I remember reading Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Re-thinks Contraception as a single girl. The Torode’s honesty was refreshing. Their openness to life struck a chord.

I was tired of hearing about an “oops” or the “tagalong.” I’d seen too many pair of eyes filled with the tears of a miscarriage. Life was too precious to be so incredibly opposed to its conception. And life was too sacred to even accidentally abort a baby through use of contraceptives.

Yet while I wanted my future marriage to be open and receptive to life, I knew that prudence might demand stewardship of the gift of fertility. Natural family planning sounded easy. Take your temperature, observe a few signs, abstain a few days a month, no problem.

But the more I read and observed about sex and marriage, it seemed to me that the problem with a lot of marriages might have stemmed from abstaining more than a few days per month. And turns out the even though peak fertile period may only be a few hours or days per month, that doesn’t mean you won’t conceive a week before or after. Two weeks a month without sex? Were husbands actually going for this?

A few years down the road, I was once again visiting openembrace.com. This time, I was married. And this time, I found a bit of a disclaimer. Several years of marriage and children later, the Torodes had a slightly different perspective:

…strict NFP reaches a point where it is more harmful for a marriage than good…

…it‘s a theological attack on women to always require that abstinence during the time of the wife‘s peak sexual desire (ovulation) for the entire duration of her fertile life, except for the handful of times when she conceives.

The motive behind Open Embrace was to help foster strong and joyful marriages, and that’s still our goal in writing this. We are still concerned about the Pill and hormonal contraceptives for their effects on women. We still agree with everything we wrote about the goodness of sex, marriage, the body, and the beauty of children.

-Bethany Torode on openembrace.com, May 2006

Natural family planning is excellent in the way it educates women to be aware of their body’s signs. Not only will you detect fertility and pregnancy early on, you’ll often notice when something isn’t right and needs medical attention, as well. But natural family planning doesn’t always do as much for the sexual part of marriage as the medical part. Which is why a lot of happily married couples use something more along the lines of the fertility awareness method.

Fertility awareness seems for many to be a good blend of stewardship and trust: often using non-abortive barrier methods as a means of stewardship during fertile times, yet trusting that God in His wisdom is in control of every little sperm and every little egg, and knowing full well that no barrier will stop what God has planned.

But whether you use NFP, FAM, or a truly open embrace, I think the Torodes would agree that Open Embrace is more about a mindset than a method. A marriage that is not open to children might be little more than free sex. A marriage that is all about children might go to pieces if they are not so blessed. A marriage where two are infrequently becoming one might not be much of a marriage at all.

Related Links:

• “Open Embrace: An Update from Bethany” – an archived version of openembrace.com
• “An Open Letter About Open Embrace” – an archived version of the original update from Sam and Bethany on openembrace.com
• “When Changing Your Mind Goes Public” – an interview with Bethany Torode in Catapult Magazine
• “When Should You Have Babies?” at bathgates.net
• Gretchen’s original review of Open Embrace (with excerpts from the book)
• watch for an upcoming series from another team member about the “what”, “why”, and “how” of FAM

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