The Billings method actually involves only the observation and recording of changes in cervical mucous. Natural family planning clinics approved by the church generally advise that it be combined with the temperature method, which requires the extremely precise observation and recording of very small changes in body temperature. Numerous charts are required, observations must be conducted daily without fail, and you can't even start using the method until you've kept the records for several months to establish a baseline pattern.
Needless to say, it's not very effective in practice.
I live, as you know, in a predominantly Catholic country in the 3rd world, and I can say with some authority that the attitudes that the Church hierarchy takes toward contraception are responsible for a great deal of pain. I've watched a good deal of this nonsense, and I think it's pretty disgusting: if the priests devoted half as much pulpit time to opposing the really drastic abuses of the feudal elite as they do to battling against pills and condoms, they could accomplish some real good.
Some favorite stories:
A Catholic Priest (thoroughly overweight, as most of them are), asked by a reporter how poor mothers were supposed to feed all the children he wanted them to have, replied (in Tagalog) "add some water to the soup".
The church has called for the banning of the pill because it is, they say, an abortifacient drug. This is of course nonsense. The pill prevents ovulation; without ovulation you can't have conception, and without conception you can't have abortion. But many of the poor and devout believe it anyway....
I could go on, but I suppose that's enough. |
