When Emily Frase and Mary Bruno first learned about natural family planning, they thought there was only one way to practice it. Today, as founders of a nonprofit dedicated to fertility awareness, they’re working to inform women about the multiple methods that exist — and to empower them to choose the best one for them.
“We want to educate them and give them informed consent,” Bruno, the executive director of their nonprofit, FAbM Base, said of their approach.
At FAbM Base (FAbM is short for “fertility awareness-based methods”), Bruno and Frase define NFP as fertility awareness plus discernment. Fertility awareness, they say, is the scientific discipline where a woman learns to track and interpret fertility signs over the course of her cycle to determine when she is fertile and to collect beneficial health information.
The discernment part happens when couples seek spiritual guidance while deciding whether to use this knowledge to avoid or achieve pregnancy, according to FAbM Base.
Women and couples who want to practice fertility awareness or NFP can choose from a variety of methods. Different methods rely on different fertility signs, or biomarkers, such as cervical mucus, cervical position, basal body temperature, vaginal sensation and hormone levels. To help women and couples find the best method for their specific needs, FAbM Base recently released a colorful, interactive side-by-side comparison of methods on its website.
Frase and Bruno, who are Catholic, spoke with Our Sunday Visitor about their new method comparison and the methods they personally use during National NFP Awareness Week, held July 20-26. The week takes place around the anniversary of St. Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which warns against the dangers of artificial birth control and contraception. NFP cooperates with this teaching by allowing couples to plan families with fertility awareness-based methods.
A method comparison
FAbM Base distinguishes between fertility awareness-based methods (FABM) and fertility awareness methods (FAM). Both use the same scientific, evidence-based methods, but FABM users practice abstinence to avoid pregnancy during a woman’s fertile window, while FAM users take nonhormonal contraceptive measures during that time. The former is consistent with Catholic teaching; the latter is not.
The effectiveness of a fertility awareness-based method depends on “how well charters understand how the method works and the extent to which they use it correctly,” according to FAbM Base.
On their new method comparison page, FAbM Base explores six of the most popular method options: Billings, FEMM, Marquette, Boston Crosscheck, Creighton and SymptoPro. Instructors and experts in these methods share how their respective methods address specific reproductive categories — or a woman’s state of life, type of cycle or situation. They describe how each method works in various situations, from post hormonal birth control and premenstrual syndrome to miscarriage, infertility and perimenopause.
“A lot of women come with a particular life situation or category or symptom or diagnosis — or whatever they’re experiencing — and they might want to know, it might be helpful for them to see, ‘Well, how does each method handle my particular situation?'” Bruno said.
On the page, instructors also delve into other factors that might impact someone’s choice, including the cost of a method, the biomarkers it relies on and the general strengths and weaknesses of it.
In addition to the method comparison, FAbM Base provides more resources to explore methods, including a method overview section and a user database with stories from women who use different methods.
Two personal journeys
As NFP users, Bruno and Frase come from different backgrounds and have previously spoken about how joy and pain coexist with NFP. Frase, a mother of three, had two surprise babies before her third wedding anniversary. Bruno, who adopted a daughter with her husband, suffers from infertility.
Frase said that she and her husband first learned Couple to Couple League, a sympto-thermal method, during marriage preparation.
“I had no idea that there were other method options, and it was not the greatest fit for us,” Frase, the president of FAbM Base, said. “We weren’t given the greatest expectations, we weren’t really given good follow-up support.”
After the birth of their first child, Frase switched to Creighton because she didn’t want to rely on temperature as a biomarker postpartum. She called Creighton an even worse fit because the information was too overwhelming at that time. After a second surprise baby, she landed on a third method: Marquette.
Like Frase, Bruno only knew about one method at first.
“The sympto-thermal, the same one that Emily started with,” she said, adding that she only knew about NFP as a way to avoid pregnancy.
She later discovered Creighton, and today teaches as a Creighton practitioner. She said that, even as a high schooler, she could have benefitted from the health insights of Creighton if she had known it existed.
“I suffered for a really long time,” she said. “Had I been aware of all the different methods — and that Creighton had the most in-depth medical component — I could have started that much sooner and gotten treatment much sooner,” she said. “As it was, it took 12 years for me to be diagnosed with endometriosis.”
‘Something new’
Frase said that, when delivering “Intro to Fertility Awareness” talks, she always opens by saying, “If you feel like you’re drinking from a fire hose, it’s because you are.”
“I just always like to remind people that if this information feels overwhelming, it’s because it is,” she said. “It’s because this is not in the air we breathe. This is something new.”
At another point, she called fertility awareness “the most practical and tangible way to live out the virtue of chastity,” which she defined as “the integration of our sexuality with the whole of who we are.”
“Particularly for women, since we kind of live in a world that’s designed on a male fertility cycle — which is a 24-hour cycle — it becomes very countercultural and kind of brave to say, ‘No, I’m going to live in harmony with the way that God designed a woman’s body,’ which is on a roughly monthly cycle and has ups and downs in accord with that,” she added. “Trying to figure out what that actually means — what that looks like in practical day-to-day living — to me, that is seeking to live the virtue of chastity, which is living in harmony with my sexuality as God designed it.”
As women determine the best method for them, FAbM Base is there to accompany them, both founders said.
“If you feel overwhelmed, just pause, take a deep breath, you don’t have to get it all in one go,” Frase said. “That’s why it’s a free website there for you to absorb as you can.”
Bruno stressed that there’s no absolute best method for all women.
“It’s just the best fit for the individual woman,” she said. “You may still have to try a method or two, but at least we’re giving you more information to start with — to sit with — while you go on that journey.”
