Young, religious couples are eschewing birth control

[Vespasia]

Am I alone in feeling like this is related to the anti-vaxx movement? At least in that it's a move away from science towards a more "we can do it ourselves" mindset? Not to mention it's another example of privileged people rejecting something that would be welcomed by so many who do not have easy access to birth control. 



Among young Christians, moral discomfort with birth control grows
america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/4/some-young-evangelicals-forgo-birth-control.html




Jessica Wilson got married five months before she graduated from an evangelical college in 2010. Because she believed that sex is reserved for marriage, it wasn’t much earlier that she had started thinking about what kind of birth control to use. No one in her family or her church had ever questioned the idea of contraception, but they hadn’t taught her much about it, either.



Eventually she came upon the writings of Randy Alcorn, an author and activist who promotes the idea that hormonal birth control, like the pill and some intrauterine devices, sometimes works as an abortifacient by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg. Alarmed, she decided she couldn’t take that risk, especially since she had already heard horror stories from friends who said the pill made them gain weight, diminished their sex drive or caused depression. She began charting her menstrual cycles, haphazardly at first, and when she got married she used a diaphragm with spermicide when she thought she was ovulating. All three of her pregnancies, including those that resulted in a son and daughter born 15 months apart, were unplanned, but she says she has no regrets.



“I have seen a lot of people [questioning] the idea in our culture that couples deserve to have five years of freedom before they have kids or this unwritten code that all Americans should have two boys and a girl and then they’re done,” she said. “Why are we buying this idea that we shouldn’t have kids?”



Surveys indicate that the vast majority of both Catholic and Protestant married women have used or are currently using contraception. But Wilson is part of a conversation percolating among some adherents of both traditions, most of them educated and conservative, that suggests a growing moral discomfort with birth control. These are not like the Duggar family (of reality television’s “19 Kids and Counting”) who believe that constant childbearing is a Christian obligation, and not all of them reject birth control wholesale. Some simply don’t like the idea of interfering with a woman’s natural bodily rhythms, or they fear, like Wilson, that hormonal contraception has the potential to cause very early abortions. And others share a broader concern: that the underlying logic of contraception suggests couples can, and should, rigidly control their fertility — and that children are not a blessing, but a burden to be avoided.



Among conservative Protestants, these are sprouts of doubt around a topic that hasn’t been debated seriously for decades. “Contraception has been an ingrained, unquestioned, binding reality on young evangelicals,” said Andrew Walker, director of policy studies at the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. Growing up in the evangelical community, “there was just the assumption that you get married, you use contraception, no doubt about it.”



Walker, now 29 and the father of two daughters, got married at 21 and didn’t question at the time whether his wife would go on the pill. Today, he still doesn’t believe that contraception is categorically sinful, but his wife no longer uses hormonal birth control, and he has larger concerns about what he calls “the contraceptive mindset.” “The idea of talking about children as a ‘scare’ and viewing them as an obstacle to the American dream, that’s not a Christian way of looking at family,” he said. “That’s what I like to tell young couples: The family is actually a pretty adaptable institution. It doesn’t necessarily have to put a brake on your life.”



Walker says he’s not alone in this thinking. “In more intellectual evangelical circles there’s a growing reticence, and a growing — not questioning the all-out use, but questioning the worldview,” he said. He first started to reconsider his acceptance of contraception as a graduate student at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, whose president, R. Albert Mohler Jr., has been an influential critic of what he calls “the contraceptive revolution.” (Wilson, too, cited Mohler’s writing on the subject in describing her own evolution.) As Mohler put it just last year, “Today’s generation of evangelicals is indeed reconsidering birth control, and theological concerns are driving that reconsideration.”



Few, if any, are convinced that evangelicals will turn against contraception in significant numbers. In 2002, a young evangelical couple, Sam and Bethany Torode, wrote a much-discussed book titled “Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Rethinks Contraception.” Amy Laura Hall, an associate professor of Christian ethics at Duke University, said the book resonated with her students at the time. “There was a sense that something was wrong if there was this much pressure on exactly how many children you should have and exactly when you have them,” she said. The couple later divorced, and Hall says her students more recently have seemed less inclined to reject contraception. (If students ask her about birth control in class, she recommends a diaphragm with spermicide, explaining that it introduces women to their own bodies and also avoids artificial interruption of the “ebb and flow of desire.”)



