Family Planning

Natural family planning (NFP) is a term referring to the family planning methods approved by the Roman Catholic Church. more...

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In accordance with the requirements for sexual behavior maintained by this church, NFP excludes the use of contraception, as well as acts intended to end in orgasm outside the context of intercourse.

Periodic abstinence and the natural infertility caused by breastfeeding are the only methods deemed moral for avoiding pregnancy. When used to avoid pregnancy, NFP limits sexual intercourse to naturally infertile periods: during infertile portions of the menstrual cycle, during pregnancy, or after the menopause. Several methods may be used to identify whether a woman is likely to be fertile, which NFP users make use of to either try to avoid or to achieve pregnancy.

Prevalence

It is estimated that 2–3% of the world's reproductive age population relies on periodic abstinence to avoid pregnancy. Breastfeeding is believed to reduce the world's fertility rate by 30–45%. However, what portion of this population should be considered NFP users is unclear. Some Catholic sources consider couples that violate the religious restrictions associated with natural family planning to not be NFP users.

There is little data on the worldwide use of natural family planning. In Brazil, NFP is the third most popular family planning method. The "safe period" method of fertility awareness is the most common family planning method used in India, although condoms are used by some.

Use of NFP in developed countries is low, even among Catholics. While Catholics made up 24% of the U.S. population in 2002, of reproductive age American women using birth control, only 1.5% were using periodic abstinence.

Use of NFP is not restricted to Catholic couples. In 2002, Sam and Bethany Torode, then a Protestant Christian couple, published a book advocating NFP use. (Five years after writing the book, the Torodes retracted their advocacy of pure NFP and also supported barrier methods as moral; the couple also converted from protestantism to the Eastern Orthodox Church.)

Methods

There are three main types of NFP: the symptoms-based methods, the calendar-based methods, and the lactational amenorrhea method. Symptoms-based methods rely on biological signs of fertility, while calendar-based methods estimate the likelihood of fertility based on the length of past menstrual cycles.

Read more at Wikipedia.org