Woman religious doctor makes strides with Natural Family Planning in
Taiwan
SUBMITTED ON SEPTEMBER 01, 2010
Jennifer Brinker |
jbrinker@stlouisreview.com
Sister Arlene Te, a religious
of the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart and a family medicine doctor in Tapiei, Taiwan, visited Aug. 27 with Emily Joost, right, a Creighton Model
FertilityCare practitioner intern, at the Department of FertilityCare
Services at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur.
Pictured at
center is Diane Daly, director of the archdiocesan Office of Natural
Family Planning. Joost, who lives in Belleville, Ill., has been
corresponding with Sister Arlene via the Internet as she undergoes
training to become a practitioner. Sister Arlene is in St. Louis to have
an on-site visit with Joost. The woman religious then will travel to
Omaha, Neb., later this week for the 25th anniversary celebration of the
Pope Paul VI the Study of Human Reproduction.
Rebecca Venegoni Tower
With a high
abortion rate, easy access to artificial reproductive technology and a low
Catholic population, Taiwan wouldn't seem like a place where natural
family planning would be embraced.
But Sister
Arlene Te, a member of the Sisters of the Society Devoted to the Sacred
Heart, is showing that's quite the contrary. The family medicine doctor,
who practices at Cardinal Tien Hospital in Taipei, said she has observed a
growing interest in NFP among couples who are trying to achieve a
pregnancy.
Sister Arlene
was in St. Louis last week to meet with a student she is coaching as part
of her training to establish a Creighton Model FertilityCare System
education program in Taiwan. The Creighton Model is one of several
Church-accepted methods of natural fertility regulation. The model also
includes a component called NaPro Technology, a medicine-based health
science that monitors and maintains a woman's reproductive and
gynecological health, all within the realm of Church teaching.
This weekend,
she will be one of several presenters at a conference in Omaha, Neb., to
celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study
of Human Reproduction, home of the Creighton Model and NaPro Technology.
NFP in Taiwan
Those who seek
out NFP in Taiwan are primarily doing so to help treat infertility, Sister
Arlene said in an interview with the Review last week. In Taiwan,
artificial reproductive treatments are easily accessible and affordable
(about $5,000 per IVF treatment, for example, she said) and so NFP isn't
viewed as a viable option until attempts to achieve pregnancy with
artificial methods have been exhausted.
Nevertheless,
Sister Arlene said she currently has more than 400 patients, some of whom
come from as far away as Hong Kong to see her in Taipei. She noted her
success rate for patients achieving pregnancy is 48.7 percent.
"Most of them
are not Catholic, so that's why they don't know about the natural way,"
she said, adding that Taiwan is only about 1.2 percent Catholic. "They
come through their curiosity ... they want to know what natural
procreation is."
The majority of
her patients are beyond 35 years old, a reflection of a popular mindset in
Taiwan in which starting a family is delayed until later in life.
"Most of the
couples don't want to have a lot of children, because it costs a lot of
money to raise children in Taiwan," she explained, adding that most don't
want to have more than two children.
The government
has stepped in to encourage couples to have larger families, including
incentives in which the government will pay for part of a child's
education, she said.
Getting started
in NFP
Sister Arlene,
who grew up in the Philippines and completed her medical schooling there,
moved to Taiwan for her medical residency in obstetrics and gynecology. It
was there that she learned about the Sisters of the Society Devoted to the
Sacred Heart, a religious community started by Hungarian Catholic Sister
Ida Peterfy in 1940. The sisters' motherhouse is based in California.
When she entered
the community in 1991, Sister Arlene was an OB/GYN but committed to
undergo training as a family medicine doctor, which allowed for a more
predictable schedule and fit with her ministry as a religious.
Sister Arlene
began training in 2005 to become a medical consultant, a medical doctor
certified to work with patients who chart their fertility signs using the
Creighton Model. The woman religious also said she is the only one in the
country who is certified as a practitioner, someone who teaches
individuals how to chart using the method. The training is offered through
the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha.
She practices
medicine with two other certified medical consultants, OB/GYNs Drs. Victor
Chang and Pauline Yao, the latter who helped translate Creighton Model
materials -- including the chart, user manual and other forms -- into
Mandarin Chinese, the primary language in Taiwan.
Sister Arlene's
training to establish an educator program in Taiwan hopefully will attract
others who want to become Creighton Model practitioners, she said. "In the
future, when I am ready, if all the materials are translated into Chinese,
I can train my own people in Taiwan. Because of the language, they cannot
come here" to the United States for training, she added.
Abortion,
contraceptives
Abortion has
been legal in Taiwan since 1985. According to a 2009 report from the Alan
Guttmacher Institute, a research arm of Planned Parenthood, most abortions
in Asia are a response to unintended pregnancies.
Sister Arlene
said there are about 100,000 abortions annually among married couples in
Taiwan, and about 100,000 per year of babies conceived outside of wedlock.
She also said that medical professionals in Taiwan perform a total of
about 300,000 abortions per year.
According to the
Guttmacher report, the prevalence of artificial contraceptive use among
married women ages 15-44 in Asia rose from 57 to 68 percent between 1990
and 2003. However, married women also said the second biggest reason they
do not use contraceptives is because of the side effects and health risks
associated with using them.
Sister Arlene
said the married couples she works with are starting to discover the
benefits of using natural family planning.
"I have gained a
lot of feedback that their marriage is stronger, and they have good
communication and respect for each other," she said. "For me, it's very
affirming. It's very important for the couple to have a strong marriage
before they start their family."
"In my
(religious) community, we're really involved with families. Through this,
I can help them. We want families to be together and united."
|
