TITLE: The Roman Catholic Church and Contraception

BlBLIOGRAPHY: LeMaire, W. (2016). The roman catholic church and contraception.

International Journal of Reproduction, Contraception, Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Retrieved October 11, 2019 from https://www.ijrcog.org/
SUMMARY
In 2014 and 2015, Pope Francis made some statements regarding issues that
made an impact on the family including divorce, gay and lesbian marriage, sexuality and
family planning. The author decided to focus his article about “Catholics who are using
Artificial Methods of Family Planning” because this was the only issue that was
continued to be opposed by the Roman Catholic Church even until now. In this religion,
using or prescribing artificial methods of family planning is considered a grave sin and
this situation puts all its followers, especially Catholic patients and practitioners, in a
dilemma whether they should adhere to the teaching of their church but risk an
unwanted pregnancy or use artificial methods of family planning but as a consequence,
they get marginalized by their church. In this article, the author has a stand that it is
about time for the Roman Catholic hierarchy to revise this outdated position and allow
its followers to resort to modern methods for family planning because as a matter of
fact, a large percentage of their followers are already doing it anyway. The author
pointed out reasons which are stated in the article as to why the Catholic Church should
consider the Artificial Methods of Family Planning.
Work immersion experience
REACTION
With the data presented, I strongly agree to the points made by the author in this
article. I agree with the author when he said that this certain teaching of the church does
not only affect the Catholic Couples and patients but also the Catholic practitioners. Our
goal as a health care provider is to give the best care needed by the client and if the
artificial method of family planning can be the best option for the situation, Catholics will
always have a dilemma to prescribe. Moreover, natural methods, as stated by the
author, under less than ideal circumstances have high and unacceptable failure rate. In
relation, Pope Francis made a statement wherein he said that catholic couples are free
to plan the number of children they have according to their means but he denies the
effective means to do so which I personally think is unfair for the Catholic people. I also
agree on how the author defended some methods of contraception against the
proponents of the natural methods. They argued that some of the contraceptions are
abortifacients but most of the evidences pointed that this certain method only prevents
the transport of sperm and/or ovulation but not the implantation itself.
 I realized that even though the Catholic Church has a strong stand of opposing
the artificial methods, most of their followers still choose to do the unnatural way to limit
the sizes of their families because they choose the more effective one. On the other
hand, abortion has always been unacceptable in the Catholic Church and as a Catholic,
I agree with that but I realized that hindering the patient to use effective methods to
prevent birth control may somehow lead to abortion for the reason that the patient may
not want the pregnancy in the first place. This situation proves that the opposition of the
church in this matter is insignificant because it may lead to a greater sin which is to take
someone’s right to live through abortion.
When I was having my experience for work immersion in Senior High School, I
was able to witness a scenario wherein the client, who is a mother, and the nurse were
both Catholic. The client asked if what is the best family planning method are they going
to recommend for her. The nurse answered all the artificial methods and she
emphasized the Depo Provera. After their first meeting, the mother was able to get a
shot of Depo Provera with the help of the nurse. In this case, both parties did not follow
the teachings of their church. The nurse could possibly give her best to her client
through referring her to another health care provider who have no religious constraints
but because of lack of manpower in the health center, she could not just ask everyone
and ended up doing it herself. I consider this situation as unfair to both parties because
their intention was good but still ended up committing a sin in their religion.
The article is significant to the nursing practice because it concerns a large
percentage of nurses. Providing the best and appropriate care is our goal for our client
and it is difficult to comply this knowing that you have lied or ignored the teaching of the
church. I solely believe that this article is an eye-opener to the Roman Catholics
especially the Pope to address this issue and if fortunate, revise the position of the
church towards the use of artificial methods for the sake of health care providers and
their patients.
On the other, this article is imperative for our education because it gives us awareness
that not all the family methods are applicable to all mothers because their stand varies
from religion to religion. For the nursing research, this article is significant as well. The
author pointed out some parts about the misconceptions about how contraceptives work
and its side effects.
The article calls for a nursing research to correct all those misconceptions of each
artificial method so that we could prove that it is more effective and ideal for birth control
compared to the natural method.