Women Deserve Better

Earlier this year, an uproar was sparked because a few Ottawa Doctors are refusing to prescribe contraception or refer for abortions,  and sterilizations. This choice to act in accordance with their conscience for the sake of each of their patients has steadily become a cause for concern with many canadian citizens. A letter provided to their patients read:

Dear Patient,

Please be advised that because of reasons of my own medical judgment as well as professional ethical concerns and religious values, I only provide one form of birth control, Natural Family Planning. In addition, I do not refer for vasectomies, abortions nor prescribe the morning after pill or any artificial contraception. If you are interested in the latter, please be aware that you may approach your own family doctor or request to be seen by another physician.

Some patients also come to a walk in clinic for prescriptions of narcotics. The distribution of those drugs is controlled. Narcotics have a high potential for side effects, including addiction and they should be prescribed by a regular physician who is able to follow you. It is your responsibility to ensure that this physician will be renewing your prescription on time as I won’t do so in a context of walk in clinic.

With deepest respect,

Edmond Kyrillos, B. Eng., MD, CCFP
Ottawa Ontario

As a result of this, there has been a pull from the Conscience Research Group to have the conscience rights reviewed and possibly changed within the Physicians Code of Ethics for the Canadian Medical Association. They note on their website home page that they are “investigating the permissibility of conscientious refusals by health care professionals to provide health care services such as abortions. Our particular concern is with refusals to provide reproductive health care services.”

It is an important thing to question what is motivating a doctor in how they follow their conscience. The removal of the right to follow their conscience, however, will be detrimental. You can see more on this in the first part of this series, “Doctor Dilemma“. In the letter provided to patients, the primary reasons motivating their decisions are due to their own medical judgment and professional and ethical concerns. The “religious” reasons are last in the list. It is listed last because, although it helps to motivate decision making, it is the morals and values surrounding human life, that are further informed by their faith, that motivate their decisions.

These doctors know full well the terrible and masking effects of the pill, how abortion kills children, and how sterilizations for the reason of pregnancy prevention are detrimental to us and society at large. These doctors also know how well modern NFP (Natural Family Planning) benefits all aspects of life, including keeping marriages successful by promoting communication and respect of one another. I am a user of NFP which these good doctors advocate, and have experienced the wonderful effects of it in my own life. Modern NFP is a truly holistic concept. It helps to achieve and avoid pregnancy at a highly successful rate (a far greater rate than the Birth Control Pill), and in a manner that does not pose a threat to a newly conceived child. The method which I use for example is the Creighton Model Fertilitycare System, which can incorporate NaProTechnology. Creighton has a 99.5 % effectiveness rate with perfect use and 96.8% effectiveness rate with typical use. Even more importantly, however, is the fact that it actually helps to diagnose and treat medical issues, even before they can seriously progress.

The Creighton Method is only one of many effective NFP methods (which require total abstinence from sex during the fertile time to avoid pregnancy), but I will speak about this one in particular since I am a personal user of it. I should clarify that modern forms of NFP are not the Rhythm Method; that ancient form of NFP which was almost completely useless and had an extremely high failure rate).  It is also not FAM (Fertility Awareness Method, which rather than abstaining from sex during fertile periods, engages in it, while using “protection”). While the Rhythm Method is based on the assumption that every woman ovulates on day 14 of her cycle, other modern methods of NFP such as Creighton, help a woman to understand her personal cycle so she knows when she is ovulating, and thus how to avoid or achieve pregnancy. It is a personalized method geared to fit every woman and circumstance. This is achieved by tracking cycles. In the case of the Creighton Model, a woman “NaPro Tracks” her cycle, by documenting the observed cervical mucus or lack thereof. The benefit to using the Creighton method is that your tracked cycles are monitored by a qualified teacher, who can help interpret the chart and send the woman to a qualified NaPro trained doctor, should it be necessary. It is these doctors that assess these charts and can see from them the issue that a woman may be experiencing, and they can thereby help her.

