Fr. Bloom mentioned that other forms of artificial and dangerous “family planning” have received significant U.S. government funding, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Those methods, he said, are based on a mechanistic concept of the body, that strips sexuality of its meaning.
“In an urban environment, we can be more alienated from our bodies, and treat our bodies as a kind of machine – and not really see the integration of body and spirit that the (NFP) method is based on.”
Fr. Bloom noted that no population could possibly stand to benefit from policies that treat fertility as a disease, and new life as an inconvenient byproduct. He explained that natural family planning, besides being practical, also expresses a larger “philosophy of life” that affirms women as they were created.
Although the Mary Bloom Center's primary purpose is to strengthen families by helping them appreciate and manage fertility, its donors and volunteers partner to meet a number of other needs among the population of Puno – including medicine, food, clothes, scholarships, and school supplies.
Just as their concern for children goes far beyond safe birth, their work in women's health encompasses the broadest range of needs. The center has provided hundreds of screenings for female cancers, as well as local treatment and help with referrals to those who are diagnosed.
According to Fr. Bloom, the Mary Bloom Center has also helped women value themselves in a more authentic way – one that bypasses Western feminism's obsession with power and independence, in favor of helping communities value women for their unique roles and capacities.
“We have women seeing their own dignity, and the whole beauty of their creation. I always tell them, it's not an accident that woman was the very last thing that God created. Because she's the most beautiful, and the most complex thing in God's creation.”
Fr. Bloom asked one man, at the end of the five-week Billings method course, what the main point was that he would take away from it. He told Fr. Bloom: “The main thing I learned was respect for women.”
More information on the Mary Bloom Center is available at http://stmaryvalleybloom.org/marybloom.html.