Tragic Abortion Mix-Up

An expecting mother carrying twins in Australia has suffered an incredible tragedy this past week.

After learning from her doctor, that one of her 32 week year old twins had a serious congenital heart defect, she decided to have him aborted. During the surgery, the surgeons accidentally aborted the healthy baby.

We are so sorry for this woman's heartache and loss here at Natural Family Planning and hope that this woman finds the strength to get past this awful tragedy somehow.

You can read the full article here.

Russia Restricts Abortions As Population Dips

This news story about Russia restricting abortions in attempt to solve the problem of decreasing population caught our attention this past weekend. Here at EFP, we like to stay on top of current events which pertain to birth and all aspects of family planning, so this was especially interesting to us. As an unbiased informative website, we appreciate generating discussions among our readers and providing content which does exactly that.

Russia's parliament has adopted a controversial law restricting abortions in an attempt to tackle the country's population collapse.

The UN predicted that, by 2050, Russia's population will shrink by a fifth to 116 million.

Critics of the change in law said limiting women's choice is the wrong way to tackle the problem, in a country where women are almost twice as likely to have an abortion as a live birth.

Read the full article here

Feel free to leave comments and opinions about the new restrictions Russia is placing on abortions on our thread below.

Switching from a Diaphragm to the Femcap

We found a great blog post about one woman's switch from using diaphragms to the FemCap. Like many other women who have made the same switch, this user found the diaphragm to be inconvenient at times, especially when they had to change sizes. Unlike the diaphragm, the size of your femcap is determined by your birth history, so you use the same size until you give birth, then switch to a new size once you've had your baby.

Most FemCap users find it be more user-friendly and comfortable than the diaphragm. It's smaller, more modern and comes in a more conspicuous carrying case. Like the diaphragm, it can be used with ContraGel, the natural alternative to spermicide instead of the more generic, harsher spermicides that contain Nonoxynol-9.

Check out her story!

I've been a diaphragm user for most of my adult life and over the past few years, I've found it increasingly hard to get a hold of. I assume the difficulty can be attributed to the popularity of hormonal birth control and how prevelant it is in our society today. I found my last diaphragm about a year ago from this site:www.buydiaphragms.com. I was really happy with the diaphragm and the process of ordering online (which I was a little apprehensive to do at first). But last week, I went to my gynaecologist and she told me I needed to move up a size. I was a bit bummed because I wasn't planning on having to buy another diaphragm for a while. Then, my gynocologist told me about something called a FemCap, which is a cervical cap for women, which size is only dependent on a woman's birth history, which is more straight forward than the sizing of diaphragms. (it only changes if/after you give birth)

Read her full post here!

Knowledge: The Noninvasive Birth Control

Using knowledge as a form of birth control is perhaps one of the best options out there and the article below explains why. Why increase your chances of breast cancer, infertility and other awful illnesses by using hormonal contraception? Empower yourself and start relying on your own knowledge to control your fertility!

(NaturalNews) As of now, the FDA has yet to approve of a safe option for birth control. The pill has been linked to higher breast cancer risk, the Depo Provera shot to infertility and osteoporosis, and the Mirena IUD to spontaneous abortions and even death. The Nuva Ring and the Patch can result in weight gain and blood clots, which can increase a woman`s risk of having heart attacks and strokes. Women are taught that the risk of pregnancy cannot be avoided unless they take one of these hormone-altering drugs. They are taught to treat fertility like a disease and medicate it away, not realizing what a detrimental effect this can cause on long-term health. They are rarely taught the usefulness of fertility tracking as a means of monitoring one's probability for pregnancy throughout the cycle.

Read the full article here.

True Story: How and why one woman gave up hormonal contraception

I recently came across an article about natural family planning and one woman's experience in switching from hormonal birth control to natural contraception. Her story was really inspiring and is an excellent example of the conflict and confusion a lot of women experience when considering giving up the pill. I wanted to share bits and pieces from her post with you. You can read the full entry here.

Not Excited About Drugs

Why take the chance? We live today. All of our research and technology has enabled us to pop a pill to avoid a pregnancy. That's all we have to do. So why do so many question the use of contraception?

I won't speak for others, but I can tell you why I did. This is my story: Why I decided to use a natural family planning method.

I do not like drugs. I avoid them whenever I can. Just before getting married, I was introduced to the idea that I would need to take a pill everyday to avoid becoming pregnant. This idea did not excite me. But what other alternative was there?

