Pope Calls For Birth Control Experts

Keeping up his promotion of periodic sexual abstinence as a way to plan families, Pope John Paul II said Saturday that counseling centers and parishes should have experts in the method available.

The method, called natural family planning by the church and popularly known as the “rhythm method,” is the only way permitted by the Vatican for married couples to space out their children’s births. Followers use scientific knowledge to help determine a woman’s fertile period and then abstain from sex during that time if they don’t want children then.

He was addressing participants in a course to prepare teachers of the method. The course was being run by Rome’s Catholic medical school at Gemelli Polyclinic, where the pontiff has been hospitalized several times for surgery.