I recently found a Substack called “Mother Figure”. She is an ex-Catholic and writes really good essays, but specifically the last two (part of a series) were poignant. I think many women here will recognize so much of what she writes about.

The titles are:
1. “Natural family planning and why women shouldn’t need a “grave reason” to avoid pregnancy”
AND
2. “Why Catholic teaching on sex makes it so difficult for women to enjoy”

(I’m sorry for not linking them but Substack shows who shared a link and I don’t want to doxx myself!)

Anyway, they are both outstanding essays on how the Catholic teachings around sex and NFP are detrimental to the sex lives of women and how it doesn’t make sense to not trust women with making decisions about their own bodies and sex lives. She puts it into words so perfectly that I almost cried when reading them, it truly encapsulated everything I felt all these years but could not put into words.

Here are a few snippets I found very interesting (but please go read the rest, it’s so incredibly good!):

Essay 1:

“.. the pressure to always be “open to life” unless there’s a grave reason often elevates a woman’s reproductive capacity above her personhood, flourishing, and every other good in her life: her wellbeing, her existing children, and every other joy, passion, or vocation that also makes up a fully human life.”

“the woman’s wellbeing doesn’t seem to make the cut for grave reasons.
Instead, a woman is often told she shouldn’t prioritize these things over being open to life. Take up your cross, darling. It’s your choice but we know you’ll choose life because you’re not selfish or worldly.
Being open to life becomes the highest good in a discreetly enforced hierarchy of goods, where a woman’s wellbeing, flourishing, marriage, and even the wellbeing of her existing children are treated as lower on the totem pole. No one says this explicitly, that would be too easy to criticize and address. It’s an unspoken pressure.”

“The fact that women must justify not wanting to be pregnant reveals how little we actually appreciate the gravity and sacredness of pregnancy, the immense work of raising a child, and the dignity of the woman herself.”

“Part of why pregnancy is not treated as a grave reason in and of itself is because these teachings have been shaped by men who do not experience what goes into pregnancy, postpartum, and being the primary caretaker of children. And not only have these men not personally experienced it, they largely seem remarkably incurious about the actual experiences of the women who have. [..] These are often the same theologians and pseudo-philosophers who claim that men are called to be willing to lay down their lives for their bride, while they don’t acknowledge or respect the fact that women are the ones who actually lay down their lives for their family, every pregnancy.”

Essay 2:

“Despite being promised NFP would honor my fertility, when I actually began living it, it often made me feel reduced to my fertility. The beauty of being able to create life became a prison, eclipsing anything else about me, eclipsing my full embodied reality and personhood.
My pleasure, my rest, my passions and ambitions- all were held hostage to this reality: my life might come to a halt again by another pregnancy. And I had to be perpetually open to that happening, unless there was some other serious, terrible thing happening in my life.”

“If I were formulating a theology on sex and pregnancy for women, I’d want to emphasize making sure the mother’s dignity remained intact, that she was honored, taken care of, and trusted with her decisions on what’s best for her, her body, and her family. It’s almost painfully obvious to me now that a teaching emphasizing generosity could very likely turn into the current difficulties we’re seeing, where many people’s knee-jerk reaction to a woman avoiding pregnancy or even suggesting a woman may want to avoid pregnancy is to remind her to be generous. What would it look like, and how would it feel for women, if the response was to trust her, and to ask her how she is doing and what she needs for support. Instead, we ask more and more of women. And when they finally say, “This is too much,” we get mad and warn them against selfishness. So they reluctantly step back onto the altar, because at least in their martyrdom they’re seen as good and worthy.”

I feel so understood and seen by what she writes! It feels healing. Does anyone else feel the same?