I am one of those women. I was familiar with Creighton Model at the time of becoming pregnant with both of my children, though I was not actually using it. After experiencing my second miscarriage, and knowing that low progesterone (an important hormone needed  to achieve a successful pregnancy) was often a cause for miscarrying, I asked the OB/GYN who followed up with me after the second miscarriage about getting tested for it. She said it could not be done, that no one could check for that. Even though I knew she was wrong, I went and got a second opinion. While NaProTechnology considers every miscarriage a problem, most of our “professionals” do not consider it an issue until after a third miscarriage. What woman really has the heart to bear the loss of a child, and then another, and then another, before any typical doctor cares to help?

I was not willing to take this risk, so I went and received a referral to the nearest NaPro doctor. I had my first appointment this past July. He took one look at my chart, saying “I know what this is” and prescribed Metformin due to a “short luteal phase” during the time of post ovulation. Prior to taking this medication, I was experiencing a lot of PMS symptoms. I was extremely irritable and struggled with bouts of depression. I knew my period was coming because I could feel a noticeable change in myself. It was extremely difficult to deal with. With just one cycle (so far) on this new medication, I did not feel the way I did before. I know that my journey has only just begun, but there has already been so many great changes. I would not have known I was dealing with this had it not been for NaPro Tracking and the help of my NaPro doctor.

What has sparked my interest in sharing this with you was a Facebook conversation my husband had online recently. In it, a friend spoke of her fertility issues and the need for artificial birth control to aid in its control. She felt it was necessary that doctors be forced to prescribe these “medical services”, particularly “the pill”, because women like herself “need it to get by”. While I am not denying that it may alleviate symptoms, the pill is not the answer. To help illustrate this point, I decided to reach out to some friends within groups that I am a part of who have had severe cases of Endometriosis and PCOS. These women came to know of their fertility issues by the symptoms and using NFP Tracking. These issues, once properly diagnosed, either required serious surgeries, other medical assistance, or both. Due to the highly successful rates of the surgeries done by the hands of specially skilled NaProTechnology doctors, these women have come back nearly pain free, and being able to successfully conceive and bring the child to term on their own.  I wish to share just a few amazing testimonies which they have given with their permission regarding how effective NaProTechnology really is:

“My story before NaPro includes seeing OB/GYN’s for years (20 to be exact) and being told several untruths:

“Being a woman sucks and you have to get used to that.”
“You obviously aren’t in enough pain that you’ll take the BCP – so I question how honest you’re being about your pain level.”

The most intervention I ever received before NaPro was an ultrasound where they told me everything looked “beautiful and perfect”…. only to find out later from NaPro that I had low estradiol, very low progesterone, an ovulation defect, a luteal phase defect, the endo on my uterine ligaments, lots of inflammation. I was puking about 2 weeks a month, and laboring and passing massive clots. I was not “beautiful” on the inside as they had suggested.

I had endo excision via robot assisted surgery in the end of May 2013. The endo removal almost completely removed the GI dysfunction I was having. My sharp pelvic pain went away. I no longer had stabbing pain running down my thighs either. The really acute pain around ovulation disappeared. And because of the surgery, my NaPro fellow found a uterine infection (via sHSG) and a fibroid. Additionally, my constant nausea disappeared. We found a thyroid disorder and treated it along with my sex hormones. The endo removal was like peeling back the first layer of the onion.

NaPro literally gave me back 2-3 weeks of my life every cycle. And for a long time I didn’t write about my journey because I thought others had it worse. I never knew I didn’t have to suffer like that. Or that suffering like that wasn’t normal. It was the failure of my doctors for so many years to ever make me think it was normal.”

Some other short but awesome testimonies:

“I would have one cycle a year if that. After the OWR (Ovarian Wedge Restriction surgery) I had regular cycles every month and I’ve been pregnant three times now (one miscarriage). My hormones are much more stable and my periods are not excruciating anymore”

Another woman had the same surgery and states:

“I had an OWR. It completely eliminated my insulin resistance and my cycles became really regular (I planned my wedding around them). When I wanted to conceive, I had no problem but needed progesterone support (1 miscarriage and currently 23 weeks.)”

This lady had not had a cycle on her own in years:

“I had an OWR. I hadn’t had a cycle on my own in years. 35 days exactly after my OWR, I had my first un-induced cycle. In the 4 months since my surgery, I’ve had four. Unheard of for me.”