But Hall, the author of the 2007 book “Conceiving Parenthood: American Protestantism and the Spirit of Reproduction,” worries that creeping criticism of “contraceptive culture” misses the point. She says most young couples delay childbearing not because of the existence of contraception but because of complex, real financial pressures. And she’s also concerned that conversations about a theologically proper approach to contraception make life difficult for young married couples. “It puts so much pressure on women’s bodies to be rightly ordered for the sake of the future,” she said. “All this pressure of getting it right — that can’t be what God means us to be doing with our beautiful minds and bodies.”

For Catholics, the theological leap required to forgo contraception is not nearly as extreme as it is for Protestants: The first papal encyclical on the topic was delivered in 1930, and it built on a deep suspicion of contraception that had existed since the earliest centuries of the church. Today, however, 98 percent of sexually experienced American Catholic women have used contraception, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Even so, long-established anti-contraception church doctrine is finding a newly receptive audience among young conservatives who are more vocal and vociferous in their obedience than previous generations.



“We have four decades under our belt of widespread contraceptive use,” said Jennifer Fulwiler, a Catholic author and blogger who writes frequently on the topic. “Has this benefited women like it was supposed to? I think a lot of women are looking around and saying no, it has not.” Fulwiler had six children in eight years, despite a serious blood-clotting disorder exacerbated by pregnancy; in her most recent pregnancy she was hospitalized with a bilateral pulmonary embolism. She acknowledges with a laugh that “people look at me and I’m their worst nightmare,” but she believes in the church’s teaching and that its wisdom is self-evident in the light of what she views as a chaotic contemporary sexual culture.



Like many who question hormonal birth control, or contraception more generally, Fulwiler is a proponent of natural family planning, an advanced version of what was once called the rhythm method. Approved by the Catholic Church, it involves tracking ovulation signs and avoiding sex when fertility peaks during each cycle. The method was once easily mocked as unreliable, but times have changed. Today, fertility apps such as Glow and Kindara make tracking menstruation, body temperature and other ovulation signposts easier, and over-the-counter ovulation kits are affordable and available. Meanwhile, more information and social support than ever before is available online. “The technology has gotten much, much easier,” said Simcha Fisher, the Catholic author of “The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning.” “And it’s more culturally acceptable; it’s no longer seen as something only backwards sheep do because the pope tells them to.”



Matthew Schmitz, deputy editor at the Catholic-leaning magazine First Things, sees a connection between shifting attitudes toward birth control and a broader cultural suspicion of all things “unnatural.” “At one point people would have celebrated having a shirt made of polyester, but now you want 100 percent cotton,” he said. “It does connect in a real way to people’s deeper moral intuitions on things like the pill.”



Beyond mere aesthetics, Schmitz senses contraception is an issue with which more young Catholics and evangelicals are actively grappling — perhaps even finding common ground. “The period in which the Christian community has been divided hasn’t been that long,” he said. One suggestion that he’s right, admittedly anecdotal: When asked which resources had influenced his thinking on contraception, Andrew Walker, of the Southern Baptist Convention, referred first to “Humanae Vitae,” Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical that warned, “ man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires.”


In the nearly 50 years since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut found that the state’s ban on the use of birth control violated the privacy rights of married couples, contraception has been viewed primarily as a personal matter. But in the last few years, it has been thrust back into the political sphere by a series of lawsuits over the Affordable Care Act’s so-called contraceptive mandate. To be sure, some of those who, like Walker, question the morality of contraception would be happy to see fewer young women on birth control, but for most of them, this is not a question of public policy. If anything, Republican posturing on contraception may have repelled some otherwise sympathetic young people. Hall said many of her conservative students who may be open to questioning its use on a personal level are appalled by political rhetoric that suggests they shouldn’t be able to choose for themselves. As Walker put it, “What we saw with the whole Hobby Lobby stuff is that contraception is one of America’s sacraments.”



