Dear Betty,

I am writing you about the "Birth Control Makes My Pussy Drier" article, where you say that "Although I never tried it, once a woman gets tuned into her ovulation times, that too can be adequate."

The reason I am writing you is that I am an "Ogino daughter." My mom, who is about your age or maybe a few years younger, did exactly that when she was a teenager. She relied on counting the days to her ovulation ("natural method birth control"}. This led her to two pregnancies, one at 16 that ended in an abortion (when abortions were still illegal in my country) and the other at 19, and that's me.

To read a good, wise (sounds like a granny, but alas, you are wise) and knowledgeable "sex advisor" like you say those words were scary. The fact is that I know from... Uh!... Experience! that the methods based on ovulation observation (be they Ogino-Knaus, Billings, basal temperature and saliva analysis with those tiny tests they sell) is unsafe at best. In the first place, these methods were not created to avoid pregnancies, they were devised to help women get pregnant by individuating their fertile period and in this sense they work well enough.

Secondly, they require a perfect regularity of the cycle to prevent pregnancy with any decent accuracy. But most women are not totally regular. Menstrual cycles can be early or delayed by a couple of days, due to lots of different causes: travels, weight fluctuations, seasonality, nearness to other women, influence of the stars and plain bad luck (you understand, I bet). Than there are double ovulations and such things, or major irregularities that can be triggered by illnesses and other causes.

Finally, these methods require several days of abstinence (ABSTINENCE!!! Ah!). I remember reading a pamphlet (sponsored by the Catholic Church: yep, them!) about the Billings method, and it basically required 15 days of abstinence in mid-cycle (the central days were the ovulation), which is usually the period when women are most horny. If you also consider that many women will not have sex during menstruations, that quite closes the circle: Billings is just another method used by the Catholic Church to repress a couples' sexual life? ^_^

I know you are going to tell me that there are lots of ways to have sex that's not "coitus". You know that, I know that, but the next 16 year old girl reading your comment may not know it, or have a boyfriend that does not know, so for them it's either abstinence or risk ending up like my mom, although hopefully in a legal clinic. Probably I am overreacting, but every time I hear or read about "natural methods" based on the observation of ovulation and coitus interruptus, I feel a chill going down my spine!

Love your work,

Anna