Napa Valley Family Planning Faculty

 Our Napa Valley Natural Family Planning Faculty (NFP Faculty) promotes those methods of family planning that do not require the use of drugs or devices. When the couple understands and monitors their mutual fertility, they can cooperate with their health care provider in every stage of their reproductive life from puberty to menopause and beyond.

Benefits of NFP | Find a local Resource | Donate to NFP Faculty | Our Beginnings | Links

MISSION: promote and support the use of Natural Family Planning by married couples in our Napa Valley Community. NFP Faculty unites teachers, users, and advocates of all methods of natural family planning, always respecting differences in methodologies and preferences of the couplesVISION:NFP Faculty educates the Napa Valley Community in the benefits of NFP so that physicians, clergy and all people of good will may understand fertility as a normal, healthy process.WE BELIEVE: that fertility is life-giving. It is a natural, normal, healthy process. Fertility is a gift to be cherished; children, born or unborn, are a gift to be cherished. NFP Faculty advocates only natural methods of family planning because these methods respect and uphold the dignity of every human person, are sound health practices, and can be used both to achieve or avoid pregnancy.

 What is NFP?

OTHER VIDEO LINKS HERE: Couple to Couple League Testimony Videos
See NFP classes offered in ENGLISH in the Napa Valley Area
See NFP classes offered in SPANISH in the Napa Valley Area

See a Doctors Perspective about NFP…


Benefits of NFP: Natural Family Planning

 

 

Find a Local Resource:

St. Apollinaris Catholic Parish NFP Contact: English Language:

WALT & PAM BIRDSALL
(707) 251 9226

St. John’sCatholic Parish NFP Contacts: Spanish Language:

CARLOS & OLGA LOPEZ:
(707) 255 5037

ANA & ALEJ. GONZALEZ:
(707) 254 8337

Providers in California as of Feb 22, 2011

Please visit: http://onemoresoul.com/nfp_by_zip/94558

NFP Centers

San Francisco, CA: Archdio San Francisco
Resp Life Office
Phone: (415) 614-5500

Oakland, CA: Oakland Diocese
Family Life Center
Phone: (925) 680-8510

Dublin, OM Center
Phone: (510) 829-0512
NFP Model: CrM

San Mateo, San Mateo NFP
Phone: (415) 341-8188
NFP Model: CrM

Daly, CA:Seton Medical Center
Phone: (415) 301-8896
NFP Model: CrM

Hayward, St.Rose Hospital NFP Program
Phone: (510) 264-4043
NFP Model: CrM

Physicians/Medical Professionals

Walnut Creek, CA
Ronald G. Connolly MDSpecialty: Rheumatology
Phone: (925) 974-7000
Walnut Creek, CA 94598 USA

El Sobrante, CA
Mary Davenport MD
Specialty: OB/GYN
Phone: (510) 222-2098
NFP Model: CrM
El Sobrante, CA 94803 USA

Donate to Napa Valley NFP Faculty Needs

General funds are collected, managed, and distributed through the parent organization, the Napa Valley Culture of Life (NVCL), a 501c3, tax exempt, California Non-Profit Corporation (www.napavalleycultureoflife.com), phone 707 337 6887. Please click here to make a donation.

Funds for a clergy conference are currently being collected through a series of fund raising initiatives.

When the clergy of the Napa Valley have had their conference the next step in the process of promoting and sustaining an ongoing and thriving NFP presence in the Napa Valley will be a major conference to introduce the general population to NFP . The conference will present the advantages and scientific advances modern NFP offers to couples who are often only aware of the chemical concoctions and mechanical devices that are so full of dangerous side effects and long term health problems.

 

 Our Beginnings

On October 31, 2009, nine frustrated individuals from Napa Valley met to discuss what could be done to answer a challenge from Planned Parenthood of Napa (PP). They and 261 others would complete on the following day, a 40 day campaign of prayer and fasting with a 24 hour vigil (40 Days for Life) in front of the Napa PP and had just had their consciences stung by a sign hung over the entrance to PP that said :

PLANNED PARENTHOOD WORKS HARD TO PREVENT UNINTENDED PREGNANCIES AND THE NEED FOR ABORTION.

ANTI-CHOICE GROUPS DON’T

They formed a steering committee with the Vision: They would identify pro-life options to whatever life affirming services PP purported to offer. They already knew that there were growing problems of survival for the localPregnancyResourceCenter; they knew the medical limits of the Napa Birthright; they knew about a small home for unwed mothers – Rainbow House. But there was nothing known to replace family planning services offered by Planned Parenthood (as they are an entrée to culture of death)

The last paragraph on the minutes for that first steering committee meeting read:

Mission – Putting hands, feet, and heart to the pro-life work (culture of life) in Napa Valley.

 

Out of that humble beginning grew an initiative to bring God’s Plan for Married Love and the creation of the NAPA VALLEY NATURAL FAMILY PLANNING FACULTY.

That first effort to find an NFP teacher revealed that none were available in the valley. There was NO ALTERNATIVE to the chemical concoctions and mechanical devices offered at PP. The sign was right –“anti-choice groups don’t” offer any alternatives “to prevent unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion.” Our only NFP hope, Walt and Pam Birdsall, was still in the middle of a course for instructors in the Sympto-Thermal Method. And at the time they were uncertain about finishing the course because they had been offered the opportunity to complete a very demanding course of instruction to become a Catholic Deacon. There was nothing to offer couples wishing to learn responsible parenting.

There were even some (many?) who thought it a foolish thing to do: why would anyone want to promote natural methods of family planning? Only the Catholic Church still promoted the idea that each act of intercourse ought to, by its very nature, be open to human life. Worse, of the population of the Catholic Church, it was estimated that more than 95% actually thought artificial birth control was the best if not the only way to be responsible parents. After all even the clergy didn’t believe what had been taught by the pope in 1968 in an encyclical: Humanae Vitae. So, why bother?

Those who had stood on the sidewalk watching the children, 12, 13, 16, 18 years old, getting in line for PP brand prevention saw a direct connection between artificial birth control, its failure, and the PP solution – abortion. They knew from that experience, the importance of understanding one’s body and knowing one’s fertility. They knew that actually knowing one’s fertility and using that knowledge to conceive a child could empower women to choose life – not abortion. They understood the direct connection between choosing to bring new life into the world and building strong families. They knew the direct connection between sacrificing immediate gratification for the common good and living more loving lives. They understood how important is was to “create a culture of life.”

Out of that beginning has come a faculty of four certified Natural Family Planning couples and a determination to bring to the clergy and people of our Napa Valley the genuine, natural, answer to the responsibility of parents to use their wonderful gift of fertility in a responsible way.

Resource Links

 

Method Web Sites

General NFP Related Web Sites

Other Resources