Pro-life science treats infertility, other reproductive health issues |
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Written by LAURIE STEVENS BERTKE, Chronicle Writer
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Friday, 02 January 2009 01:00 |
TIFFIN—Patricia Cress recalls her amazement the first time she heard a medical doctor tell how she transformed her practice with the Creighton Model FertilityCare System and NaProTechnology.
By networking this natural system of fertility regulation with NaProTechnoloy, a pro-life women’s health science, the Catholic doctor found she was able to treat reproductive health issues in women without prescribing birth control pills and performing sterilizations.
"I thought, this is the best women’s health I’ve ever heard of in my 30 years of nursing," recalls Mrs. Cress, a registered nurse with experience in a range of hospital fields including obstetrics.
She explains that in traditional medicine, "the way we have treated women’s reproductive issues has been usually to either suppress or destroy."
Putting a woman on birth control pills is generally the first course of treatment, "which does nothing to solve the problem," she says. "It just kind of shuts down the reproductive system. And their symptoms might go away, because their reproductive system isn’t working, but it doesn’t address why it wasn’t working correctly to begin with."
In contrast, NaProTechnology — short for Natural Procreative Technology —seeks the cause of the problem and treats it in a way that cooperates with the woman’s menstrual and fertility cycles.
Hearing that doctor speak at a medical conference about a decade ago inspired Mrs. Cress to travel to Omaha, Neb., to study the Creighton Model FertilityCare System (CrMS) at the Pope Paul IV Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction.
Founded by a Catholic doctor and his wife, the institute opened in 1985 as a direct response to Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on married love and procreation, "Humanae Vitae" ("Of Human Life"), which reaffirmed church teaching that artificial contraception is morally wrong. The institute is dedicated to developing reproductive health services that align with the teachings of the Catholic Church, including CrMS and NaProTechnology.
Mrs. Cress became the first certified fertility care practitioner in Ohio after 13 months of training through the institute. She opened Infant Jesus FertilityCare Services in Tiffin about eight years ago to provide private instruction in the CrMS.
Her center is affiliated with the FertilityCare Centers of America, a nonprofit that promotes CrMS and NaProTechnology in the United States and Canada.
As with other methods of natural family planning, married couples can use the Creighton Model to avoid or achieve a pregnancy by observing the woman’s signs of fertility throughout her cycle. It is 99.5 percent effective in avoiding pregnancy with perfect use, and 96.8 percent effective with typical use.
Yet Mrs. Cress says the CrMS encompasses much more than other methods of natural family planning because it treats the woman’s whole reproductive system.
Using the observations gathered through CrMS, physicians trained in NaProTechnology can diagnose and treat such conditions as premenstrual syndrome, endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, ovarian cysts, tubal occlusion and postpartum depression.
Mrs. Cress says NaProTechnology has also helped many couples overcome infertility by pinpointing and treating its underlying causes.
Infertility, defined as the inability to conceive after one year of trying, or not being able to carry a child to live birth, affects one of every five couples, or an estimated 7.3 million women of childbearing years and their partners.
"It’s very hard, and so many Catholic couples are tempted to go the route of in vitro [fertilization] or some of the things that clearly are not, number one, sanctioned by the church, but also are not in their best interests health-wise or morally," says Mrs. Cress, a member of Tiffin St. Joseph who notes she and her husband have personally experienced the "sorrow of infertility."
She believes NaPro gives "tremendous hope" to Catholic couples struggling with infertility by providing them an alternative to artificial reproductive technologies, which can strain them physically, financially and spiritually.
Medical and surgical treatments of NaProTechnology address the underlying cause of infertility and "then get the woman in the best possible condition also to carry a pregnancy," says Mrs. Cress.
"So we have a lot better success in achieving the pregnancy, but also in carrying that baby to term without as many issues as you often get when you go the in vitro route," she explains.
After teaching her clients to use the CrMS, Mrs. Cress says she can refer them, as needed, to several Ohio physicians trained in NaProTechnology.
Jason Row, a family medicine physician in Archbold who provides women’s health care including obstetrics in his practice with Midwest Community Health Associates, began offering NaProTechnology after he completed the course through the Pope Paul VI Institute in April 2005. He also stopped prescribing or referring for contraception, abortion and sterilization several years ago.
"My ability to provide women’s health care was severely limited, since all women’s ‘health care’ nowadays revolves around the prescription of birth control," Dr. Row writes in an e-mail.
"I firmly believe that NaPro Technology is on the vanguard of women’s health care and is the most pro-woman approach to health care available today," adds Dr. Row. He says he has successfully used it in the treatment of infertility, recurrent miscarriage, postpartum depression and other conditions.
Costs associated with CrMS and NaProTechnology tend to be significantly lower than those of artificial reproductive technologies, Mrs. Cress notes, and NaPro Technology also boasts higher success rates in treating many conditions.
"I believe the Catholic Church has been given tremendous wisdom in their teaching about fertility and marriage and morality, and I think God has blessed us with this whole system," says Mrs. Cress. "Not only does it respect marriage and women, it’s more successful and it’s healthier."
Mrs. Cress does not teach the CrMS to couples that are not engaged or married, but she does teach a modified form to single women and teenage girls seeking treatment for reproductive problems.
Clients meet with her regularly over the course of a year to learn the complete system, but she says they can begin using it after their first appointment.
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For more information or to find a Creighton Model FertilityCare System instructor, visit www.fertilitycare.org.
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 03 March 2009 13:41 |
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