Grey’s Anatomy and Family Planning

If you’re anything like me, a fan of the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, you may have also attained what I like to call the “Grey’s Medical Degree.” Now of course this degree comes with no actual merit, but after being loyal to the show for many seasons’ worth of viewing brain, heart, general, pediatric, orthopedic, plastic, and trauma surgery, it kind of feels like I know it all. I’m sure real doctors (you know, the ones with real degrees from real schools) dread people like me coming into their emergency room claiming I have that one disease from that one episode.

I have enjoyed being exposed to the bits and pieces of medical information that come with each episode, and with the last one I watched I couldn’t help but think of NFP.

One of the medical topics discussed was the brain and the fact that its hormones are what tell the body what to do. It is because of these natural hormones that your heart beats and your lungs breathe, among other things. Our body literally knows what to do to stay standing because of the brain and these natural hormones.

Then I thought about how contraception puts artificial hormones in your body to try and tell it what to do, and yet these artificial chemicals haven’t had any experience keeping you alive. Our body was built perfectly to function exactly as it was designed to do. It seems silly that so many people take artificial hormones to try to control a certain main bodily system — the reproductive one — especially when natural family planning provides a completely natural and effective way to do the same thing without messing with our natural hormones.

This is just one way natural family planning keeps you safe and healthy — by not messing with the body’s natural process. Sometimes, you have to learn to trust your body — because it knows what it’s doing.

— Megan Imwalle
CCL Communications Intern