[Mrs. Don-o]

"A sex act performed with NFP or artifical BC is "open to procreation" proportional to the method's failure rate."

I think I understand what you're saying here. But it's a misunderstanding. "Openness to procreation" does not have anything to do with the method's "failure rate." This idea that a method's "chanciness" defines its "openness to life" is a false inference that a lot of people draw. That's why I never use the words "openness to procreation." It can be misinterpreted and cause unnecessary confusion.

What we're looking for here is, what is your stance toward sex? Do you think that healthy, natural sex --- pleasurable, emotionally satisfying, periodically fertile/infertile, expressing "I am yours, you are mine" ---is good the way God designed it? Do you think that human fertility is a holy thing, or do you think that fertility is a design flaw, a disease?

If women's bodies have a design flaw, a disease (fertility), you will attack it with drugs, devices, and surgery, just as if it were cancer, or an infestation of parasites. Contraception is based on the pathology paradigm of the female body.

On the other hand, if fertility is a holy thing, and a good part of a good design, then you practice sexual intercourse during your wife's fertile period when you're willing to accept the gift of a child; and you cherishingly refrain during that time when (for whatever reasons of health or hardship) you could not responsibly accept a child.

Either way it's respectful. It always gives homage to fertility as an awesome gift, because human life is an awesome thing: I could even say access to a fertile woman is an awesome thing, a gift: one which is respectfully accepted, or one which is respectfully declined. It says in an embodied way, "You were made right: I don't want to alter you. I will behave accordingly."

For the most part, contraception is an embodied insult to women. I mean that it embodies the message: if you were made right, you'd be available all the time. But you were made wrong, dammit. You need to be fixed.

[klossg]

I cannot say it any better than Mrs. Don-o has said it. Way to get to the point.

[armydoc]

On the other hand, if fertility is a holy thing, and a good part of a good design, then you practice sexual intercourse during your wife's fertile period when you're willing to accept the gift of a child; and you cherishingly refrain during that time when (for whatever reasons of health or hardship) you could not responsibly accept a child.

The issue is not abstinence during fertile periods. The issue is sex during infertile periods. This attitude/method intentionally tries to separate the sex act from procreation. In your "disease" analogy, NFP does look at fertility as a type of disease, like active herpes, to be avoided.

[SuziQ]

Thanks for your awesome explanation. I'm always mystified when people think NFP is wrong because some people choose to use it to avoid pregnancy. It's simply using the signs God gives women to help them and their husbands decide when to express the mutual love with which God has Blessed them.