Safe sex and beads

Now couples need only to look at the color of beads in a special necklace to know if they can have safe sex.

This is a revolutionary method that the Catholic Church and Pro-Lifers can promote as the Natural Family Planning method. Even family planning advocates who have been espousing artificial contraceptives might make a shift to this Standard Days Method (SDM) which has been tested to be easy to teach, learn, and use, costs little, and has no side effects.

SDM was developed by the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University in the United States. It is based on recent research that identifies more precisely when a woman can become pregnant during her menstrual cycle. This method is based on the identification of a fixed "window" of fertility.

SDM users keep track of the days of their menstrual cycle and avoid having sexual intercourse during their fertile days. To keep track of their fertile and infertile days, they use a special mnemonic device which in lay terms, is a necklace consisting of 32 colored beads, each bead representing one day of the menstrual cycle. The bead for the first day of menstruation is red, followed by six brown beads. The red and brown beads represent the first seven infertile days of the cycle – days when sexual intercourse will not make the woman partner pregnant. Now follow 12 white beads – which represent the woman’s fertile window; these days are no-no to sex as the woman will most likely become pregnant. The 12 brown beads that follow are safe days for sex. So a couple need to abstain from having sex on the eighth to the 19th day after menstruation.

Whether a woman’s monthly cycle is 26 or 32 days, she and her husband should abstain from having sex on those 12 white-bead days.The woman marks the safe and unsafe days by moving a rubber ring one bead per day so she can tell when she is in her fertile window.

The method has been tested by IRH in Bolivia, Peru and the Philippines beginning in 1996, and its effectiveness found to be 95.25 percent. It was first tested through a computer simulation, using a large data set of more than 7,000 cycles from the World Health Organization. Then the test was followed by a pilot study to see if couples could use it successfully.

In the Philippines, the method has been tested on couples in the Prelature of Ipil, in Zamboanga del Sur; among farming couples connected with Kaanib, an NGO (consisting mostly of male farmers) in Malaybalay, Bukidnon; in 13 municipalities in Benguet, the Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital and FriendlyCare clinics in Manila.

At a dissemination forum held in Makati the other day, representatives of the organizations above indicated the success of the tests conducted by IRH.

Bishop Antonio Ledesma, SJ, of the Prelature of Ipil, said that practically all the priests in his 19 parishes agreed to introduce SDM in pilot areas, as an added option to the church’s NFP program. "Because of its standardized simplicity, SDM, we felt, could easily be taught and learned, even in one session."

The bishop cautioned, however, that teachings on SDM should include value formation , since NFP was not only a matter of methods, but also of values, a way of life.

Furthermore, SDM was not to be viewed as competing with "established" NFP methods, but rather as complementary. "Indeed, all NFP methods are premised on fertility awareness – i.e., a basic understanding of the fertile and infertile periods in a woman’s cycle," he said.

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Speaking on the Kaanib experience, Dr. Lita Sealza said that concern for the health of the woman was the most important consideration among acceptors for choosing the method. More than one-half of the acceptors (56.4 per cent) chose SDM because it does not affect the woman’s health, and has less side effects from other methods. Dr. Sealza said information dissemination was effectively made by couples – and even by male "educators".

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SDM was introduced to clients at the Fabella Hospital, said Dr. Cristina Torres, "to address an unmet need among women who prefer to use natural family planning methods." The hospital, the biggest in the country servicing an average of 500 to 600 patients a month, introduced SDM into its menu of family planning services in 1998.

"Client satisfaction may be gauged from both quantitative and qualitative sources," she said. There was a high incidence of clients who indicated recommending the method to other women.

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As to the Benguet experience, Dr. Erlinda Castro-Palaganas noted the empowerment of women "with their ability to negotiate the time for intercourse and initiate intimacies during the infertile days. The remarkable stabilizing effect of the method on one’s temper has lessened arguments between spouses. The periodic abstinence instills discipline, promotes self-control, intensifies good working habits, and facilitates open communication and mutual respect for spouses."

Mention was made of the willing participation of most husbands in the implementation of SDM. Some even helped move the rubber ring themselves.

But keeping the "wolf" away has to be done sometimes. Some husbands moved the rubber ring to indicate safeness on unsafe days. And women had to have "back-up" methods on abstinence days, such as having a child sleep between them and their spouses or going shopping or to other activities on their fertile days.

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SDM seems to be the most attractive of NFP methods by far. It does not require the woman taking her temperature each day, or looking at the thickness or lightness of her vaginal mucus to see if she is fertile or not. She only needs to look at the color of her beads; let’s hope her husband is not deliberately color-blind.

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