Will They Print It?

An Open Letter to American Baby Magazine
Re: Going Green with Natural Birth Control

Dear American Baby Magazine,

With four children, I have been a regular reader of your magazine for eleven years now. I was a little disappointed when I read the current issue’s article on birth control. It neglected to mention Natural Family Planning. Not your mother’s “rhythm method”, NFP is a scientific method of using a combination of calendar, temperature, and mucous observations to plan the timing and number of babies a couple will have. It comes with no risks or side effects and requires no medication. There is no better way for a woman to learn about her body, and no “greener” way to plan one’s family. My husband and I have been married for fifteen years and have perfectly planned our family using NFP.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Kathryn Gerold-Miller

NFP and the Media

The current issue of American Baby has a big spread on birth control. I am sending them a letter pointing out that they neglected to mention Natural Family Planning as an option. As in homeschooling, the more people hear from us, the more mainstreamed NFP will be become. You can't get any "greener" than that!

Explaining Abortion to Children

One day late last October, my then-nine-year-old daughter came home from school and told me about an informal poll that had been taken in her fifth grade class.

If they were able to vote in the next Presidential election, whom would they vote for? She said most of the children raised their hand for Hillary Clinton. I do not know who else was offered as a “candidate”, but I was shocked at the support for such a person in a Catholic school.

“Oh, she’s horrible, horrible – evil, even!” I exclaimed.

“Why?”

I could have gone into a thousand reasons – the shocking things she has gotten away with throughout her years in public service. The one that stood out the most in my mind, at that moment, was her stance on abortion.

I quickly weighed in my mind whether or not I wanted to bring this subject up at this juncture. Would I shatter her innocence by letting her know such evil existed? How likely was she to hear the term “abortion” elsewhere in the next year?

I decided to sit her down and explain what abortion was. She had just been through my pregnancy, so she understood what I meant when I said a woman decided to “terminate” her pregnancy.

“But why would someone want to do that?”

I explained that sometimes a woman might feel like she had no options – no husband, no support from family or friends, nowhere to turn. My explanations of procreation had been so entwined in marriage that she didn’t understand how a woman could become pregnant without being married!

She was sad but calm. “Well, at least there is one good thing, the baby gets to go to heaven,” she said.

This past summer, we came across a mention of abortion in the most innocent of movies, “The Singing Nun”, starring Debbie Reynolds. A young woman fainted at a church dance and said, “Don’t worry, I’m just pregnant. I’m not having the baby though. I’m going to have an abortion.” The freshman nun, shocked, yelled at her for even thinking of such a thing, calling it “murder”. “How dare you say such a thing to me!” returned the young woman. The young nun was rebuked by an elder nun, saying she had to find a gentler way to express herself if she didn't want to "lose" the people. It was lost on my six-year-old son. My eight-year-old daughter turned to me and asked, “What is abortion?”

So I quickly and gently explained it to her. As my mom always said, she’d rather I heard about these things from her than from the world. Middle school seems to be the time to explain such matters to our children so they have it in the context of our values.

“And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”
Deuteronomy 6:6-7

Virgin and Child before a Firescreen
Oil on wood, 1430
National Gallery, London

Communications and a Visit to Highbury

“A Visit to Highbury: Another View of Emma”, is an entertaining and well-written novel by Joan Austen-Leigh, the great-grand-daughter of Jane Austen’s nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh. It takes the form of an exchange of letters between two sisters.

Mrs. Mary Goddard, the mistress of the girls’ school in Highbury, shares the local gossip about the beloved characters created by Jane Austen in “Emma”: Emma Woodhouse, Harriet Smith, Jane Fairfax, Robert Martin, Mr. Elton, Frank Churchill, and Mr. Knightly, among others. Mrs. Charlotte Pinkney, from her dark and gloomy house in London, speculates on the causes of their behavior and complains about her loneliness in her new marriage.

Although separated by a mere twelve miles, without a private carriage and the means to travel it is like an ocean between them. The last time they saw each other was seventeen years ago, when Charlotte went to help Mary grieve the loss of her children to scarlet fever. Writing almost every day in copious detail, they maintain their closeness and help to lend support and advice where needed. The title comes from the hopes Charlotte has of obtaining permission from her new husband to visit Mary.

Reading the letters made me think of the change communications has brought to us. Although my sister lives several hundred miles away in Tennessee, we are able to talk via telephone and e-mail. A car ride is only one full day away, and a plane ride about four hours.

The written letter has become quite rare and old-fashioned, something I now share only with older relatives who do not access e-mail. How much deeper the letters in this book go than the typical telephone conversation or e-mail! There may be a frequency and ease of contact, yet the depth is something that is often lost in the technology.

On the other hand, with much thoughtfulness we can use our modern gadgets to enhance our long-distance relationships. My grandmother, mother, sister, and I exchange e-mails several times per week. Several years ago my husband bought me a digital camera. I liberally send the photos to share my excitement in a memory made that day.

And my digital camcorder, another Christmas gift a few years later, I use to take home movies of every-day activities that my relatives must miss out on. Last Christmas I made copies of the movies and sent them as Christmas gifts to those who would most appreciate them. This year I will do the same, so they can share in Baby’s First Birthday, Baby’s First Steps, baseball games, and track meets.

Technological communications can distance us or make us closer. It is all in how we make use of it!

Additional Post-Notes:

I will try to get my hands on the sequel, “Later Days at Highbury”, and review it here.

My review should appear on ReviewScout.com in five to seven days.

Read my post on Austen’s Times.

Read my post on Northanger Abbey.