More on the Life Front

Death of unborn child as a result of Mother's drug us a Homicide
By Thaddeus M. Baklinski
2/26/2008
LifeSiteNews

These fetal homocide cases have some pro-abortion advocates concerned. If killing a child through the intentional drug use of the mother is homicide, then how is chemical abortion not homicide?

EDWARDSVILLE, IL (LifeSiteNews) - A coroner's jury has determined that the death of an Illinois woman's unborn child was a homicide because of the woman's use of illegal drugs, reports the Belleville News-Democrat.

An autopsy on 26-year-old Alicia Tucker's stillborn baby revealed cocaine and amphetamines in the child's system. Tucker was eight months pregnant at the time. The doctor who treated Tucker told the inquest that the "fetus died due to a placental abruption (premature separation of the placenta from the wall of the uterus), which can be caused by cocaine use."

The inquest was told that Tucker had bought a "bag of pills for $11 from a man outside a currency exchange in Granite City shortly before the stillbirth," which she said she thought were painkillers for which she had a prescription. She said she doesn't know why she bought the pills. "I don't know. I honestly don't know," she said. "Sometimes people make stupid mistakes." A detective also testified that Tucker told him she inhaled methamphetamine that she had purchased for someone else, a week before the stillbirth. The result of the police investigation will be forwarded to the county prosecutor for consideration as to whether criminal charges should be filed against the mother.

Robert Weisberg, a law professor and director of the Stanford University Criminal Justice Center, commented on the incongruity of legal abortion and criminal fetal homicide. "Pro-choice groups find this issue difficult," he said. "They know that so long as Roe v. Wade is good law, fetal homicide statutes passed by states can't threaten the right to an abortion. But I think they're concerned that if it becomes well-known that fetal homicide outside abortion can be considered a crime, then the notion of a fetus as a human being might become more widespread in public opinion."

Although Illinois has a fetal homicide law under which only another person can be convicted of killing a child in utero, and not the mother herself, other US states have legislation that allow a mother to be convicted of involuntary manslaughter or reckless homicide if her drug use leads to the death of her fetus.

Good News on the Life Front

French Court: Parents Can Register Names for Fetuses
By John Jalsevac
2/9/2008
LifeSiteNews

According to the AFP report, the ruling is triggering a storm over the issue of abortion in France.

PARIS, France (LifeSiteNews) - France's supreme court has ruled that parents of miscarried or stillborn children can register a name for the child, no matter what stage of development the child was at at the time of miscarriage or birth, reports the AFP. Previous to this most recent ruling, parents in France were allowed to register a name for miscarried or stillborn children, but only after 22 weeks gestation, or if the child weighed over 1.1 pounds. This new ruling gives parents the right to claim the body of their child, which, until this point, was incinerated by the hospital along with other waste tissues. It also allows the mothers of miscarried or stillborn children to claim maternity leave.

According to the AFP report, the ruling is triggering a storm over the issue of abortion in France, with pro-abortion activists arguing that the ruling gives pro-life activists a strongly emotional argument for the humanity of the child, by indicating that a fetus at any stage has a right to a name. "A fetus is only viable after 26 weeks," said Chantal Birman, deputy president of a pro-abortion group called ANCIC. "You have to take the timetable of pregnancy into account." She said that the court decision, "will help a rollback [on abortion availability] that has been taking place in Europe for the last few months."

However, there is an increasing recognition in medical circles that miscarriage or stillbirth can be an extremely traumatic experience for mothers and fathers alike, who may have developed a profound emotional connection with their unborn child. "The mourning process can be long and lonely," says the Helping After Neonatal Death (HAND) website. "After the death of a baby, it generally takes twelve to twenty-four months simply to find your new base." Many parents have found that the process of grieving is helped significantly by the giving of a name to their child. "Giving the baby a name and having the baby baptized or blessed, if such rituals are important to us, are ways for us to acknowledge the reality of the life that has come and gone so quickly," says HAND.