Still, some of the questions raised by the new generation of doubters may resonate even with those who have no moral qualms about the pill: Why do so many women feel pressure to postpone childbearing until the last possible biological moment? Why do stable couples fear that a child will ruin their lives? And why has our culture put more energy into extending women’s fertility window than into remaking the workplace to accommodate parenthood?



Of course, it’s possible to raise those issues without forgoing contraception altogether. Even the most passionate rejecters of birth control concede that it’s not always easy or practical to go without one of the most life-changing tools of the modern era. “It requires discipline and self-sacrifice, and those are never going to be popular things,” Fisher said. “I’m 40 years old and I’m sick and tired of natural family planning, I’ll be honest with you.” She is pregnant and expecting her 10th child.  

[Deleted]

I think this might appeal to some of the same people, but it's its own animal. I've known a few evangelicals that had a thing or two to say on the subject, but none of them have ten kids, so I guess their partners disagreed.

[ijack]

but haven't a lot of religions kind of always taught this?

[ttt]

Feb 4, 2015 15:21:03 GMT -5 Vespasia said:

“We have four decades under our belt of widespread contraceptive use,” said Jennifer Fulwiler, a Catholic author and blogger who writes frequently on the topic. “Has this benefited women like it was supposed to? I think a lot of women are looking around and saying no, it has not.” 

Yes. Yes it has. And if you can't see that, then you need some serious eye-opening about what our lives as women would be like if we didn't have access to that contraception. 

[chedifuen]

Widespread, reliable birth control has been huge for women. It's ridiculous to try and say otherwise

[mbcdefg]

[Velar Fricative]

Feb 4, 2015 15:42:56 GMT -5 ttt said:

Feb 4, 2015 15:21:03 GMT -5 Vespasia said:

“We have four decades under our belt of widespread contraceptive use,” said Jennifer Fulwiler, a Catholic author and blogger who writes frequently on the topic. “Has this benefited women like it was supposed to? I think a lot of women are looking around and saying no, it has not.” 

Yes. Yes it has. And if you can't see that, then you need some serious eye-opening about what our lives as women would be like if we didn't have access to that contraception. 

OMG seriously. This woman is just dumb.

It is pretty damn amazing that we are able to exercise reproductive choice (well, for now...) and yes, we are certainly better off as a species for this. 

Now, if someone doesn't want to use hormonal birth control, fine. You do you. But to say it doesn't benefit women? I'm repeating myself but this lady is dumb.

[aurora]

Feb 4, 2015 15:21:03 GMT -5 Vespasia said:

...
“We have four decades under our belt of widespread contraceptive use,” said Jennifer Fulwiler, a Catholic author and blogger who writes frequently on the topic. “Has this benefited women like it was supposed to? I think a lot of women are looking around and saying no, it has not.” Fulwiler had six children in eight years, despite a serious blood-clotting disorder exacerbated by pregnancy; in her most recent pregnancy she was hospitalized with a bilateral pulmonary embolism. She acknowledges with a laugh that “people look at me and I’m their worst nightmare,” but she believes in the church’s teaching and that its wisdom is self-evident in the light of what she views as a chaotic contemporary sexual culture.

...

I've had a pulmonary embolism myself and it wasn't fun.  They're often fatal.  As long as she is willing to grant me the right to decide if I want to risk going through another (closely linked to my ability to choose to prevent pregnancy), I'll respect her right to make the choices she does with her own reproductive system.

[downtoearth]

So, as someone who is sitting here with a likely hormone-induced-migraine from her birth control (again) - I am thinking of going off of it and trying to avoid during ovulation. However, I'm different since I wouldn't bat an eye at, and have access to, using Plan B or an abortion if I did get pregnant.

Like aurora, if they don't limit my choices, they can choose what they want for their bodies/pregnancies.

[josieposy]

Isn't great to live in a society where we get to make those choices and live with them?

[katfco]

Feb 4, 2015 15:21:03 GMT -5 Vespasia said:

Am I alone in feeling like this is related to the anti-vaxx movement? At least in that it's a move away from science towards a more "we can do it ourselves" mindset? Not to mention it's another example of privileged white people rejecting something that would be welcomed by so many who do not have easy access to birth control. 

FTFY, because let's be honest. Many of these families feel like they can make these choices and not be criticized for being irresponsible because of their race. Because they're white, there's a presumption of personal responsibility that doesn't exist for others, and I think it's also similar in the anti-vax movement.  

