Relief for Mind and Body

     Jane, a lifelong Catholic, and Bob, a convert, were married in 1958 at the ages of twenty-one and twenty-three.  Bob was attending college on the GI Bill, augmented by his father, while Jane worked to pay the rent.  Before the wedding, Jane told her priest she and Bob would be using rhythm.  That would be permissible, the priest told her, for up to two years.  Early in the marriage, Jane suffered a miscarriage.  After that, the couple was able to avoid pregnancy during the time it took Bob to finish college.  Their first child was born in 1960, and three more followed in roughly two year intervals.  The fifth child was born four years later, in 1970, after the couple thought they’d had their last.

     Jane did not want to have more children.  If anything happened to her in childbirth, who would take care of the five she already had—the Church?  She consulted the wife of a former priest friend about what the Church permitted.  The answer: her decision was whether or not to use artificial birth control; after that, the Church made no distinction and so the choice of what to use would be hers.  Jane talked the matter over with a Protestant neighbor, who said, “Look, Jane, when I die, God will say, ‘Dee, you were a good Protestant.  You used birth control.  You may go to Heaven.’ But when you die, God will say, ‘Jane, you used birth control. You were not a good Catholic.  You may not go to Heaven.’  Does that make sense?”

     Jane went on the Pill.  A few years later she thought she was pregnant and went to her doctor for the urine test.  During the days she awaited the results, she felt terrified.  Because she was nearing forty, she became convinced that the child would be deformed.  She saw herself smothering the newborn.  Around other people, she was able to hold herself together, but when she was alone, she cried uncontrollably.  Then the doctor called.  “Whatever made you think you were pregnant?” he asked.

     Seeing the distress Jane had been in, Bob volunteered to have a vasectomy.  Jane felt vastly relieved.  He consulted a doctor who explained that the procedure was a simple cut and stitch that could be done in-office in a matter of a few minutes.  Bob took a day off from work and felt some tenderness for a day or two, for which the doctor had recommended ice packs.  Back at work, he told a friend about the vasectomy.  By the end of that day, many colleagues were making joking references to it and several left ice packs on his desk.