Linacre Quarterly最新文献

This pilot qualitative case study was able to elicit rich data enabling a description of how women went through the journey of achieving pregnancy using fertility awareness-based methods. Findings underscore that women preferred using natural ways to detect ovulation and would recommend other women to do so, but with healthcare providers' guidance. The findings of this case study can serve as a starting point to provide a framework to understand women's experiences of enduring trial and error with multiple fertility awareness-based methods before discovering their effective method. Findings emphasize the importance for healthcare providers to guide women in using fertility awareness-based methods.

Perimenopause is a time in a woman's life where fertility may vary depending upon her age and her reproductive stage and has been defined as the transition period prior to menopause that is characterized by irregular menses, hormonal changes, vasomotor symptoms, and declining fertility (Casper, 2020). Fertility tracking during this time in a woman's reproductive stage has not been widely studied. Employing the use of Luteinizing Hormone Urine Assay sticks, an electronic hormonal monitor device or mucus, we propose a set of guidelines to determine the potentially fertile times of a woman's cycle based on staging according to the Stages of Reproductive Aging Workshop (STRAW) criteria and illustrate their application with three case reports.

Taking the heart into account while providing pastoral care to couples suffering from infertility is essential. The affective sphere is not irrational but has its own logic that needs to be addressed. Trying to bypass the wounds involved in something as painful as infertility by speaking merely to the mind can turn out to be counter-productive, especially when it comes to explaining the Church's teachings on artificial reproductive technologies. One first needs to connect on the level of the heart in an authentic way to bring some relief and initiate the healing-process before addressing the unethical nature of in vitro fertilization, for example. In this article, I therefore, explore what it means to speak the language of the heart and, briefly, what characterizes the affective sphere. It is key to meet people where they are rather than try to leverage them to where one thinks they ought to be. Compassion, that is, suffering with the other, is essential to ease their pain. Paradoxically, people need to mourn in order to get to a better place, but often do not know how to do it. Hence, I give some pointers as how to assist people to grieve before giving some advice on how to counsel specifically those suffering from infertility.

As a physician, the hardest days in medicine are when I endure great distance from the Lord in my bedside interactions with patients and families. They make me feel like driftwood without vocational direction. Given the enormity of what critically ill patients are experiencing, emotional detachment from Jesus and those I am serving creates swells of grief for me as a Catholic physician. In the intensive care unit, I tend to gravitate to big and bold occurrences. Unfortunately, one tendency I have is to think that small events yield small outcomes, while big events yield big outcomes. Such is not the case with God, whom I tend to force into finite scales when, in truth, the Creator of the universe has no limits. This essay highlights an experience in which God brought a deeper understanding of His grace from a seemingly monotonous patient encounter. I am reminded that because of God's presence in my relationship with each person, "Nothing shall be impossible." (Lk 1:37).

This article critiques the current theological basis that deems assisted reproductive technologies (ART) as immoral, namely that it dissociates the unitive act from procreation, and that it violates the dignity of the embryo. It is argued that notwithstanding the validity of these moral truths, these issues are of little relevance to couples facing childlessness. Three alternative views are then presented, all based on the injustices related to the ART market: (a) injustices that directly affect the couple and their offspring, (b) unfairness related to the commercial aspect of ART markets, and (c) the overall effects that impinge on society at large. Therefore, instead of burdening childless couples wanting to have children of their own with the culpability of sin for resorting to ART, one must rather make them aware that they are prey to the ART market while calling for better regulation of this system in order to mitigate these injustices. The article ends with some recommendations on how to address these injustices.