Letters to the Editor

Smart people and family planning

Many things in Karen Heller's column "What? Birth control? Again?" (Sunday) are false and offensive, but the claim that the Catholic Church endorses "the rhythm method, which is contraception for stupid people," takes the prize.

What the church actually endorses, is natural family planning (NFP). Catholic doctors like Thomas Hilgers and his team at Creighton University are careful, intelligent scientists who publish on these subjects in peer-reviewed journals. They have created several different systems for understanding women's fertility. These methods can be used not only to space and plan births, but also to treat infertility and other women's health issues without pharmaceuticals. NFP requires believing that occasionally deferring desire can be the right thing to do. The restraint is where spirituality comes in.

NFP works. Its effectiveness is statistically equivalent or superior to the pill for couples who use as directed, but without the physiological side effects.

If Heller has a case to argue, she is free to do so, but spare us the gratuitous insults. My wife and I began practicing NFP while I was finishing my Ph.D. Thousands of other couples, Catholic and otherwise, practice NFP with happiness and success, and, believe it or not, we're not fools or part of a cult. Intelligence and natural family planning most definitely coexist in our world.

Christopher C. Roberts, Philadelphia

Church's election-year cause

How ironic that a group of allegedly celibate men, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the servants of the people of God, continue to insinuate themselves into the private lives of their communities and employees, invading the relationship among a woman, her conscience, her spouse, and her doctor ("HHS rule 'insulting,'" Sunday). How ironic that they express outrage at President Obama and his administration for trying to provide health-care coverage for all Americans, yet still claim to work for justice.

Where was the outrage when thousands of children were being stripped of innocence while some of these "leaders" looked the other way? Where is the outrage at thousands of children, born into a society that undereducates and neglects them, being left to live a subhuman life and die in misery or in jail?

Given Obama's continued attempts to make things right, it is truly tragic that the Catholic Church has selected this issue as its election-year cause.

E.L. Sheronas, Glenmoore, els5x@hotmail.com