Doctors Blend Health and Faith

[MountainLaurel]

I found this article especially interesting because at one point I almost went to this place for my annual PAP smear/birth control scrip visit. The doctors there happened to be on my approved provider list. But a quick Google search told me that one of the physicians there won an award for her pro-life practices from a group that condones the murder of abortion providers.


Sandwiched between a swimming pool store and a spice shop on Lee Highway in Fairfax, the Tepeyac Family Center looks like any other suburban doctor's office. But it isn't.

The practice combines "the best of modern medicine with the healing presence of Jesus Christ," a brochure at the reception desk announces. An image of the Madonna greets every patient. Doctors, nurses and staff members gather to pray each day before the first appointments.

The center is one of a small but growing number of practices around the country that tailor the care they provide to the religious beliefs of their doctors, shunning birth-control and morning-after pills, IUDs and other contraceptive devices, sterilizations, and abortions, as well as in vitro fertilization. Instead, doctors offer "natural family planning" -- teaching couples to monitor a woman's temperature and other bodily signals to time intercourse.

Proponents say the practices allow doctors to avoid conflicts with patients who want services the practitioners find objectionable, as well as to provide care that conforms with many patients' own values. The approach, they say, provides an alternative to mainstream medicine's reliance on drugs and devices that, they argue, carry side effects and negatively affect couples' relationships.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083003290.html

[Nobody]

1. I'd just like to know

what's stopping doctors from providing information on Natural Family Planning if the doctor also prescribes contraception, implants Norplant, IUDs etc., performs abortions and sterilizations?

NFP has always been an option. And patients should know ALL the risks, just as they would seeing a doctor who provides other services. NFP isn't for everyone. Neither are birth control pills. Or any other contraceptive.

What I find objectionable is that people are increasingly trying to block access to the one thing that allows women to be the masters of their own lives. And that is control over their own fertility.

By the way, NFP requires predictable periods, which many women do not have. At least they're not trying to push Rhythm, which has a bigger failure rate than just hoping you don't get pregnant.

[mykpart]

2. As long as these doctors are up front about what they will or won't do,

they should be allowed to run their private practice as they want. I don't like it much, but I'm afraid that their right to choose must be defended if we are to keep our right to choose. Ironic, isn't it?