New York Times IVF Article and Dr. Solenni's Responce

Lowering Odds of Multiple Births

By Laurie Tarkan
New York Times
February 19, 2008

In the complex, expensive and emotionally charged world of fertility treatment, doctors are sounding a call to arms to reverse the soaring rate of multiple births. The doctors are responding to an unintended consequence of the success of in vitro fertilization — that it is often too successful. Since 1980, when the technique became available in the United States, the rate of twins in all births has climbed 70 percent, to 3.2 percent of births in 2004. Much of the increase, experts say, is a result of in vitro treatment. The rate of triplets and higher-order multiples increased even more from 1980 to 1998. It is not that twins or triplets are undesirable, doctors say. But multiple pregnancies often lead to risky preterm births and other complications. With that in mind, fertility centers are trying to lower the odds of such pregnancies, even at a cost of slightly lower success rates.

Fertility Center in Boston. “Is it a pregnancy without regard to the number of gestations or a pregnancy with a singleton live birth?” “Now is the time for all of us to rethink what is the paradigm of a successful I.V.F. pregnancy,” said Dr. Aaron K. Styer, a reproductive endocrinologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital. In I.V.F., a woman is given ovulation-induction hormones to produce multiple eggs, which are retrieved, fertilized with her partner’s sperm and transferred back to her uterus. The more embryos transferred, the higher the likelihood of multiples.

To achieve the goal of a single healthy baby, clinics are focusing on transferring fewer embryos and on developing more sophisticated ways to identify the healthiest embryos with the greatest chance of success. “We have been getting better at I.V.F. over the years, and as success rates go up, the number we transfer has to go down accordingly,” said Dr. Judy E. Stern, director of the human embryology and andrology lab at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. “Where three embryos used to work and give you mostly singletons, now we transfer two, because we’re making better embryos.”

The number of I.V.F. cycles in which four or more embryos were transferred has dropped sharply, to 21 percent in 2004 from 62 percent in 1996. Although the efforts have substantially lowered the rates of triplets born through in vitro fertilization, they have not made a dent in the twin rate. That is because many doctors and patients are reluctant to take the final step to ensure a single birth, a process called S.E.T., for single embryo transfer. From 1996 to 2004, the rate of such procedures rose modestly, to 8 percent from 6 percent.

The American Society of Reproductive Medicine now recommends that women younger than 35 with a good prognosis have just one embryo transferred. Women under 35 make up 44 percent of I.V.F. cycles. In women older than 37, who have a higher incidence of embryos with chromosomal defects, three to five embryos are still recommended, depending on the woman’s age.

The main obstacle to single embryo transfer is its lower success rate. Some experts ask women to agree to two cycles, first transferring one fresh embryo while freezing the others. If the first transfer fails, doctors transfer a single frozen embryo, a much less costly and onerous procedure. That approach yields similar success rates to transferring two at once while drastically reducing twin rates. With momentum building to transfer just one or two embryos, clinics focus on choosing the embryo most likely to succeed. Selecting embryos has traditionally been based on a visual examination of their morphology — shape, number of divisions and other physical factors. But morphology does not tell all, and many embryos that look great under the microscope have undetected chromosomal abnormalities like missing or extra chromosomes, called aneuploidy. One method used to weed out unhealthy embryos is to leave the embryos in a Petri dish for five days, two more than usual, to allow more time for hidden chromosomal abnormalities to show up.

Other researchers are looking at the traits of women at high risk of having multiples. In research presented at the reproductive society’s annual meeting last October, Dr. Stern linked a higher number of oocytes, or eggs retrieved from ovaries, with higher rates of single and multiple pregnancies. “This will change our practice,” she said. “If more oocytes are retrieved, we’ll want to transfer fewer embryos.”