The surgical techniques done for these women by Dr. Hilgers (one of the creators of NaProTechnology, the Creighton Method, and the aforementioned surgical techniques) and his few trained surgeons, are unlike any other. Due to the advanced methods which he pioneered to prevent scarring and adhesions, which result in a lower recurrence rate for endometriosis, these surgeries have allowed for better outcomes for both health and fertility. Who wouldn’t want that? These women will tell you firsthand that Dr. Hilgers and his team are simply the best.

These doctor’s, such as Dr. Edmond Kyrillos, who are refusing these so-called “medical treatments” such as contraception (whether for medical issues or avoidance of pregnancy), abortion, or sterilizations, are in actual fact, looking out for their best interests because they know that these antiquated forms of birth control are doing these women an injustice. Women deserve better, and women deserve real solutions to help them in their reproductive health. Just as we have the right to refuse receiving a treatment that a doctor recommends, life saving or not, they also should continue to have a right to refuse to prescribe, when they know the treatment is not in the best interest of the patient. We need to let doctors be doctors. Health care is not Burger King, and you can’t always have it your way. The customer is not always right in this case. We also need to hold our doctor’s to a higher standard of practicing medicine. St. John Paul II said “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” Taking away the conscience rights of our doctor’s will only serve to harm us and them. Though a patient may not always agree with the opinion of their doctor, they need to have the freedom to care for us to the best of their ability.

 

Pope Francis, the Incarnation, and the Not-So “New” Evangelization.

I am absolutely fed up with hearing about the “economic” ramifications of Pope Francis’ newest Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium. I really do not think people are listening to what the Holy Father is really calling Catholics to do, and more importantly, who he is reminding them to be. I have not even finished reading it, but I can tell you that it is so good that in the index alone, I have found everything that I am going to be using for our annual Team Orthodoxy retreat at the end of the month. The 220+ page exhortation is, more than anything, a battlecry for the Church Militant to proclaim the Gospel. The question is: are we listening?

The “Year of Faith” which began during the Pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI and was completed under Pope Francis, has come and gone. I look across my diocese and the parishes within my own city , however, and I have to question whether the call to a renewal of faith was really actualized or not. This is not to say that there are not parishes and dioceses that did really good things. My diocese, however, seemed to largely forget the Year of Faith was even there, when it came to the day-to-day. I appreciated seeing Matt Maher come and do a concert and having a “Year of Faith” day, but this was not the intent of the Holy Father when he inaugurated this special year. Now, with Evangelii Gaudium hot off of the press, I am watching and seeing people are doing the exact same thing with it as they did with the Year of Faith. Heck, let’s take it further. They (much of the Catholic establishment media and the world at large) are doing the exact same with this as they did with the documents of the Second Vatican. They are missing the whole point. I am just sitting and waiting to see when people will actually acknowledge this evangelical molotov cocktail which was thrown into their midst. I truly believe that those within the Church who seek to live out her missionary spirit will really hear these words of Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium and find them encouraging. Regrettably, the majority of the Church Militant are too busy looking for something else.

I personally have some struggles with Pope Francis and I have yet to find anyone who grew up and paid attention as part of the “JPII Generation” that doesn’t. The man is not impeccable, and believing otherwise is certainly not the teaching of Holy Mother Church. His teaching, when teaching from the Seat of Peter or Ex Cathedra is infallible. This does not make the man impeccable or give him some supernatural knowledge to know or do the right thing without thinking. I will say this: Our Pope is in love with the person of Jesus Christ and desires that all men be saved. This is what sums up his Pontificate at present.

Our Pope longs for the Church he shepherds to know and love our Blessed Lord with an apostolic intensity. He knows that once we fall in love with Christ, we cannot help but proclaim it. So he calls the faithful to pray in a most real way, a prayer of personal commitment to Jesus. He says, “Now is the time to say to Jesus: ‘Lord, I have let myself be deceived; in a thousand ways I have shunned your love, yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord, take me once more into your redeeming embrace”’. He desires for us not to simply have a Sunday get-together with Jesus, but to know Him intimately through daily personal (also known as mental) prayer. From this place of daily personal encounter with the Living and True God through prayer, we become more closely united with Him, and so His desires soon begin to become our own. This is the litmus test of real prayer: If it is causing you to convert, turn away from sin, and turn you towards to world to love people and lead them to the Truth. “Goodness always tends to spread”, Pope Francis tells us. He reminds us that, “We become fully human when we become more than human, when we let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being.” What is that truth? That God loves us personally so much as to lay down His very life for us to save us and that He desires that we be in union with Him for all eternity, but more importantly, He desires that union right now. This is Good News! By repenting and turning away from our sin, we lose nothing of ourselves and gain everything. We repent because of the Good News. We should not repent out of fear. We should repent because our God loves us and desires union with us, but sin destroys that union, and prevents us from being with Him. “God asks everything of us, yet at the same time he offers everything to us,” our Holy Father tell us. This is what the world needs to hear, but are we going to respond to this battlecry?

