the African family 4 roles need special mention: the father the mother the child and the elderly. The husband and father is seen traditionally as the head of the family. Most African families are patriarchal although a few are matriarchal. Although African culture honors the wife and mother she does not have equal rights with her husband. The child is greatly desired in the family. He is regarded as a guarantee of the continuance of the family lineage. The elderly have an honored place in African culture and in the extended family. African couples love to have many children. Couples that have no children are plunged into suffering. As a result of urbanization travel paid employment and the introduction of money have caused the traditional family to change. Africans welcome the Church as the Family of God. The Church strives in various ways to defend the family and to help it make its contribution to Church and society.
Cervical signs are particularly useful when expected changes in the mucus on the vulva are absent during the following situations: lactation premenopause coming off the pill and in cases of continuous mucus when high estrogen levels persist although no ovulation is occurring. The cervix exam is not 1 method among several; rather there is only 1 method that of selective continence which may be based on a variety of signs. Softening and elevation of the cervix are signs of the fertile time. Self-examination for cervical signs as guides to continence for fertility is suggested. Some women find cervical self-examinations distasteful. The method has no scientific basis. Not all women see the signs. A danger of the cervical exam is that it may cause toxic shock. Defining the fertile period is very difficult. Investigators have found that the most comprehensive preovulatory guide is the old stand-by calendar formula S minus 19. Vaginal ultrasound studies not hormone levels will establish the ultimate scientific basis for cervical signs.
It is morally wrong for a Catholic doctor to prescribe devices or substances for contraceptive use or to make referrals to other sources no matter what the personal moral convictions of the patient Catholic or non-Catholic might be. Anything that is contrary to the natural law is by that very fact harmful in some way to the totality of the human person. William G. White M.D. currently the president of the National Federation of Catholic Physicians Guilds presents his opinions in this paper. He believes that contraception is inevitably destructive of the integrity of the person and of the stability of the marital relationship. He denies patients requests for contraception to save them from self-destructive decisions. The sinfulness of formal cooperation arises from the fact that the intention of the cooperator and the intention of the wrongdoer coincide in the same moral evel. When a Catholic physician makes a referral for contraceptive prescriptions devices or advice his cooperationa constitutes formal cooperation because his intention is obviously for the patient to pursue her contraceptive plans.
The number 1 obstacle that teachers have to surmount if they are to make natural family planning (NFP) philosophy seem credible is students question about the moral difference between abstaining from sex and using contraception. When students raise this question they are usually not looking for an answer. This is why the logical and obvious answers are totally unsatisfactory. This question is not really an honest inquiry as much as it is an obstacle that is deliberately placed in the path of the educational process as a stumbling block. There are important differences between NFP and contraception even where the desire to avoid pregnancy is a common denominator. Contraception implies use of a means (sexual intercourse) that was made for expressing an invitation for a child as a vehicle for communicating a disinvitation. On the other hand NFP may provide a special joy for people who in saying no to themselves rather than to God at the same time offer a prayer of gratitude in the form of humility and restraint which confers upon them the reassuring sense that the order of creation is being honored and preserved.
Pope Pius XII rejected artificial insemination outside matrimony and artificial insemination produced by means of the active element of a 3rd person. He condemns all types of artificial insemination on the ground that this practice is not included among the rights of married couples and because it is contrary to the natural law and Catholic morals. Pope Pius XII insisted that any facilitating assisting means to promote human fertility must be related to the conjugal act done in the normal way to attain its end or within the context of a normal conjugal act. An argument for the moraliy of assisted insemination could be based on the right of the husband and wife to the act in itself suitable for the procreation of offspring. 3 procedures for assisted insemination may be considered in harmony with Catholic teachings: The tubal ovum transfer procedure (TOT); the gamete intrafallopian transfer procedure (GIFT); and the sperm intrafallopian transfer procedure (SIFT). After the infertile couple have maritial relations at the time of predicted ovulation the mature egg or eggs are retrieved from the womans ovary by laparoscopy and the husbands sperm are obtained and reintroduced into the wifes uterus. This is the TOT method after which the couple is encouraged to repeat the marital act. In the GIFT procedure semen obtained by laparoscopy from the husband is treated and centrifuged to a high degree of concentration and motility and then transfered to the fimbriated ends of each fallopian tube at a precisely calculated period in the wifes menstrual cycle along with ova from the wife. The SIFT procedure involves transfer of the husbands sperm only. The husbands sperm obtained by morally acceptable means could be washed centrifuged and treated as required before delivery by catheter through the vagina and uterus.
This article examines the importance of breastfeeding reasons for its decline in the developing world its integration with natural family planning and new ways of promoting this combined health strategy. Breastfeeding best satisfies the nutritional needs of young infants and provides some immunological protection. It also costs less than substitutes which generally run US $200-300 for the 1st year and avoids the risks of bottle feeding when formula dilution is practised. It is also effective in child spacing. Recent studies by the World Health Organization estimate that 83% of couples in developing countries rely on naturl regulation of their fertility in which breastfeeding is the most important factor. Use of the Ovulation Method (OM) along with the reduced likelihood of conception during lactational amenorrhea offers couples a safe and natural means of fertility control very acceptable to rural communities with a theoretical effectiveness of 98-99%. Studies show that health workers need to be better informed about the health advantages of breastfeeding including its protection against the infectious agents of diarrhea and its possible relation to the prevention of future myocardial infarction and to successful cholesterol absorption capacity. Practical guidelines in promoting breastfeeding in family planning practice need to be developed. Health workers should be motivated and oriented to the benefits of breastfeeding to the user and to society. The combination of breastfeeding with the OM provides an ecologically sound need-oriented program for health self-management in the rural world.