Other experts are turning to genetic screening before transfers to cull embryos without aneuploidy. The screening is used to select healthy embryos in families with histories of genetic diseases. Because one or two cells have to be removed for analysis, there is some concern that the process can damage embryos, lowering pregnancy rates. Another screening, comparative genomic hybridization, can assess all 23 pairs of chromosomes, providing an 80 percent chance of a healthy embryo and a 60 percent chance of a live birth, says Dr. Geoffrey Sher, executive medical director of the Sher Institutes of Reproductive Medicine, a nationwide group of fertility centers.

But Dr. Sher, whose lab performs this procedure, has encountered the same obstacles as others. He has a very high twin rate, hovering around 60 percent, because although the technique yields a higher success rate, women are refusing to have just one embryo transferred. Many women in fertility treatment say that they simply do not view having twins as a risky situation and that they are willing, if not eager, to have them to speed the completion of their family, to avoid the high costs of future I.V.F. cycles or to ensure that their child has a sibling, among other reasons.

For a couple in Brooklyn who asked that just the woman’s first name be used to protect their privacy, six years of infertility and several failed procedures was enough. When the woman, Marie, was 28, they requested that three embryos be transferred, even though their doctor advised transferring two. “I wanted a set of twins,” Marie said. “It is such a complicated and sometimes painful thing to go through I.V.F., and to have to go through it all again for a second child was just a waste for me.” In the third in vitro cycle, last June, Marie became pregnant, with triplets. At four weeks, she lost a fetus. At four and a half months, she lost the entire pregnancy. She was devastated, she said, but she added, “I don’t regret my decision.”

Though it is widely accepted that carrying three or more fetuses can have serious complications, some fertility specialists do not view a pregnancy with twins as risky, as long as the patient is carefully monitored. “Yes, twin delivery has more risk than singleton delivery, but with good obstetrical care and educated patients, the risk of twin delivery is minimally higher,” said Dr. Norbert Gleicher, medical director of the Center for Human Reproduction in New York.

Carrying twins or higher-order multiples raises the risk of preterm births; low-birth-weight babies, with the possibility of death in very premature infants; long-term health problems; and pregnancy complications, including pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes and Caesarean section. Studies show that 56 percent of I.V.F. twins born in 2004 weighed less than 5.5 pounds, and 65 percent were born prematurely, before 37 weeks of gestation. Still, many patients take comfort in the improvements in neonatal care. The survival rate for newborns over 2 pounds 3 ounces is 85 percent. And many people just see the adorable twins cooing in the double strollers crisscrossing Central Park — not the ones that do not make it out of neonatal intensive care — or the fetus that was eliminated in a medical procedure called a reduction to improve the chance of survival for the remaining fetus or fetuses.

Along with changes to in vitro fertilization, experts say, physicians need to improve monitoring drugs used to enhance ovulation. “The biggest problem with high multiples is coming from ovulation induction,” said Dr. Richard P. Dickey, chief of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Louisiana State University Medical School in New Orleans. If ovaries are too aggressively stimulated with hormones, a woman can produce a nest full of eggs and increase her risk of having triplets, quadruplets and even sextuplets. All ovulation-induction cycles should be closely monitored, and the cycles that produce too many oocytes should be canceled, Dr. Dickey said.

The biggest obstacles to reducing twins in infertility treatment are not medical, experts said, but the lack of insurance coverage, as well as pressure from patients to be aggressive. “People have to recognize that there’s a connection between cost and how the treatment is going to play out,” said Barbara Collura, executive director of Resolve, a patient advocacy organization for people with infertility. “If you have $10,000 that you’ve begged, borrowed and stolen for this one I.V.F. cycle, you’re not going to say, ‘Please just transfer one.’" Even doctors in the vanguard of the trend face resistance from patients like Marie. Despite her pregnancy loss, she said, “With all the hard work I put into getting pregnant, I’d just rather have a set of twins than a singleton.”

Gimme, Gimme
Dr Pia de Solenni

When we go about having children the way we order a customized car, design a kitchen, or buy a wardrobe, maybe it's a sign that we should get a pet or stick to inanimate things like cars, clothing, and cuisinarts rather than babies.....

