Family Planning or Family Privation?

This is part II of my post "Diabolical Family Planning, Part I".

The Disney film I posted the other day aptly illustrates the naked facts about “family planning”.  Here it is again, for your viewing "pleasure" (ahem):

Were people perhaps a little more naïve in 1968 than they are today? Some of the statements or depictions seem baldly racist and patently false; today, we use more nuanced verbiage to avoid the truth! The film paints a one-sided (and erroneous) picture of the “consequences” of having “too many” children. I suspect that most people – even those who are pro-abortion and pro-contraception – would be a little embarrassed by this film today. The style of “persuasion” is so dated…

But, still, aren’t the notions outlined in the film exactly what people really think…even today? Doesn’t everyone believe that when there are too many children, there’s not enough food, no modern conveniences, the family ox dies, everyone’s health suffers, the children are “sickly and unhappy, with no future.” The narrator warns us that this will be the fate of many families “if the number of children born is left to chance. But fortunately, this need not happen any more.”

People today may not articulate it quite that way, but when it comes down to it, the reasons given in the film for limiting children are the ones you still hear from people today – when they actually give reasons. It seems to me that most people don’t even feel a need to justify limiting family size – it just makes sense! Look at the economy! A family can’t make it on one income! Look at the cost of health care!

We add in a few extra reasons: We want to send our kids to a good private school, and we can’t do that if we have “too many”. We want to provide a “good environment” for our kids to grow up in, and we can’t afford educational trips and vacations if we have “too many”. And so on...if we have "too many". Don’t tell me people don’t think this way!

Where does NFP fit into all this? Well, one reader pointed out to me (via email) that:

In the Disney video’s explanation about how family planning works, the video used the same wording and rhetoric that is used to promote NFP. NFP can be used to determine the size of a couple's family. It can be used to allow better spacing; it can be used to have no more, or later on have another, etc. It is safe and 100% natural, the wife will be happier and healthier along with the children... it's responsible... it’s not about the number of children, but how you can take care of the current ones.

In most of the NFP rhetoric, the video could be aptly applied, especially when used to promote family planning in third world countries. You almost get the sense that NFP promoters see families in the same light as the video depicted: the more children you have the sorrier the family looks.

Yes indeed. The narrator of the film also tells us that “family planning means that, without affecting normal relations as man and wife, you can decide in advance the number of children you will have, and when you will have them.” He just forgot to add that part about “serious reasons” and “prayerful discernment”.  

But the bottom line is this: “family planning” equals birth control. There are many forms of birth control, of course, as the video points out.  “You can use a pill”, we are told, but allusions are made to other methods, and the fact that “there’s an acceptable way for everyone.” One of those “acceptable ways” is NFP. Now, I’m not saying that NFP is the “same as” artificial contraception. But I am saying that it’s birth control, and until Vatican II, the Church has never supported or condoned birth control.    

Here’s an excerpt from a comment left on my previous post, in which the commenter describes her experience with NFP (my emphases):

If only we had seen the decision to avoid as the object of discernment, instead of the decision to conceive! I've read all the arguments as to how NFP can be used selfishly, but not contraceptively, and I remain unconvinced.

Our motivation in using NFP was never selfishness; in fact, I believed for many years, that I was selfish in wanting and having more children. But our entire view of NFP was that it must be used to avoid the "mistake" of conceiving another child. Thanks be to God for the "accidents" which resulted from our lack of skills and dedication in this area!

I don't need to mention how many well-meaning priests advised us to cool it over the years. The contraceptive mentality is much bigger than the simple issue of artificial birth control. This culture views children as disruptive and almost impossibly difficult to put up with as a lifelong proposition, and NFP-practicing Catholics often share that basic view in many ways.

This is not a judgment on anyone - not myself, my husband, or anyone else. If anything, I feel so blinded and duped by a hierarchy that has it only half right. The Church teaches that children are our life and our joy. To avoid conception is always a serious privation, and should be understood as such, even if it can sometimes be a sacrificial good. The heavy emphasis on not making overly scrupulous people feel bad may be costing many, many others the chance to live a life free of unnecessary restrictions on their marriage and family size.

Her idea that avoiding conception is a “serious privation” reflects the reasoning of Fr. Cormac Burke who has written (my emphases):

What is perhaps most significant here is not the number of Catholics who, in violation of the Church's clear teaching, make use of contraceptives, but the quasi-exaltation of family planning by natural means as if this represented some sort of ideal for Catholic married life, and not, as in fact it is, a recourse that the Church allows, because Nature itself allows it, when a couple have serious reasons for depriving themselves - and their present children - of the gift from God of a further child.

Let those words sink in: “depriving themselves” of the gift from God of another child.

It’s pretty easy, I think, to see how the overgeneralizations in the Disney film were bought – hook, line, and sinker – by American society at large. The advent of artificial contraception made possible the separation of the sex act from its procreative end. A “unitive” purpose was imparted to the sex act itself. That ideology led further into separating out the procreative end of marriage, and minimizing it. Nowadays, in general, the idea seems to be that we are “entitled” to the pleasure of the sex act without having to be responsible for any offspring that might result from the act that has their conception as its primary (and only) purpose! Heck, many people seem to believe that we are entitled to the pleasure of the sex act without the benefit (and responsibility) of marriage.

So, in essence, the idea that we should be able to have our sexual pleasure and avoid the natural outcome of the sexual act is the primary idea behind “family planning” – and that includes natural family planning. Fr. Cormac Burke notes:

…[W]e seem to have forgotten that the essential reason why Natural Family Planning is termed "natural" is to mark the borderline that distinguishes it from "unnatural" and immoral family planning through the use of contraceptives. In that sense, NFP marks a "moral minimum", a way of avoiding children without sin - when there are serious reasons to do so. Certainly these grave reasons can exist; but the clear teaching of the magisterium is that NFP is natural only when such reasons exist. Without those serious reasons Natural Family Planning would be "unnatural" and morally wrong

Sadly, NFP is often just rationalization fueled by lust. Once the mind grabs on to a reason to indulge our passions, it sounds like all the "family planning" propaganda. As Christopher Gawley pointed out in his article on “Heroic Parenthood”,

… because NFP advocates treat NFP as a good without qualification, couples are encouraged to view using NFP as a positive part of their conjugal lives. But Catholic couples ought to feel a sorrow by having the necessity to resort to NFP. By analogy, NFP is a type of bankruptcy in a technical sense.

Yes, we are bankrupting the world by limiting births; a number of nations are beginning to experience this now (just search the LifeSiteNews website for “underpopulation” for a number of articles on this).

Disney and Donald Duck notwithstanding, “family planning” is not family friendly.