[teengirlsquad]

I know a lot of people like this and they believe that birth control pills are abortifacants (sp?) and they are prolife and therefore won't take them. I don't believe the same about the pill - but at least they are consistent. Most the couples I know that won't use the pill will use condoms and are not just relying on natural family planning. For the people I know it is definitely not the same mindset as the anti-vaxxers.

[darnkatz]

Feb 4, 2015 15:42:56 GMT -5 ttt said:

Feb 4, 2015 15:21:03 GMT -5 Vespasia said:

“We have four decades under our belt of widespread contraceptive use,” said Jennifer Fulwiler, a Catholic author and blogger who writes frequently on the topic. “Has this benefited women like it was supposed to? I think a lot of women are looking around and saying no, it has not.” 

Yes. Yes it has. And if you can't see that, then you need some serious eye-opening about what our lives as women would be like if we didn't have access to that contraception. 

I'm thinking Call the Midwife series should be required reading for all. The story of a woman on her 24th pregnancy will never leave me.

[omgzombies]

Feb 4, 2015 15:42:56 GMT -5 ttt said:

Feb 4, 2015 15:21:03 GMT -5 Vespasia said:

“We have four decades under our belt of widespread contraceptive use,” said Jennifer Fulwiler, a Catholic author and blogger who writes frequently on the topic. “Has this benefited women like it was supposed to? I think a lot of women are looking around and saying no, it has not.” 

Yes. Yes it has. And if you can't see that, then you need some serious eye-opening about what our lives as women would be like if we didn't have access to that contraception. 

Well it certainly benefited me.  Desire to never again be pg achieved.  Thank you fucking bc!

[NewOrleans]

Goody for them? I don't care if they reject it (of their own consenting, accurately informed accord which does not always happen in religious families) in their own lives. I only care when they tell lies about it (like this lady) or try to legislate it.

[laurenpetro]

Feb 4, 2015 16:37:57 GMT -5 darnkatz said:

Feb 4, 2015 15:42:56 GMT -5 ttt said:

Yes. Yes it has. And if you can't see that, then you need some serious eye-opening about what our lives as women would be like if we didn't have access to that contraception. 

I'm thinking Call the Midwife series should be required reading for all. The story of a woman on her 24th pregnancy will never leave me.

What.

[omgzombies]

Feb 4, 2015 16:37:57 GMT -5 darnkatz said:

Feb 4, 2015 15:42:56 GMT -5 ttt said:

Yes. Yes it has. And if you can't see that, then you need some serious eye-opening about what our lives as women would be like if we didn't have access to that contraception. 

I'm thinking Call the Midwife series should be required reading for all. The story of a woman on her 24th pregnancy will never leave me.

OMG!  Vagina's are not clown cars!

[darnkatz]

Feb 4, 2015 17:05:40 GMT -5 laurenpetro said:

Feb 4, 2015 16:37:57 GMT -5 darnkatz said:

I'm thinking Call the Midwife series should be required reading for all. The story of a woman on her 24th pregnancy will never leave me.

What.

Oh, I'm sorry. 25th pregnancy.

It's a series of memoirs written by a woman who was a midwife in the 50s in one of the poorest areas of London. Absolutely horrifying.

[penguingrrl]

It's interesting that this resurgence of religious objection to BC (which has seemed to have grown in fervor over the past few years) coincides with stagnant wages and increased living costs. I find it insulting that many in this article are scoffing off family planning based on finances (both in terms of timing a first pregnancy and in terms of how many children people have) right when the average American is less financially stable than they have been in a while.

I remember reading an article during graduate school that we were in the beginning of the 4th Great Awakening, a period of religious fervor tied to financial and social unrest. This seems to be yet another manifestation of that.

[Deleted]

What is wrong with condoms? Seriously. They are way better than frequent pregnancy. I've only had this one pregnancy and it is way more uncomfortable than a life time of condom use.

I'm very excited to have a child. And maybe another 1 too. But 6 would definitely be a burden.