The New York Times has this piece on reducing the chances of multiple births for women who use IVF to become pregnant. Granted, infertility is a very difficult thing to deal with, but it doesn't follow that we can therefore use any means to achieve what we want - a child, our own child. This article raises some interesting points that deserve consideration. Here are a few:

"Women under 35 make up 44 percent of I.V.F. cycles."

- That's a lot of relatively young women. What IVF clinics won't tell women is that there are natural methods to overcoming many cases of infertility. Dr. Hilger's Pope Paul VI Institute is a very good place to start. Imagine treating women holistically and integrally - there's a revolutionary concept.

"But Dr. Sher, whose lab performs this procedure, has encountered the same obstacles as others. He has a very high twin rate, hovering around 60 percent, because although the technique yields a higher success rate, women are refusing to have just one embryo implanted." [emphasis mine]

- It's all about the baby, right? Yet people are willing to allow numerous embyros to die in the process of getting a "baby." Remember, that embryo is its own unique entity with it own DNA. It's not a clump of cells that will grow into a bit of hair or bone or any other isolated matter. Unimpeded, it will become the "baby" desperately desired by some. It will continue to become the screaming toddler, the morose teenager, the college graduate, the young spouse, and so on.

"Many women in fertility treatment say that they simply do not view having twins as a risky situation and that they are willing, if not eager, to have them to speed the completion of their family, to avoid the high costs of future I.V.F. cycles or to ensure that their child has a sibling, among other reasons."

- ["And I'll have one of those, and one of those, and that one, and that one, and one of those in every color, and...."] Sorry, not to trivialize infertility, but this sounds ridiculous. Only in a culture that has lost the sense of what gifts are (think of those endless registries for every occasion besides getting married; think of how acceptable it has become to buy gifts for ourselves or to select the gifts that other people will "give" us) would be so blind as to realize that we lose what it means for a child to be a gift. This is about having a baby my way, when and how I want it, without thought even for the well being of the baby that I want. Because, after all, I want it.

"And many people just see the adorable twins cooing in the double strollers crisscrossing Central Park — not the ones that do not make it out of neonatal intensive care — or the vanishing twin, a fetus that was eliminated in a medical procedure called a reduction to improve the chance of survival for the remaining fetus or fetuses."

- Need I say more? It's about getting what we want, no matter the cost to others.

"Despite her pregnancy loss, she said, 'With all the hard work I put into getting pregnant, I’d just rather have a set of twins than a singleton.'"

- Well, that's one way of looking at it.

Again, I don't intend to belittle infertility in any way. My only point is that maybe there are some good reasons for rethinking IVF. A friend of mine, faced with infertility, was ready to adopt. Her husband was completely opposed. But my friend reasoned, "Whether I have the baby or someone else does, there's no guarantee that he will be good, honest, intelligent, good looking, whatever." Even with all the choices that IVF offers, there are no guarantees of this kind. In the meantime, there are children who already exist and need homes. What about helping out one of them? Granted, it won't happen on our terms, but do we really think that having a baby on our terms with IVF will mean that everything will continue to be on our terms after that? That wouldn't really be life, would it?

Hilarious!

I love these YouTube videos and what these guys did to the Mac v. PC commercials. I especially appreciate the last logo and quick tip they show at the end of each episode. There are 6 videos total, just search for "NFP vs. Contraception." Enjoy!

The Truth About Birth Control 1 & 2

A Challenging Truth, Part One: How Birth Control Works

Patti Maguire Armstrong
Catholic Exchange
February 9, 2008

How can something be both immense and minute at the same time, something upon which all of human history depends, yet fragile and almost non-existent to the eye? It is the union of an egg and sperm — an embryo. Such is God's way. He takes something smaller than a mustard seed and brings forth all of civilization. After creating everything in the universe single-handedly, He created us in his own image and bestowed upon us the power to become co-creators with Him. Working in union with us, when the sperm unites with the egg, not only has a new human life been set in motion, but so too has a spiritual life. God places an everlasting soul into the being of every son and daughter.

