ARTICLES

An Urgent Issue

CALIFORNIA NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING ORGANIZATION

By Lesley Payne

"A lot of people at conferences like this pass by the table and say, 'We don't need to join this group, we already know NFP,'" said Sheila St. John, President of the California Association of Natural Family Planning (CANFP), at the April St. Joseph's Communications Conference in Oakland. "But what about the rest of the world? I see this as a real evangelization tool. This is an issue for almost everybody. I'm trying to understand why it's not seen as a more urgent issue."

Dues paid by members of CANFP (of which there are over 100, mostly NFP teachers, along with users and other supporters) advance this "urgent issue," paying for such NFP promotional activities as conference displays, outreach programs to educate physicians about NFP (such as the group's exhibit at a 1996 San Francisco medical conference), printed materials in English and Spanish and an annual state-wide NFP conference. "A family membership is only $30," says St. John. "That's a way people can help us if they can't do the work themselves."

St. John stresses that NFP is not a narrow, sectarian interest, but an aid with multiple applications.

"The only people who really have no need for NFP are celibate males, menopausal women and children. It's not about 'preventing' pregnancy; it's about knowing a woman's cycle, for health and other reasons. The term 'natural family planning' is really outdated. It has applications for predicting menstruation, accurate dating of pregnancy, identification of gynecologic abnormalities, increased communication for a couple, for adolescent girls to become more comforable with their changing bodies, and more."

"A recent client asked me what's the difference between NFP and artificial contraception," says St. John. "I told him that he wasn't 'using' this to avoid a pregnancy; they were using this to understand her cycles and fertility and from that they were making decisions about whether to invite a child or whether to refrain from that act by abstaining during her fertile time. It was their self-conrol that would avoid a pregnancy, not something they're using. There's a big difference between saying, 'I want this pleasure but not the consequences,' and saying, 'If I am not prepared to embrace the consequences, I will refrain from the pleasure as well.'"

CANFP is divided into 12 regions, corresponding to the 12 California dioceses. Each region has members, but not all have official representatives to coordinate CANFP activities in the area. In dioceses with well-organized NFP programs, CANFP-affiliated teachers work through diocesan programs, offering all the major NFP methods (Billings Method, Creighton Model, Sympto-Thermal, etc.) In other dioceses, with little or no NFP teaching resources, independent teaching couples (such as those certified by the Couple to Couple League) are the only source of NFP instruction.

St. John functions as director of NFP for her diocese, Monterey, as well as being contracted as an NFP instructor with Dominican Santa Cruz Hospital. "Most of the people I teach are not Catholic," she notes. "Dominican Hospital sends out their class schedules to the entire community. Many people who come to the classes are Christian--there's a whole block of non-Catholic Christians who are interested in NFP. Many people come for infertility, because they want to find out how to achieve a pregnancy. Many others come because they don't want to put hormones into their bodies--they want to work with their bodies."

"This is a women's health issue," says St. John. "I don't know if the hospitals are always able to see that, but this is tied in with women's health--helping women be in tune with their bodies and healthy. So many times a woman will tell me she had a problem, like dysfunctional bleeding, for which her doctor put her on the Pill. The Pill doesn't solve the problem; it just suppresses the cycle so the problem goes away temporarily. This circumvents the whole process of diagnosis and treatment. With the knowledge gained from NFP, you can diagnose and treat the real problem."

(Catholic hospitals, contracting with NFP teachers, include O'Connor Hospital in San Jose, Seton Hospital in Daly City and St. Rose in Hayward. The Diocese of San Jose, according to St. John, has an excellent program to promote NFP: all couples going through marriage preparation are required to attend a workshop on NFP.)

CANFP is also interested in the moral health of youth, says St. John. It has received a $19,000 grant, funded by the state's Community Challenge Grant program, to promote teenage abstinence. St. John will be conducting the F.A.C.T.S. program (Family Accountability Communicating Teen Sexuality), produced by Northwest Family Services. Classes, attended by parents and children together, will be held throughout Monterey County, in English and Spanish, at churches, schools and community centers. The first session to train F.A.C.T.S. facilitators will be held August 21-22 in Salinas.

"We were the only totally abstinence program funded in Monterey County," notes St. John. "By educating the whole family, you're really starting a process of family involvement in this issue, instead of thinking you taught it in one class and it's done. That doesn't work. Studies show kids going through this program have a greater than 45% reduction in sexual activity compared to a control group in a conventional sex education program."

For more information about CANFP or to purchase a 1996-97 California NFP Teachers Directory ($5), write or call: 1217 Tyler Street, Salinas, CA 93906, (408) 443-3743.

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