[meshaliuknits]

Feb 4, 2015 16:37:57 GMT -5 darnkatz said:

Feb 4, 2015 15:42:56 GMT -5 ttt said:

Yes. Yes it has. And if you can't see that, then you need some serious eye-opening about what our lives as women would be like if we didn't have access to that contraception. 

I'm thinking Call the Midwife series should be required reading for all. The story of a woman on her 24th pregnancy will never leave me.

No thank you.

[hopecounts]

Feb 4, 2015 17:09:42 GMT -5 darnkatz said:

Feb 4, 2015 17:05:40 GMT -5 laurenpetro said:

What.

Oh, I'm sorry. 25th pregnancy.

It's a series of memoirs written by a woman who was a midwife in the 50s in one of the poorest areas of London. Absolutely horrifying.

Yes and this season of the show is just the same.
It's a good wake up call to
The reality of what women not having reproductive autonomy looks like and it is not pretty in anyway.

[cattledogkisses]

The only way I can think of that this might overlap with anti-vaxing is that I've heard some women say that they don't want to put "chemicals" in their body by taking BCPs (ingredients!). I've also heard, "There's nothing wrong with the way my body naturally works so why would I take a pill to change that?"

[cattledogkisses]

I should say that in my example above, unlike anti-vaxxing, I don't care what other people do. Whether or not someone else chooses to use hormonal birth control has no effect on me. I just think the ingredients!!! mindset it silly.

[msmerymac]

Feb 4, 2015 16:06:04 GMT -5 downtoearth said:

So, as someone who is sitting here with a likely hormone-induced-migraine from her birth control (again) - I am thinking of going off of it and trying to avoid during ovulation. However, I'm different since I wouldn't bat an eye at, and have access to, using Plan B or an abortion if I did get pregnant.

Like aurora, if they don't limit my choices, they can choose what they want for their bodies/pregnancies.

Feel free to tell me to mind my own business, and you probably have talked to actual medical professionals, but if your migraines are estrogen-induced, the mini-pill and the paraguard are estrogen free. And I think the mirena and nuvaring and low-estrogen, if any. 

But hey, NFP, Plan B and abortion are also perfectly acceptable choices, as it is your constitutional and moral right to decide what is best for your own medical well-being.

[zelda25]

Matt Walsh posted something similar (but more incendiary and mansplainy, naturally). I only know about this because one of my Mormon cousins linked it on FB recently. Because she thought it was so terrific 

I'll post without the link because I don't want to give him more traffic than he deserves.


Birth control pills: men get free sex, women get cancer



Matt Walsh/ 6 Comments


The birth control pill is poison, plain and simple. They inject synthetic hormones in cows, and everyone freaks out. They prescribe it to perfectly healthy women, and we scream “liberation!” Something is wrong here.


This may well prove to be the most unpopular thing I’ve ever written. And that’s saying something. But I think it needs to be said. It’s a conversation we should be having, so I hope you’ll share it even if it’s guaranteed to upset 97 percent of your Facebook friends.


A couple of notes about this post:
1) yes, I’m a man. I can already hear the objections. “You’re a man! How can you have an opinion about birth control?” Well, because I can read. I just read a whole book last week, actually. Green Eggs and Ham. You should check it out, really dense but quite engaging. Besides, most men have opinions about the pill. It’s just that their opinion is, “hey, it makes my life easier, so I don’t care about the side effects.”


2) I blame this post on my wife. She’s been egging me on to write a birth control post for weeks. She’s a real instigator, I’m telling you.


3) I blame the title on my sister. She suggested it a while ago.


4) For the record, as you might already suspect, my wife and I don’t believe in any type of artificial birth control. Yeah, we’re those sorts of freaks. But I didn’t want this post to get side tracked in a general conversation about all contraception. There’s a lot about the pill that makes it particularly and especially dastardly (yes, dastardly) so I wanted to stay focused on it. However you feel about other forms of birth control, you should still be able to relate to what I’m saying in this piece.


5) Here it is, read.


I saw on the news last week that birth control pills are now potentially linked to brain cancer.



According to the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (I have a monthly subscription — got it in a package deal along with Highlights Magazine) women who took chemical birth control at any point in their lives show a 50 percent higher likelihood of developing a certain type of brain tumor. The researchers concluded that the results, though startling, shouldn’t be viewed as a reason to discontinue using the pill.