When I started on birth control, I actually started with the patch because it only required that I remember to change it once a week, not every day like the pill; less chance of "messing up." Within a few months however, I found that I did not like the patch. If I forgot to use it, for even one day, I was thrown for quite the emotional loop. I felt out of control, something that was not common for me. It felt horrible! I switched to the pill, and even though I had to take one every day, I did not experience the sudden swings like I had experienced on the patch. This pacified me for a few years.

But it kept bothering me, "If the patch could do that to me, what was the pill doing to me?" Occasionally I would research, looking for an alternative to the birth control pill, but each search left me looking at more pills, inserts, or implements.

What was wrong with all of these methods?
Most birth control methods use hormones to suppress the natural fertility cycle. I found several studies and heard people talk about how the use of these hormones affects the body. Things like how today's pills have lower levels of hormones because research has found that the higher level hormones of earlier pills 'may have caused cancer' and all sorts of problems. My thoughts were "What will they find out tomorrow about the pills of today?" Every drug has an adverse effect. They usually help and hurt your body in one way or another. Don't believe me? Look at the labels.

The point is: I did not want to be a guinea pig.
Nothing felt right. But what else could I do?

I looked into natural family planning methods.
Rhythm method, basal body temperature, ovulation charts, they all had one thing in common: Too much room for error.
Too much was left up to chance. Each natural family planning method seemed based on good principle but not complete. They required long periods of abstinence each month to "make sure" you would not get pregnant yet the chances of getting pregnant were still higher than just staying on the pill. Not good enough for me.

Then Came The Tipping Point
While at a doctor’s appointment my doctor shared some information with me about how today's contraceptives work, which he himself had just discovered. There are three ways today's contraceptives work to avoid a pregnancy. They all work the same way.

Here they are, short and not so sweet:
1. Stop the egg from ovulating
2. Stop the sperm from getting to the egg
3. Stop implantation of a pregnancy, thereby causing the body to abort the pregnancy, in case the first two don't work.

I was floored! I had never heard such a thing! Could this be true?
It says so right on the label of the contraceptive, though you would be hard pressed to find, or recognize it.Here it is, right off of a label:

"Combination oral contraceptives act by suppression of gonadotropins. Although the primarymechanism of this action is inhibition of ovulation, other alterations include changes in the cervicalmucus (which increase the difficulty of sperm entry into the uterus) and the endometrium (whichreduce the likelihood of implantation)."

Does it sound the same?

That's probably why you missed it. I knew it was there, and yet I still had to scour the label 3-4 times before I could find it again. Click Here to read the label for yourself.

This was the tipping point. I was already uncomfortable with using the pill, having my own health in mind. Now that I knew the pill did not only prevent a possible pregnancy, but sometimes aborts a pregnancy that occurs "by mistake", I had a choice to make.The number of aborted pregnancies due to use of the pill is very small, but in my book, one is too many.

Now what do I do?
Thankfully my doctor had been researching this answer for me already. In light of this information he was preparing not to write prescriptions for contraceptives anymore. He wanted to provide a good natural family planning method alternative for birth control and he found a method called the Creighton Model. This was the method I had been looking for!
If you are interested in Natural Family Planning, this is the method that makes avoiding and achieving a pregnancy truly a matter of choice.

To learn how to practice natural contraception, have a look at Ethical Family Planning's page here.

Alert! Hormonal Implants lead to hundreds of unwanted pregnancies!

A new finding has come to show that hundreds of women have fallen pregnant after a long-term contraceptive implant failed. Many women were left injured or scarred as a result of the implant after it was inserted into their arm.

To compensate the failings of these contraceptive implants, the NHS has had to pay the women who were hurt by the implant and those who were traumatised by their unexpected pregnancies. The total payouts have totalled more than £200,000 – an average of more than £28,000 each.

A lawyer representing the women who had fallen pregnant unintentionally revealed that many of his clients had suffered psychological difficulties after suffering miscarriages or undergoing abortions after the implants went wrong. One woman who underwent an abortion claimed the trauma had led to her marriage ending.

The hormone filled rod which is behind all of these unwanted pregnancies is called Implanon. The Implanon implant is meant to provide protection against pregnancy for up to three years and when properly inserted, it is 99.5% effective compared to 99.7% for the Pill. The Implanon device costs £90. It is a flexible rod the size of a matchstick which is inserted underneath the skin of the upper arm. It works by gradually releasing the hormone progesterone, which stops the ovaries from releasing eggs and makes the womb less receptive to fertilised eggs.

One in four women in the UK who go to family planning clinics receive the long-term contraceptive implants. The implants are especially popular among teenagers who prefer the implant to the pill because it doesn’t require daily action.