Most of us rarely think that deeply about it all. In our worldly way, we forget eternity and begin to affix costs — physical, emotional and monetary. The costs can seem exorbitant when we focus only through the eyes of the world. And looking through those same worldly eyes, the way to prevent the miracle we clearly do not recognize as such is so easy, inexpensive, and ironically, also so small — the birth control pill. But the pill does not just prevent the miracle, it also destroys it, a fact that is often surprising to committed pro-lifers. This fact is true for all contraception that works through manipulation of hormone levels.

History

The pill has become a symbol of freedom to those who have been told they can "have it all". And it has become a symbol of destruction to those who support a "Theology of the Body," philosophy, the essence of Catholic teaching that artificial means must not disrupt God's natural order of things.

The first birth control pill received approval from the Food and Drug Administration in 1960. Using a synthetic estrogen hormone, the pill tricked a women's body into thinking it was pregnant. No egg would be released thereby preventing the opportunity for conception.

Although the pill was initially introduced with the idea of affording women a reliable way of limiting their family size, it soon became the ticket to the Sexual Revolution that began in the Sixties and never really ended. The pill promised something it's never been able to deliver: sex with "no strings attached". There are always emotional and moral consequences to thwarting God's purpose, but women discovered physical problems too. Blood clots, heart attacks and strokes were some of the side effects caused by the Pill's high estrogen levels. Drug manufacturers lowered these levels in order to reduce the side effects but that also increased the incidence of breakthrough ovulation. With the lower levels of estrogen, eggs would sometimes still get released and pregnancies resulted.

The drug companies tackled this situation by adding the synthetic hormone progesterone, which makes the uterine wall (the endometrium) inhospitable to implantation by an embryo. So if an egg was released and became fertilized by a sperm, thus creating life, the pill would have actually failed to prevent a conception, meaning it failed as a contraceptive. But, through preventing implantation of the embryo, the pill acts as an abortifacient and stops life from continuing to the next stage. (A clear and simple demonstration of this can be seen here.)

Since some women actually do become pregnant while on the pill, there are some embryos that manage to implant into the uterus. Whether it's RU-486, Norplant, Depo-Provera, the morning after pill, the Mini-pill, or the Pill, there is no chemical "contraceptive" that always causes an abortion. There is also none that never causes an abortion.

Ignorance

There is no way of knowing what percentage of pregnancies result in abortion through the pill. The woman using the pill with this scenario never even knows that she conceived a child. Her cycle will continue on schedule with no realization that an embryo is being flushed from her body. The Catholic Church has never wavered on the teaching that life begins at conception. Although Catholics are contracepting at rates parallel to non-Catholics, using artificial means to change our body's natural functions in order to block the potential for life has been recognized as rebellion against God's plan for humanity. However, using natural means to understand the rhythms of life and then to work in union with God is encouraged through Natural Family Planning.

The issue of birth control is a big one where misunderstanding and ignorance often misguide people. But when it comes to the pill, the ignorance that many women fall prey to is lack of understanding of its abortifacient properties. Most women don't consider that while taking their birth control, they may also be aborting a life within them. As Pope Paul VI predicted when he issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) in 1968, the use of artificial contraception would lead to abortions.

Although it seemed to many to be an overdramatic prediction, it proved to be prophetic. In hindsight, its logic in saying that widespread use of contraception would lead to "conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality" was prophetic. Since the Pill began to be sold in 1960, divorces have tripled, out-of-wedlock births jumped from 224,000 to 1.2 million, abortions doubled, and cohabitation soared 10-fold from 430,000 to 4.2 million.

Sex both inside and outside marriage ceased to be about a bond of marital love in which a couple became one in union with God. It became merely an activity for personal satisfaction devoid of anything more. The Pope predicted man would lose respect for woman, considering her "as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion."