They’re right. Just those results, alone in a vacuum, would only probably be a good reason to never take an oral contraceptive. But put it in a blender and mix it with all of the other negative aspects of the pill, and you end up with one horrific smoothie. Speaking of smoothies, in a country where health food is all the rage, trans-fats are banned, cigarettes are all but banned, and sugary sodas are next on the chopping block, birth control pills would be no doubt subject to severe scrutiny if not for the fact that they are the Eucharist to liberal feminism.



Note: I am not saying only liberal feminists take birth control pills. I am saying the pill is particularly crucial to liberal feminist philosophy because it’s seen as a “liberation” from their feminine biology. I’m sure some women take it and don’t see it that way. Still, it is a sacred chemical cow because of its political and social implications. If it did not have those implications — if people were as dogmatic about the pill as they are about, say, Tylenol — we’d be living in a very different culture, and I doubt that chemical birth control would be nearly as ubiquitous. (Yes, I agree “The Chemical Cows” would make a great name for an experimental indie rock band, ditto for “The Horrific Smoothies”).


If a woman’s reproductive powers were seen as powers, rather than a disease or a burden or an oppression, I think conservatives and liberals alike could find many common reasons to reject the pill. If we could simply get past the notion that a woman must be liberated from her nature, we might all look at hormonal birth control and see it as the poison it is. And not just poison, but poison unfairly placed before women. Feminists are on a constant quest to find double standards, yet they miss the most obvious ones. Women assume the enormous risk and consequence of birth control, and men just get free sex out of the deal.



Where is the feminist outrage when you need it?

[UMaineTeach]

Feb 4, 2015 15:21:03 GMT -5 Vespasia said:

In the nearly 50 years since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut found that the state’s ban on the use of birth control violated the privacy rights of married couples, contraception has been viewed primarily as a personal matter. But in the last few years, it has been thrust back into the political sphere by a series of lawsuits over the Affordable Care Act’s so-called contraceptive mandate. To be sure, some of those who, like Walker, question the morality of contraception would be happy to see fewer young women on birth control, but for most of them, this is not a question of public policy. If anything, Republican posturing on contraception may have repelled some otherwise sympathetic young people. Hall said many of her conservative students who may be open to questioning its use on a personal level are appalled by political rhetoric that suggests they shouldn’t be able to choose for themselves. As Walker put it, “What we saw with the whole Hobby Lobby stuff is that contraception is one of America’s sacraments.”


Still, some of the questions raised by the new generation of doubters may resonate even with those who have no moral qualms about the pill: Why do so many women feel pressure to postpone childbearing until the last possible biological moment? Why do stable couples fear that a child will ruin their lives? And why has our culture put more energy into extending women’s fertility window than into remaking the workplace to accommodate parenthood?

Let's make these 2 points a unity horse and ride into the sunset.
If conservatives could bug the crap out of their reps about these two things we might have some compromise in congress. Understand that people want to make individual choices and that women aren't going to leave the workplace anytime soon, so lets figure out how mothers and father can be the parents they want to be and still pay the bills they need to pay.

[saz]

I had forgotten Matt Walsh existed for at least a good month. Ughhhhhhhh he sucks. He knows better than anyone else about EVERYTHING. His smug attitude makes me want to scream.

[cattledogkisses]

Feb 4, 2015 18:16:26 GMT -5 @dontcallmeshirley1 said:

The "contraceptive mindset" is very much a construct in NFP-practicing circles. It's all over this dumb book we received when we did our pre-Cana "sex" session--from a man with six daughters and $100,000 in debt.

I'm keeping that book forever, though, because it has some absolute gems in it. Lol.

Oh man, there were some gems in our pre-Cana (we did a whole Engaged Encounter weekend, because we're crazy, lol).  I was sitting there as the non-Catholic doing a whole lot of this: , but even most of the Catholic couples were doing the same.

[Cicero]

My body can't handle hormonal birth control anymore. Even the low estrogen stuff was messing with my blood pressure. I'm personally not comfortable using a method of BC that works because it doesn't allow a fertilized egg to implant, so no non-hormonal IUD for me. So we use FAM.

From that perspective I do understand it. What I don't understand is why these guys can't wrap it up.