This message is not new. The desire to proclaim it, however, needs to be. This is why Pope Francis says, “Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world. Every form of authentic evangelization is always ‘new.'” The New Evangelization is new in its fervour, and perhaps new in the way it is communicated. It is, however, simply doing what has been done for 2,000 years with the means put before us. At every juncture of human history in the last 2,000 years, Christians have sought to use every means at their disposal for the proclamation of the Gospel. It is a natural thing for Christians who love Jesus to seek out different means to evangelize. Though the means of communication change, it is unchanging in its message however. The message is Jesus Christ, who is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” The truth is, so much of the Church across the globe has been, figuratively speaking, putting the cart before the horse. Instead of creating these different committees and conferences, what we all need  is to concretely encounter Jesus Christ through the Sacraments, the Word of God,  and prayer,  and from that place go to the world. The Church needs to facilitate that in a non-abstract way. This is what the Year of Faith called for and Evangelii Gaudium is reiterating. The “New Evangelization” can never take root without a firm loving relationship with Jesus and a love for His Church.

Advent is coming to an end and Christmas is fast approaching. When meditating upon Evangelii Gaudium and the response it has received, I can’t help but think about Christmas. The Jews were waiting for a political messiah to show up and save them from the tyranny of Rome. Jesus was not a political Messiah at all. When Jesus showed up, He was born into poverty and laid in a food trough in a stable and would technically be homeless for years. Our pictures and nativity scenes make it look almost magical but objectively speaking, it was far from that. Only the Three Wise Men and a bunch of shepherds showed up to give him homage. The kings of the earth largely ignored him. King Herod wanted this poor homeless baby to be killed. The world did not want the Truth at all. This story seems a lot like what Pope Francis is dealing with. Instead of listening to the call of a renewed relationship with Christ, we are looking for things to offend us or to challenge our earthly political sensibilities. Yet instead of looking for Jesus amidst the politics, this Christmas we need to find Jesus where He actually is. As baptized Christians, that place is our hearts. Jesus waits for us to come to Him in the stable of our hearts and to make a throne for Him there.  As we embark upon a whole new year, may the Nativity be for us the starting point of a renewed relationship with Jesus, so that we can truly help to bring about a real “New Evangelization” in the world.

Motion 312 – A Call to Arms!

This month, on Friday September 21, 2012, MP Stephen Woodworth of Kitchener-Waterloo submitted to Parliament Motion 312, which is a motion to reopen the debate on the definition of a human being in Canada. Motion 312 won the voice vote on September 21, 2012.  The recorded vote on Motion 312 is scheduled to occur on September 26, 2012.

This is wonderful news!  Canada is a wonderful country.  At the heart of it, Canada wants to be a country who is honest and does the right thing in its laws and offers true universal human rights.  Who doesn’t want this?  The truth is, without recognizing even the most dependent and vulnerable of our citizens as also having these rights, let alone being human beings, Canada will never be the country that it aims to be.  It will forever fall short of being a great country.

Today, the Criminal Code for Canada states the following regarding when a child becomes a human being:

(1) A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state from the body of its mother whether or not
(a) it has breathed
(b) it has an independent circulation
(c) the navel string is severed.

http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/page-110.html#h-77

This 400 year old definition is far outdated and seriously needs to be changed.  We know when a human life begins.  Unfortunately though, this definition still does not reflect this.  At the very moment of conception, the ovum and sperm unite and become something and someone 100% different. All of the genetic code is present, everything that is needed is there for this zygote, the size of one cell (just to begin), to become a fully formed infant.  All they need is the time to grow, and they grow at an incredible rate.  At just 18 days gestation, before most women even know they are pregnant, the tiny little heart is beating.  Alarmingly, abortion is currently legal in Canada throughout all nine months of pregnancy.  This is absurd and this needs to change.