Society as a whole moved from recognizing sex as something reserved for married couples to something for everyone, since the possibility for pregnancy was greatly reduced (although never completely removed). Thus, people completely opposed to having children could have sex with others whom they had chosen as bed partners but would never chose to co-parent their children. The most intimate experience intended to be shared in love and self-giving with the potential for creating life became merely a form of recreation. And if life sprang forth, such a life was easily regarded as nothing more than an unintended problem that could legally be disposed of through abortion.

But women choosing abortion and the men who either make that choice with them or plead for them to do otherwise, are very aware of the decision that is being made, whereas women who choose to take birth control pills are not so aware of the potential ramifications of their choice. There is not a baby with a heartbeat who must forcefully be removed, but unbeknownst to many, there is a baby. Since life begins at conception, a life, even though undetectable to us, is still a life. It is the way God chooses to begin things, small and yet mighty in its eternal existence.

In addition to the pill, IUDs, Depo-Provera and Norplant also cause early, undetectable abortions. Doctor usually fail to warn women of the abortifacient properties of the pill. I've heard some doctors admit they were not actually even aware of these properties. Women often choose contraception as a means to avoid pregnancy without realizing they are not actually stopping pregnancy, but quickly ending it.

Denial

In his booklet, titled Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions?, Randy Alcorn states: "The question of whether it causes abortions has direct bearing on untold millions of Christians, many of them pro-life, who use and recommend it. For those who believe God is the Creator of each person and the giver and taker of human life, this is a question with profound moral implications."

Alcorn was a Protestant pastor who not only used the pill in his married life, but also counseled other married couples to do so. He had a vested interest in not recognizing the pill as an abortifactient. But when confronted with the facts through his own research, it demanded changes in his own behavior and philosophy. His booklet was written in 1998 to inform others of the truth.

Alcorn's booklet has met some opposition. According to him: "Despite evidence, some pro-life physicians state that the likelihood of the Pill having an abortifacient effect is infinitesimally low, or nonexistent. Though I would very much like to believe this, the scientific evidence does not permit me to do so."

Alcorn, surprisingly, found that the greatest resistance to recognizing the abortifacient quality of the pill comes from the Christian community. "Dr. Walt Larimore has told me that whenever he has presented this evidence to audiences of secular physicians, there has been little or no resistance to it. But when he has presented it to Christian physicians there has been substantial resistance. Since secular physicians do not care whether the Pill prevents implantation, they tend to be objective in interpreting the evidence. After all, they have little or nothing at stake either way. Christian physicians, however, very much do not want to believe the Pill causes early abortions. Therefore, I believe, they tend to resist the evidence. This is certainly understandable. Nonetheless, we should not permit what we want to believe to distract us from what the evidence indicates we should believe."

It's easier to be pro-life when we limit the discussion to the abortion industry. The inclusion of artificial birth control complicates and confuses people. With so many opinions even among Catholics, how is a person to know what to believe? I understand the confusion. While living in Montana, I had a doctor who was also a priest, who told me it was not realistic to expect a couple to follow the Catholic teaching on birth control. He prescribed birth control pills to many of his female patients. So, is it any surprise there are many Catholics, ones like me, ignorant of the true teaching?

Yet, we must cut through the false teachings and erroneous opinions to reach the truth. Our lives, our bodies and our souls are all we have. They are gifts that must be safeguarded. Christopher West, author and speaker, has written books and articles explaining the beauty and truth of God's plan for men and women. In his book, Good News about Sex and Marriage, he asserts that the Church's teaching on sex and marriage is good news because it's the truth about love and true love is the fulfillment of the human person. He also admits that the news is challenging. "This is so because the truth about love is always challenging."

A Challenging Truth, Part One: How Birth Control Works

Patti Maguire Armstrong
Catholic Exchange
February 12, 2008

"Everyone does it, so what's the big deal?" Taking the pill, getting "fixed", getting a shot of Depo-Provera...there's a myriad of choices for contraception. The expectation in today's modern society is that everyone uses artificial birth control at some point in their lives, be they married or not. Right?

