Speaking Up for Women

At a recent introduction to NFP for engaged couples, a woman asked me to elaborate on the use of NFP to achieve pregnancy. She assumed she was not like most who come to learn NFP, she wanted to be pregnant. She was marrying soon, and being in her 40s, she was rightly feeling a sense of urgency.

I explained to her what all NFP providers know—it is not at all unusual to come to learn NFP intending to achieve pregnancy. Commonly, the proportion of those coming to achieve pregnancy exceed the statistic of the one in six who struggle with infertility. For some providers, MOST who come to them are seeking to achieve pregnancy.

This is not so surprising, when we consider that for those seeking to avoid pregnancy, contraception has become entirely normalized in our culture. Gutmaccher Institute reports that 99% of sexually active women not currently seeking pregnancy have used contraception, and 88% are currently contracepting. Contraception is a covered benefit of private insurance and medicaid. It is not unusual for young women to be prescribed contraceptives in middle and high school, if not for birth control, then for painful periods, irregular cycles, acne, etc. If a woman does not wish to use contraceptives, she must be a strong self-advocate, repeatedly declining them throughout a lifetime of encounters with healthcare providers.

Contrast that with NFP. Most women, nearly all, have never been offered NFP as a tool for spacing pregnancy. Those who are interested in it, must seek it out on their own.

The result of living in a culture that has normalized that being a woman means being on contraception is that it is challenging to break through that conditioning, to see fertility as a normal, healthy process, and NFP as the tool to understand it.

What about women encountering difficulty conceiving? The only solutions this same healthcare system usually offers are a few token tests, perhaps an IUI (which are notoriously unsuccessful), and when that fails, the women are emotionally primed to accept the verdict—-IVF is your only hope.

Unlike contraception, IVF however has not yet been normalized in our culture. It is not usually covered by insurance and is cost prohibitive. For many reasons, too numerous to cite in the scope of this brief article, most do not pursue it. And so, with their healthcare provider offering little else besides IVF, women do their research, and many find the answers in RRM. Apparently so many, that the professional associations of those who provide IVF have been waging a campaign of misinformation about RRM. In the link below, one can read multiple press releases by the ASRM misrepresenting RRM, even claiming women are not given informed consent—ironic, because women report over and over being told IVF is their ONLY option by such specialists.

Insurance does usually cover RRM, since it is good medicine—diagnosing and treating health issues. Discrediting RRM is part of a strategy to normalize IVF, and secure mandated coverage for those who provide it.

We are at a critical juncture in women’s healthcare. Those who believe women deserve better than the norm of contraception to avoid pregnancy and IVF to achieve pregnancy, need to speak up—following the example of the physicians and patients who did so in DC in September. We were largely silent over the decades of normalizing contraception, and an entire generation of women paid the price. Will we be silent now? Or will we speak up against the heavily funded forces, and advocate for authentic women’s healthcare for ourselves—and for our wives, sisters, and daughters?

Are ASRM/IVF Providers (American Society for Reproductive Medicine) Threatened by the Interest in RRM (Restorative Reproductive Medicine)? See the mischaracterization of Restorative Reproductive Medicine here: ASRM Hosts Capitol Hill Briefing for Policymakers & Congressional Staff to Hear From Providers & Patients About Importance of IVF Access, Realities and Limitations of Restorative Reproductive Medicine | American Society for Reproductive Medicine | ASRM