This morning, I read an article titled ‘The Trump Administration Would Like To Talk To You For A Second About Your Cervical Mucus’. It outlined how Fertility Awareness-Based Methods (FABMs) were being taught by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the expense of providing education and resources on hormonal contraceptives and long acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs). The writer was understandably angry about this, and as I read through the article I became angry too.

But my anger came from a different place. I’m angry about the ways that FABMs have been (and continue to be) appropriated by Church and State as a political and religious pawn to further specific agendas – and how this ultimately discourages onlookers from using FABMs in the first place. The association serves to alienate growing numbers of people who could potentially benefit from using a FABM, while simultaneously introducing suspicion around political bias.

To understand how this has come about, it’s helpful to establish that much of the original scientific research into FABMs came from Catholic OBGYN’s and scientists. This is because the Catholic religion teaches that the use of artificial contraception is a sin (and this was even more firmly established in 1968 with the release of Pope Paul VI’s ‘Humanae Vitae’). The researchers therefore had compelling personal reasons to vehemently pursue a natural method of birth control.

We have much to thank these early researchers for; however, the Catholic influence has continued to pervade mainstream perception of FABMs to this day, often to the detriment of credibility and availability. This persists despite FABMs being politically and religiously neutral. In fact, FABMs are available to all people with a uterus regardless of their race, gender, nationality, skin-colour, age, religious views, political views, occupation or relationship status. I would go so far as to say that FABMs provide a level of body-literacy which should be available to all from as early as high school biology classes. They are not the sole domain of the Catholic church.

Unfortunately, many supposedly secular organisations are in the insidious business of delivering the trojan horse of effective non-hormonal birth control (FABMs) to your door – before unexpectedly using their educational materials to further an anti-choice agenda.

Many supposedly secular organisations promote themselves as providing full and detailed facts and education about all different types of FABMs, but fail to provide honest information about the shortcomings of the science behind their resources. Other supposedly secular organisations are run by people who have in the past exposed a clear agenda to abolish all forms of hormonal contraception.

In fact, it would seem that many FABM education providers intentionally posit themselves as secular organisations as a way to claim neutrality and credibility; however, on closer inspection the upper echelons of their financial backers and directors are often a roll-call list of conservative religious and far-right political figures. It’s this intentional blurring of the lines between secular and non-secular which is most concerning.

My message to these organisations? Stop using FABMs as a trojan horse for the delivery of your religious beliefs on sex, contraception, abortion and marriage. If nothing else, providers with even an inkling of religious background must be ruthlessly transparent about their motives when it comes to teaching or promoting a FABM.

For FABMs to be taken seriously as a valid means of contraception, they must not be politicised. They must not be used as a vehicle for the non-consented delivery of religious beliefs and agendas.

For me personally, hormonal contraception was a wild ride of the worst variety, and I’m very glad that I am now using the Symptothermal Method instead (the Symptothermal Method is a type of FABM). However, I will fight tooth and nail for other people to have the right to choose to use hormonal birth control if that is what they prefer. FABMs should never be promoted by official sources at the expense of all other contraceptive methods.

To be clear, I am not anti-religion. There is much research to show that religion plays a pivotal role in the health and wellbeing of a great number of us. It provides people with hope, direction and community and its benefits should not be understated; however, I cannot stand back while my chosen contraceptive method is hijacked as a messenger of said beliefs.

 

This editorial is brought to you by Jessie Brebner, a Symptothermal Method instructor from the Gold Coast of Australia. Jess is passionate about providing education on the menstrual cycle and regularly blogs on the subject of Fertility Awareness-Based Methods and body literacy. You can find more from Jess on her Instagram @fertilitycharting