Many years ago, I would have agreed with all of the above. I was not a rebellious Catholic, just an ignorant one. But the guilt of my ignorance rests on more shoulders than just mine. I was surrounded by contraception Catholics who discussed their birth control as easily as they spoke of which brand of toothpaste they used. And then there was the Catholic clergy. There was nary a homily I heard that even hinted of the Catholic teaching on human sexuality. Understandably, it's not an ideal topic for an audience of all ages. And, truthfully, I did not always make it to Mass, so maybe I missed the "Talk" one Sunday. Had I kept up on Catholic teaching, I would have been aware of the "Theology of the Body". This was the first major teaching Pope John Paul II gave in 129 short talks between 1979 and 1984. This project was a Biblical reflection on the meaning of human embodiment, particularly as it concerns human sexuality.

I was not aware of the "Theology of the Body" because I was not a good Catholic back in the day. Nor did I pay much heed to Natural Family Planning in which couples regulate births without recourse to unnatural methods that interfere with the way God designed our fertility. But I expected a popular priest at my parish in Montana to be up on all things Catholic. Unfortunately, he was not. As both a priest and doctor, his parishioners and patients looked up to him. He let them down by stating, "It's not realistic to expect couples to follow the Pope's teachings on birth control."

The Error of our Ways

I believed my doctor/priest and followed society. Not until I began to embrace my Catholic faith and trust its teachings to guide me did I come to trust that God's plan is always the best. When Mark and I married in 1981, I was not even aware the Catholic Church taught that contraception was against God's plan. We were both Catholic and occasionally went to Mass. It seemed like a good thing to do, but other weekend plans easily took precedence over Mass. Our Catholic faith was mostly on the back burner.

After the births of our three boys, I decided to have surgery for a tubal ligation. I loved my children very much, but three seemed like plenty. Mark said the decision was up to me. During the pre-op exam, the doctor explained the failure rate was only 1 in 500. Those odds were unsettling. "Not bad odds for a million dollar lottery," I thought. A failure could result in a tubal pregnancy, which could result in death. That thought weighed heavily on my mind. I canceled.

The next line of attack was birth control pills prescribed by my Catholic doctor/priest. (He had become a priest first then received permission to go through medical school and become a doctor.) When my cycle started up again halfway through the package of pills, it was obvious they were not working. My doctor/priest had explained they contained a low dose of estrogen to avoid common side effects. Obviously, the dose was so low that they were not preventing ovulation as intended. I tossed them out.

The following month I became pregnant. When Mark heard the news, he announced: "I've been praying for this." It turned out the big sneak had literally been praying on the sly. He liked the idea of having another baby and decided to pray rather than argue about it. I was actually happy about the news. A diehard baby lover like myself could not help but rejoice at another little one. This may seem odd from a person taking precautions against having more children, but as you can see, none of this was very well thought out.

Jacob was born on May 13, the anniversary date of Our Lady of Fatima's first appearance in Fatima, Portugal. It was also Mark's birthday and Mother's Day. Mark too had been born on Mother's Day thirty-three years earlier. Happy Birthday Mark — from God.

During this time in our lives, we began reading about various Marian apparitions and were inspired for the first time to pray the rosary. We stopped missing Sunday Mass and began learning more about our faith. Still, we were not fully converted yet — particularly when it came to family planning. There's always a learning curve and we did not go from A to Z overnight. After four children, I insisted Mark have a vasectomy. He resisted at first but finally relented.

Reality Hits

Initially, I was oblivious that we had done anything wrong. But gradually, as I grew to desire God's will in my life, started making visits to Jesus in the tabernacle and continued praying the rosary, a feeling grew in me. I realized that the Church, which Christ had founded to guide us until the end of time, had authority to teach on spiritual matters, including matters relating to sexuality. I had been given no such authority.

