About CCL

The Couple to Couple League (CCL) is an international, interfaith, non-profit organization dedicated to teaching Natural Family Planning (NFP) to married and engaged couples. It is essentially a volunteer organization because services are provided by professionally-trained volunteers who are supported by a relatively small staff at the international headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. Local Chapters of the organization consist mainly of certified Teaching Couples and Promoters, along with other supportive members.

Origins

When Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the traditional Christian teaching against unnatural forms of birth control in 1968 through the encyclical Humanae Vitae, he recommended that married couples help other married couples with Natural Family Planning. In response, John and Sheila Kippley founded the Couple to Couple League in 1971 for three purposes:

1. To meet the need for a nationwide, independent, and organized way of delivering NFP services;
2. To provide instruction in NFP that includes moral and religious values along with physiological and scientifically accurate information;
3. To train volunteer married couples to be proficient counselors and teachers in a 99% effective method of NFP, and at no cost to those who generously undertake this training.

With the assistance of Konald A. Prem, M.D., then a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine, a plan was developed to meet those needs. The CCL concept has proven successful, not only in the U.S., but in countries throughout the world. Each year sees new areas opening up to being served by CCL.

Methods Taught

CCL teaches the Sympto-Thermal Method of NFP. In this system, a couple uses cross-checking signs of fertility: cervical mucus, waking temperatures, and changes in the cervix itself. The woman may also use secondary signs of fertility such as ovulation pain and others.

The League also teaches the world's oldest form of natural child spacing — ecological breastfeeding. This is a form of breastfeeding that typically provides over a year of natural infertility after childbirth.

The Sympto-Thermal Method is distinctly different from the Calendar Rhythm Method as well as single-symptom approaches such as the Mucus-only or Temperature-only methods. CCL believes that couples should be free to choose the natural method with which they feel the most comfortable based on their own experience. Therefore, CCL instructs couples in all the common signs of fertility and infertility. However, if a couple, after being adequately informed about all the signs of fertility, decides to rely exclusively on one sign, that is certainly their right. CCL teachers and counselors will support that couple within the limits of the system they choose.

There is more to NFP than the mere physical aspects of understanding and working with your fertility. The moral practice of NFP involves a way of life, not just a method of birth regulation. Therefore, CCL instruction provides insight into a host of values and moral principles that are involved in responsible parenthood and the decision to use NFP.

Foundation for the Family

To address the broader issues of marital fidelity, family stability, non-marital, pre-marital and teenage chastity, and preparation for marriage, a separate organization was instituted — Foundation for the Family, Inc. While each organization is legally separate, for practical purposes, the Foundation for the Family is treated as an operating division of CCL and CCL acts as the primary vehicle for distribution of all materials for both organization. The same Board of Directors serves each organization

CCL Today

CCL has grown to be the largest NFP provider in the United States, and has a presence in 23 foreign countries. In Fiscal Year 2004, the League had 25,455 active members, 966 active certified volunteer Teaching Couples, and 623 certified volunteer Promoters. A total of 7,957 couples learned NFP through either a local class series or the Home Study Course. Since 1971, CCL has taught NFP to 166,106 families and have sold over 371,000 copies of The Art of Natural Family Planning.