We are the light to reach this world.
We are the salt preserving these souls.
Let’s show them the love that we’ve received now.
We are (we are) in desperation
We need to reach this generation
We are speaking louder than before!
Christian Music singer Jeremy Camp
Jeremy Camp
Last week was Natural Family Planning Week (see the info on the USCCB website), and I don’t think it’s too late to bring this to your attention — especially those of us who know the truth about this best kept secret of the Catholic Church that enhances family life and marriages, as well as helping couples practice what the late pope Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae called responsible parenthood (echoed and defended by John Paul II in his Theology of the Body.)
Those of us who practice NFP (the science is now being called NaPro Technology) must proclaim its benefits from the rooftops, especially in this day and time. We need to drown out the voices of poorly informed Catholics like Melinda Gates. Click here to see how this very wealthy woman spends her money and time, and then pray for her to receive some sort of epiphany, as called for in a recent editorial in the National Catholic Register. I suggest you start praying a novena on August 6, 2012, before the feast of the Assumption –according to Google, Melinda’s birthday is August 15, 1964.
Michelle Schmidt
And we need to encourage and promote the voices like those of an amazing woman I know named Michelle (Yax) Schmidt. She is the client services director of a wonderful organization called Mother and Unborn Baby Care (MAUBC) in Southfield, Michigan. I used to work at this very Catholic problem pregnancy center, and I am glad I no longer do, because Michelle took my place! She gives an incredible testimony of her own experience being post abortive, which probably explains why she is such an effective counselor for women in crisis pregnancy situations who are considering abortion. I’ve never seen her unable to change a girl’s mind on this subject.
Michelle is also an amazing defender of the practice of NFP and the teachings of the Catholic faith concerning contraception. She is a walking encyclopedia of data about why contraception is a very bad idea for women, for marriages, for families and for society. For your information, here are just a few things she mentions in a recent newsletter from MAUBC:
- Women using contraception have a 70 percent chance of getting pregnant at least once during a 10-year period (Source: John A. Ross, Family Planning Perspectives, a publication of Planned Parenthood’s Guttmacher Institute.)
- More than 20 percent of women under age 18 experience an unintended pregnancy during the first two years of using contraception (Source: Contraceptive Failure in the First Two Years of Use: Differences Across Socioeconomic Subgroups, Family Planning Perspectives, Vol. 33, No. 1, January/February 2001.)
Michelle writes, “That’s what success looks like….to put it in context, imagine Planned Parenthood handling your teenage daughter a lottery ticket that gives her a one in five chance of winning 10 million dollars….Those are terrific odds! The chance that she’ll be the one are awfully good. But what if she’s only 16, and the thing she might ‘win’ is a pregnancy she doesn’t want and that she isn’t ready for?”
Michelle states simply that the odds for these two scenarios are the same. She goes on to point out how unhealthy artificial contraception is for women:
“Nearly every major contraceptive contains estrogen and progesterone (or synthetic Progestin) to prevent ovulation. Combination hormonal contraceptives include the pill, emergency contraception, implants, injections, vaginal rings and patches. But in 2002, the United States government added estrogen to its known list of carcinogens (a Group 1 Offender, like asbestos and cigarettes)…confirmed after a landmark WHI Hormone Replacement Therapy study found that women who used it were three times more likely to get breast cancer than those who did not…Would you be alarmed then, to know that your own teenage daughter was taking the exact same medication found in Hormone Replacement Therapy…but at much higher doses? You see, HRT is a very, very low dose birth control pill.”
She also writes that, while the Depo-Provera shot does not contain estrogen, it is listed in the second category as “reasonably expected to be carcinogenic” and can cause “significant loss of bone density that may not be reversible.”
Michelle says that there are some women who know the risks of using these steroidal hormones and think they are making a better choice using an IUD (inter-uterine device.) But she points out that IUDs are not contraception, meaning they do not prevent ovulation. They work by directly preventing the implantation of a fertilized embryo…
Michelle suggests other sources to read, including the new federal report on carcinogens (http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/dec2002/niehs-11.htm), the NCI press release http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/2007/breastincidencedrop, or the list of deadly health risks for women http://jenngiroux.com/2012/02/14/deadly-health-risks-for-women-the-unspoken-side-of-the-obama-birth-control-mandate/.
Like Michelle, we need to become prophetic voices to our world of the harm caused by contraception and the benefits on the Catholic teachings on NFP for married couples, as well as Chastity (not abstinence) for those who are not married. If we don’t do so soon, audiences might start throwing more than paper wads, pencils and erasers at us (stones perhaps?) as they did at an unnamed university where Dr. John Haas once spoke. After the young audience responded this way to his mention of the word Chastity, one of the female university professors approached him and asked, “How do you expect people to live without sex?” (Well, that’s a subject for another blog…)
The world is badly in need of our witness. Please, start shouting!