Mr. Woodworth, in his closing remarks on Friday, said that “recognizing the reality that children are human beings before complete birth will affirm the hallowed principle that human rights are universal, not a gift of the State which may be cancelled by subsection 223(1).”

We need your ongoing prayers and support for the passing of this motion and for the Holy Spirit to guide the hearts and minds of our government as they work toward re-examining this definition.  Join us in fasting and prayer on September 26, 2012 as Motion 312 goes to the recorded vote.

“The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right — it is the very opposite. It is a deep wound in society.” Pope Benedict XVI

You can contact Mr. Woodworth at the following contact details to offer your support:

Ottawa Office:

Room 334, Confederation Building
House of Commons
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Telephone: 613-995-8913
Fax: 613-996-7329
Email: stephen.woodworth@parl.gc.ca

Kitchener Office:

Suite 12, 300 Victoria Street North,
Kitchener ON N2H 6R9
Telephone: 519-741-2001
Fax: 519-579-2404
Email: stephen.woodworth@parl.gc.ca

Resources:

https://www.facebook.com/events/328476997247615/

http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&DocId=5437818

http://www.stephenwoodworth.ca/canadas-400-year-old-definition-of-human-being/motion-312—woodworths-plea-to-mps

Missing the Alarm Clock- The ACA and the Catholic Church in America

Have you ever awakened in the morning, only to turn to your clock and find that you have missed your alarm? If you have to be at work, school, or have an appointment, this brief moment can set you into a panic. That’s such an awful feeling, isn’t it? You’re now rushed, and it just throws your entire day off.  I wonder if that is how the Bishops of the United States feel in light of today’s proceedings.

Today, the United States Supreme Court issued a decision upholding as a tax the provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires individuals to purchase a health plan also known as the “individual mandate.” In an official press release by the US Catholic Conference of Bishops, we hear again the plea of the Church in America not to abolish the good within the ACA, but to rid the ACA of that which does not bring about the greatest good for all.

In the official press release about the ACA, the US Bishops decry certain points of the ACA which “allows use of federal funds to pay for elective abortions and for plans that cover such abortions, contradicting longstanding federal policy”. They also state that the ACA “fails to include necessary language to provide essential conscience protection, both within and beyond the abortion context.  In regards to the treatment of Immigrant workers, the Bishops also state that it ” leaves them worse off by not allowing them to purchase health coverage in the new exchanges created under the law, even if they use their own money. This undermines the Act’s stated goal of promoting access to basic life-affirming health care for everyone, especially for those most in need. ”

The US Bishops, as restated by Bishop Kevin Farrell, “have never joined in efforts to repeal this law in its entirety and do not do so today but today’s opinion does not diminish the moral imperative to ensure decent healthcare for all, nor eliminate the need to correct the fundamental  flaws mentioned above.”  The Church truly does desire affordable healthcare for all, despite the numbers of people who think that she doesn’t. However,  though the church wants this, it is not at the expense of her conscience. The Church will always fight that which masquerades as healthcare, namely abortion, abortion inducing drugs, and sterilization and so she will continue to make a stand for what is truly healthcare, and stand against what is not healthcare.

But back to the analogy of the alarm clock. Does anyone else feel like we are dealing with this mess because we did not deal with the problem in the beginning? Sure you woke up the “sleeping giant”, but have we missed our cue? I have ranted on this topic before, but some may take today’s events like a foreshadowing of the future HHS mandate.  Well, I’m here to say, better late than never.  If anything, the ACA event needs to give added impetus to the Church in America to fight with more gusto than ever before.  Let us continue to pray for the Catholic Cardinals, Bishops, and Clergy of the United States, that in the face of masquerading evil, that they will continue to speak up and stand up against that which defies natural and moral law.  Though we may have missed the alarm, the clock is still ticking.  Wake up Church Militant- it’s time to fight.

Oh and PS: Happy VENERABLE Fulton Sheen Day!