You say that #1 is different from #2 because #1 involves abstinence only, whereas #2 involves NFP. Since NFP uses only abstinence, it would seem that you need to define the abstinence in #1 more clearly. The content of the action (or rather, inaction) is exactly the same. So if the only salient difference is the intention behind the non-action, don't you need to say more than simply that the intent cannot properly be to plan the timing or number of children conceived? What precise intentions would make it okay? What about a married woman who is told by her doctor that another pregnancy would likely kill her? #1 would mean no sex with her husband, at least until after menopause, perhaps decades away? And do you restrict this to only married individuals having sex together? While the Church clearly teaches that sex belongs only within marriage, does the belief that every act of sexual intercourse must be open to procreation trump all other moral values? Should a person who, while sinning by having sex outside of marriage, never use contraception to avoid pregnancy or disease because the procreation is always more important than mitigating the potential consequences? And what of a husband who, perhaps through a blog transfusion, has contracted HIV. Are he and his wife doomed to abstinence only and, even then, only if they are morally certain that no thoughts of contraception enter their heads? --[[User:Fr Lev|Fr Lev]] ([[User talk:Fr Lev|talk]]) 11:48, June 29, 2018 (UTC)

:NFP clearly involves a different kind of abstinence to the abstinence involving a longer period of time than a few menstrual cycles. You can’t separate actions and (non-actions) from intentions. In NFP, there is a co-ordinated plan to intentionally only have sex during sterile periods. Openness (the absence of any attempt to divorce procreation from sex) is the precise intention that would “make” such sex “okay”.

:This is the ideal – perhaps there are grave circumstances in which dispensations can be given, but they would have to be examined on a case-by-case basis. I don’t know what you mean exactly by “trump all moral values”?