Other Methods of Birth Control Used with Fertility Awareness

This chapter discusses types of birth control methods that are sometimes used in conjunction with Fertility Awareness Methods such as the Justisse Method. Included is information on effectiveness, advantages and challenges.

As many methods of fertility awareness, including the Justisse Method, provide insight into a woman's natural patterns of fertility and infertility, they become useful for women trying to avoid or achieve pregnancy.

A natural birth control method is defined as a method of avoiding pregnancy that does not require the ingestion of or use of a synthetic chemical, synthetic or bio-identical hormone, or contraceptive biochemical derived from plants, or the use of an artificial device.

All natural birth control methods involve some means of identifying the fertile and infertile days of a woman's menstrual cycle. All natural methods use periodic abstinence, which means the avoidance of sexual intercourse or genital-to-genital contact, during a woman's fertile days to avoid pregnancy. If a woman is not using abstinence on fertile days then she is not, strictly speaking, using a natural method of birth control, even though she may be aware that she is fertile.

It is important to note that a woman can only become pregnant on ovulation day, which is heralded by preovulatory fertile days, which are only a few every cycle.

So if a method of birth control fails to work as it should that failure can only happen on a fertile day. In the instance of hormonal contraception, the initial failure would be that method’s inability to create enough of an imbalance of a woman’s endocrine system as to prevent ovulation and the discharge of Type E cervical mucus. Then the woman’s lack of awareness that she might be experiencing fertile days, as well as her assumption that the hormonal contraceptive is working as prescribed might put her in the situation of inadvertently having intercourse on fertile days. The same would be true for other non-fertility awareness methods of birth control.

A woman’s lack of awareness of her fertile and non fertile days leaves her with little choice but to employ a non-fertility awareness birth control method every time she has intercourse just in case she might be fertile that day. Thus, it makes sense for a woman to know what days she is fertile and what days she is not, so that she has the maximum information about making a choice as to what chances if any she wishes to take on getting pregnant. 

Abstinence from sexual intercourse and/or genital to genital contact on fertile days is the most effective method of birth control other than sterilization. A woman’s challenge is in learning to develop the skills and confidence to identify her fertile and non fertile days, and the skills to negotiate with her sex partner her choices around what behaviors towards achieving or avoiding pregnancy she wishes to engage. This is a challenge being taken by hundreds of thousands of women every year, in their desire to have more autonomy better informed choice about avoiding pregnancy. Women who take this challenge find support in working with a HRHP or other fertility awareness educator.