What Really IS Best for Women?

I was addressing a person who was going back to contraception because she just didn't believe that NFP was "working for her." It led me to all sorts of questions about the way our society learns about reproduction.

So what really is best for women? Is it best that women know little to nothing about the workings of their own bodies? Is it "pro-women's reproductive rights" to have their natural fertility taken away and replaced with steroids? Is it best for women and society as a whole to have these crazy hormones in our water, changing the very fabric of our existence?!

Absolutely not! But to really give a balanced look I will say that there is something seriously broken in the NFP movement too. Why on Earth are we waiting until a woman is about to get married to teach her about her body? The only reason that makes any sense at all is because of the concern that people will use NFP knowledge as a way to be promiscuous. I say, "Let 'em!" At least when we were in an era of sex=babies, we didn't have the train wrecks that make up our society right now. I mean really. People have been using old wives tales to "try" to prevent pregnancies since the dawn of time. We aren't going to stop human stupidity.

But by putting the poison of contraception in their hands, the behavior has gone viral. Literally, viral. STD numbers go up with contraception usage, not down. Every " health organization" is going to tell you that isn't true, but talk to any teenager. Most know someone with a disease, or worse yet, a rumor of a disease. The misinformation is as rampant as the behavior.

My sex ed class would horrify most liberals and most conservatives. But that is mostly because those are political positions and have little to do with actual rational thought. My class would be an abstinence only education. The liberals go ape at those words. "It doesn't work!!" they cry. But their definition of "abstinence only" is far different from reality. Abstinence is the one and only 100% effective way to prevent pregnancy (and disease!). All other methods fail miserably.

My class would also involve full education of all contraceptive and abortion methods. Now it would be the conservatives turn to draw their collective breath. But conservatives tend to think that explaining contraception somehow endorses it. Far from it. Contraception is a train wreck, and people ought to know that. The original contraception, "the withdrawl method," is an absolute joke to intimacy, and the "barrier methods" belong in a battle zone. Snipping fallopian and vas defrens tubes violates the Hippocratic oath, "First do no harm." And hormonal contraception? Don't even get me started! We ban steroids in athletics, yet embrace them in half of our population otherwise! The incongruency boggles the mind.

What is really best for women? I will tell you since I have been on every side of this, in actuality, relatively simple problem. I have two children. My son is 5, my daughter, 2. They are learing every day about authentic sexuality. We will never have "the sex talk" in our house. We will never need it. We talk about their bodies as the natural part of who they are. They have a child's vocabulary that will grow as they do. They go pee pee right now. They will learn the word 'urinate' when they can enunciate. They have 'boy parts' and 'girl parts' for now. They will get the bigger words without a blush or embarrassment when they need them.

I fully plan on teaching my daughter exactly what it means to have both 'red show' and 'white show.' The white means you can conceive and the red means you probably didn't. My son will hear it too. They will understand their basic anatomy. They will know the purpose of a prostate long before my son is 40 and needs an exam. They will know the location of the cervix and what it does in relation to childbirth and in relation to fertility.

And most importantly they will learn why men and women are designed as they are. They will know that the complementarity of men and women is the very building block of life. They will know that God is masculine, but NOT male. They will know that it is in both male AND female that we are created in God's image, not either/or. They will know first and foremost their intrinsic value as children of God, and they will learn the intrinsic value of all of humanity from conception to natural death. If that understanding is the true foundation, then building on it isn't really hard at all. The good news is that I don't have to design a big comprehensive plan about this. I rest on the shoulders of giants who have come before me. My ideal education program already exists. Wiser minds than mine have already been here and figured it out.

Thank you Pope John Paul the Great!