Woman religious doctor makes strides with Natural Family Planning in Taiwan

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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.

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."