Investigations conducted after reports of unwanted pregnancies have revealed that in some cases, the implant was not released from the pre-loaded applicator and therefore never inserted into the arm of the patient. Other implants were delivered too deep into the arm to function properly.

In its entire living history, the NHS has never experienced a contraceptive failure as great as this one involving Implanon. In total, 584 women who had the implant have reported unwanted pregnancies to the Medicine and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The total could actually be much higher considering many woman may not have reported becoming pregnant. The MHRA received 1,607 complaints about the implant going wrong. Some of these complaints were filed by doctors concerned about the difficulty of inserting the device and also that the implant is impossible to check if they are correctly implanted because they are invisible to X-rays.

The manufacturer of Implanon has now replaced it with an updated product called Nexplanon, which has a new pre-loaded applicator and can be detected by X-ray or CT scan. The manufacturer has not,however, recalled the existing stock of Implanon, which means doctors are still using it.

It’s important to remember that no form of birth control is 100% reliable and that when choosing a method of contraception, it’s best to talk to your health care professional. While hormonal birth control is often the most reliable forms of contraception, it can also come with the most amount of risks. Natural contraception, when practiced correctly, can be just as reliable as hormonal birth control and much safer. By practicing natural contraception with a contraceptive monitor or barrier contraceptive, you are eliminating the risk of side effects often associated with hormonal birth control such as mood swings and weight gain, and as in the extreme circumstance detailed in this story, unexpected pregnancies. To learn more about natural contraception, click here.

Men MORE Attracted to Hormone-Free Women

New research has shown that women who practise natural contraception appear more attractive to men than those who practice hormonal contraception. Studies by British researchers, Alexandra Alvergne and Virpi Lummaa, indicate that women who avoid using hormonal contraceptives are seen as more attractive by men during their ovulation period. As you know by our previous articles, ovulation is that time of month when our bodies are focused on making babies. Primal instincts begin to kick in and prompt our bodies to focus on mating and looking our best to attract a partner. This shows that women who use cyclotest or any other form of natural contraceptive, will have that natural something to draw in the guys, just as mother nature intended.

Alvergne and Lummaa emphasise that women undergo physical changes in the course of their menstruation cycle. Facial features, smell and voice are often subject to change. During the fertile phase, which is around the same time as ovulation, these characteristics have a particularly alluring effect on men as both men and women are programmed to know that ovulation time is reproduction time. It has also been established that women in their fertile phase tend to find themselves more attractive and as a result, put more effort into their appearance and dress. Women who practise hormonal contraception artificially subject their hormone balance to a permanently infertile phase, which suppresses the cyclical high of both their positive self-perception and the positive way in which they are perceived by others. Without this monthly high, many women using hormonal contraception suffer negative psychological effects. Woman who practice natural, hormone-free contraception on the other hand, are able to utilise and enjoy this monthly high and often experience an increased level of confidence as a result. This confidence allows them to be more active in their pursuit of finding a partner.

Self-perception is the key to success here. However, the success isn’t attributed solely on the positive way in which a woman perceives herself during the fertile days, but also in the possibility of ascertaining through specific cycle observation, the best time to look for a potential partner. A woman can use the symptothermal method to determine precisely her fertile and highly fertile days,so she can plan her social calendar in advance to make the most of her natural boost.

The manual method of symptothermal charting involves a paper and pen exercise of recording daily temperature readings on a chart and joining the dots, then applying a few formula and a few rules to predict when ovulation might occur. In order to even begin this process you must have already compared up to a years worth of charting data, which is best done under the supervision of a doctor who is knowledgeable in the field of reproductive science.

The alternative to this manual method is letting a contracpetive monitor, like cyclotest, do the job for you. These high-tech, compact devices replace the doctor, the pen and the paper and join the dots up for you while applying a complex algorithm to predict, using minimal data, when your highly fertile period is due. These monitors are incredibly reliable and accurate when used as a natural contraceptive device and allow you to start monitoring your fertility as soon as you take them out of the box!

While all forms of natural contraception allow you to experience this monthly high, using a contraceptive monitor enables you to know when to expect this increase in attractiveness in advance. If you are single and looking for a potential mate, this sympto-thermal method may be a bertter option for you than other forms of hormone-free birth control which do not track your fertility, such as barrier contraceptives.

Being seen as more attractive to men is one of many advantages of making the switch from hormonal birth control to natural contraception. While appearing more attractive to men may sound superficial or unimportant, there are many other more serious psychological benefits of giving up the hormones. Check out the reasons to go natural from a psychological perspective.

To find out what other benefits come with giving up the pill and going natural, have a look here.