KATRINA BURNS

Women’s reproductive health is a global concern encompassing various issues and agendas, but concerns are often addressed without regard for the normal, healthy function of the body. Fertility awareness by contrast, focuses on the natural functions of a woman’s body and works with it to avoid impairing  these functions in the long run.

So often when I hear or read material about women’s health in developing countries, the conversation quickly turns to overpopulation or the poverty that children grow up in — if they survive long enough. The suggested solution to all of this is contraception. This may be as simple as condoms or the pill, or as invasive as sterilizations — which are not always voluntary either. What I don’t understand is why these suggestions make sense.

Condoms need to be stored in cool, dry places to be effective — I’m not sure how many impoverished women in Africa have storage space that would suffice. The pill, besides being identified by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen, continually costs money. Maybe I’m idealistic, but I think clean water, nutrition and sanitation are more worthy causes if we’re sinking money into these nations.

I don’t think sterilizations are an appropriate response either. They also cost money, require a doctor and eliminate the possibility of a woman ever having children again, should she want to later in life. There’s also a sanitation issue; if proper sanitation for daily activities is nonexistent, there probably would not be ideal conditions for an invasive surgery either.

I wish to make it clear that I am not advocating for women in developing countries to bear child after child only to see them suffer in poverty or die in childbirth. Rather, I think it makes a lot more sense to offer them an alternative that is simple, effective, free — or close to it, depending on the method — and that mothers can teach to their children easily. Fertility awareness methods are simple to teach and to learn, effective in practice and can be virtually cost-free.

Fertility awareness methods — also called natural family planning — are hugely underrated. Maybe that’s because they’re what our grandparents used and it clearly didn’t work for them, so now they have a bad rap. Except they’re not what our grandparents used; we’ve come a long way in our understanding of a woman’s menstrual cycle since then and the days of the “rhythm method” are behind us.

There are much more sophisticated methods available now: Billings, Serena and Marquette. These methods observe signs that indicate the fertility of a woman. These signs include: cervical fluids, which become clear and slippery at peak fertility, basal body temperature, which increases as a result of progesterone which is produced after ovulation, cervical position and concentrations of estrogen and luteinizing hormones in the urine. The latter of which is measured using a monitor — this is the only part that has any significant cost associated with monitoring.

Avoiding pregnancy is simple, maybe not easy, but simple. A woman tracks her signs of fertility and abstains from intercourse during the fertile window, which is about a week of each cycle. That means for about three quarters of the average female cycle, pregnancy is very unlikely to occur as a result of sexual intimacy. Not having sex may be a challenge, but I think it’s a worthwhile hardship when the gain is a healthy, natural functioning body and healthy relationships.

Couples who practice fertility awareness tend to report better communication, high levels of respect for each other and their bodies, and more satisfying sex lives. This compared to the possibility of weight gain, mood changes and decreased sexual desire on the pill ranks pretty high. For me, even with a cycle that has been difficult to make sense of, the choice is obvious.

Women’s reproductive health care is the only type of health care I am aware of where the intention of some of the most common treatments is to prevent natural, healthy bodily function. A woman’s body is designed to be able to carry and nourish a growing human being. Hormonal fluctuations, the development and shedding of a uterine lining and ovulation are all signs that a woman’s body is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. Why, then, do we suppress our hormones with artificial ones and throw off these natural processes and then call it health care? This isn’t the healthy functioning of a woman’s body at all.

We, as women, have better options than impeding the healthy function of our bodies for avoiding pregnancy. Fertility awareness methods are our best options. Rather than ingesting a carcinogen daily, relying on a thin layer of latex to stop millions of potential sperm from reaching our ovum, implanting a foreign object in our uterus or eliminating the possibility of ever having children by severing our fallopian tubes, we can work with our bodies to avoid becoming parents before we’re ready and have a healthy, happy uterus for a growing child when we are.