I shared my feelings of regret over Mark's sterilization with him. He was less than thrilled since he thought it was a bad idea to begin with. As a matter of fact, he accused me of being like Eve. "You are right," I agreed. "But remember, Adam was kicked out of the garden, too." We began praying that God's will would be done in our lives, including whether we would have more children. We determined that if it was God's will, Mark's vasectomy would fail.

But, one night, I had a dream in which I saw two babies — one blonde and one dark-haired. I felt an intense love for these babies as if they were my own. At the end of the dream, I was made to know that these were babies God had planned for us, but because we had not lived in union with His plan, they would never be born. I woke up feeling like a mother who just lost her babies. I knew the only way to get to them was to convince Mark to have a reversal of his vasectomy.

When Mark came home from work that day, I approached him with my idea for a reversal. He would have none of it. I barely got two sentences out of my mouth before he announced the subject was officially closed. Even if we could afford it, he was completely unwilling to subject himself to another surgery. Now, it was my turn to pray behind Mark's back. "Okay God," I prayed, "I want to do Your will but I am powerless to change Mark's mind. I'm putting everything in Your hands." Then, I just kept praying.

Of One Mind

Several months had passed when one morning after Sunday Mass, Mark casually wondered out loud how much a reversal operation would cost. "I know," I announced. Before Mark had shot my idea down, I had called the doctor's office to get all the information.

"I can't get off from work this month," Mark said, "but next month I could go in and get it done." I was both shocked and thrilled. We did not have the money to pay for it, but we determined we could probably make payments.

"What changed your mind?" I finally asked, wondering what had caused such a drastic change of heart. His answer took my breath away.

"I had a dream last night," Mark said. "I saw two babies that God had planned for us." I had never told a single soul about my dream.

Three months later, we were expecting a baby. I had a strong feeling that it would be our first girl and God wanted us to name her Mary after the Blessed Mother who had intervened for us. We had never considered the name with any previous pregnancy. I wrote on a slip of paper, "Yes, I think Mary would be a good name," and tucked it in my wallet. I figured that when God let Mark in on the plan, I would pull out the slip and show him.

Our blond-haired baby girl, Mary, was born on December 22, 1993. A few months before her birth, we inherited the exact amount of money we needed to pay Mark's reversal surgery in full. Dark-haired Teresa was born on my birthday, April 18, 1996. I thought we must be done now that we had the babies from our dream. Mark said he thought ten would be a good number of children. I did not actually take this seriously. I recalled that when St. Maximilian Kolbe was young, he had received a vision of Our Blessed Mother. She had shown him two wreaths of roses — one of red representing martyrdom, and one of white, representing purity. She asked him which he would like to choose. He chose both. I wondered if, like St. Maximilian, we should volunteer to take on more than God asked? We prayed for guidance.

John was born on August 31, 1999 and Isaac was born on his sister Mary's birthday, December 22, 2001. We are a family of twelve now, including two brothers who were AIDS orphans from Kenya. As of this writing, the ages range from 24 to 6. There could be no greater blessing on our family than our precious children. The kid's love for each other runs deep. I know that one of the biggest draws for my oldest sons to come home for visits is to spend time with their siblings.

The moral of this story is not that everyone must have a big family to do the will of God. No, my plan is not your plan. The moral of my story is that God has a plan for us all. To discern His plan and strive to live in union with it, we must learn and embrace the teachings He gives us through His Church. Nowadays, there is an abundance of authors, speakers and organizations that support and encourage couples in this way. I have no doubt that much of that information was available back when I first married, but I did not make it my business to learn about it. Make it your business to learn because, until your plan is God's plan, it's the wrong one.

Patti Maguire Armstrong is the mother of ten children including two Kenyan AIDS orphans. She is a speaker and the author of Catholic Truths for Our Children: A Parent's Guide (Scepter). She is also the managing editor and co-author of Ascension Press's Amazing Grace book series. Her website is RaisingCatholicKids.com