We Need a Thoughtful Discussion About Birth Control (A No Easy Answers Post)

There is a reason I generally don’t post about headlines: it takes me time to process things and make sure my first reactions all hold water. I hate the tendency to react without thinking, the way it leads us to view everything in black and white and fail to acknowledge the nuances in every situation,…

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Sex Always Has Consequences

When I heard the story on the news this morning, I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or do a face palm. There’s a new study out saying that women taking the newer-generation mini birth control pills have 3x higher risk of blood clots compared to women who don’t take oral contraceptives. But, they hasten to…

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What It’s Like To Practice Natural Family Planning

After yesterday’s post about why I don’t like birth control, I think it only makes sense to talk about the alternative. Natural family planning is widely reviled as a game of reproductive roulette, an unreasonable burden on couples, or an unnecessary restriction on sexual expression. Those of us who use NFP try to dispel those myths,…

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Birth Control Really Isn’t Health Care In The First Place

It is no secret to anyone who reads this blog that I am a not a fan of birth control.  I think it’s unconscionable that women have been expected to suppress or perhaps even damage a healthy, normal part of who they are in the interest of unrestricted sex. Contraception has led to an expectation…

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What’s YOUR Problem?

Life is unpredictable, but over the past several years I’ve learned there’s one thing I can count on with absolute certainty: somewhere between one week and two days before university graduation, I will lose my voice. It happens virtually every semester, just before I join the platform party at honors convocation as the official singer…

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7 Quick Takes

___1___ Alex brought this home from school this week. They had to write a song based on the blues. ___2___ Julianna’s language can be killingly funny. She tries so hard to tell us something, and we listen, we have her repeat, but we are so lost. So we take a stab at it. “Bacon?” “Doh doh…

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Environment, Family, and Planning

Not that long ago I wrote a blog post called Too Big For Me. I know the world’s problems are too big and too complex to be reduced to black and white. But there is a topic that most people consider closed, no longer worth debating, that warrants another look. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=birth-control-in-water-supply I’ve shared before what…

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A Holistic, Natural Life

I’m posting today on a subject very close to my heart. I know that probably half of my readers think this topic has nothing to do with you, but I would like to invite each of you to take time to read it, even though it’s aimed at natural family planning users, because the point…

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Preaching To the Choir

“Why is the “e” word (evangelism) so hard? How can the Christian faith be something you keep to yourself … or keep for yourself?” – Tweeted by @lensweet 3/16/11 “What we want is not more books about Christianity, but more books by Christians on other subjects.” – C.S. Lewis Sometimes I wonder if what I’m doing…

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An Infertility Story, Part 1: Why NFP?

I spent the month of December writing a huge article on infertility. In the process of contacting and interviewing couples, I realized something: I have never actually addressed infertility on this blog. So I am dedicating this week to a no-holds-barred, lay-it-out-there infertility story. So if this is something you don’t feel like reading about,…

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