Creighton For Avoiding
Dear clients & friends,
Welcome to my ninth issue of "The Good Fruit" newsletter by Natural Fruit FertilityCare Services.
Last year (in October 2018), I wrote a magazine article about avoiding pregnancy. This 1,000-word paper can be seen here - http://naturalfruitfertilitycare.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Avoid-Pregnancy-Naturally.pdf - and on my Facebook business page. However, as I was updating my presentation slides to MDs last week, I found out that some of the information in this paper has changed since then (for the better!). I would like to emphasize this important change in this week's newsletter.
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First, the way that the Creighton Model System works to avoid pregnancy is to abstain from having intercourse on the woman's fertile days of the cycle. The couples are avoiding pregnancy in the three cycles shown in the photo above. In each cycle, the couple only has intercourse on the infertile days of the cycle - and in each case, they don't get pregnant. Ovulation is confirmed by ultrasound in each cycle and even if the couple has intercourse near that day, they still do not get pregnant since the intercourse was not on a day of fertility.
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The effectiveness rates of the Creighton Model System from a 1998 research paper are reported as 99.5% perfect use (0.5% failure) [method effectiveness] and 96.8% typical use (3-4% failure) [use effectiveness]. More recently, in May 2018, Dr. Hilgers reported that he has completed research where the Creighton Model System is now found to be the first method (of natural methods and contraception methods) to be 100% effective in successfully avoiding pregnancy! The only other method that guarantees no pregnancies 100% of the time is abstinence. It does make sense that natural methods that practice periodic abstinence during the fertile times would be nearly 100%, especially with accurate observations of fertility. It is great to know that there really are truly reliable natural methods for avoiding pregnancy available.
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In my October 2018 paper, I wrote that the CDC's website showed fertility awareness based methods (as a whole) as among the least effective at 24% failure (or 76% effective) for avoiding pregnancy. This was a very inaccurate representation of natural methods and the CDC's information on their website is often trusted and used by many doctors in their recommendations to patients.
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I was happy to see when I was updating the information in a presentation last week that the CDC's website is now updated based on a 2018 research paper to say that fertility awareness based methods have a "2-23% typical use failure rate" (or 77-98% effectiveness rate). The petition from FACTS that was signed by many in the community worked and got the CDC to update their numbers! While this is written in the text of their website, their image of the "tiers of typical effectiveness" still shows fertility awareness based methods in the least effective bottom tier, which shows methods that have "more than 13 pregnancies per 100 women in one year." Of course, many of the natural methods, including the Creighton Model System, have effectiveness rates that are much better than this, but by grouping them all together, this once again shows a very inaccurate picture of FABMs. This photo doesn't list the numbers under each method like the previous image did either. This is very misleading!
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But this update is a good start! Having all of the methods' numbers updated on the CDC's website to 2018 research is good! We still have a ways to go before each natural method of family planning is very clearly represented, however.
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Have a fruitful day!
Patricia Deshane, FCP
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