Health Service

How Safe is the Safe Period?

Not very, the way most people practise it.

One of the commonest mistakes that we hear each week is the notion that it is safe for x days after your period, x, being the convenient number from 1-14. This is nothing short of gambling on a pregnancy and should be recognised as such. Women, who stand to gain or lose most in the pregnancy stakes, need to understand more clearly the risks involved. "My boyfriend works it all out " is the ultimate in cop-outs. This is 1977 for heaven's sake.

There are different means of calculating the fertile period but guesswork shouldn't be one of them. Having regular periods is a good start and removes some of the guesswork. Can you recognise the signs of ovulation ? Did you know that sperm can survive up to four or five days ? If you are seriously interested in ovulation detection and a careful calculation of the fertile phase come and find out more about it.

If you still prefer to gamble, remember that the Safest Time of the Cycle is Just Before or During your Period — not After. This is one of the facts of life most of us don't get told.

For help with this or any other method don't look to the Royal Commission. They were too pre-occupied with abortion to bother much about contraception. Despite the fact that the only doctor on the Commission was a Catholic, the natural family planning methods are inadequate. The report states that there are three 'natural' methods and the ovulation method is the best. The report doesn't even mention the combination of temperature and ovulation symptons, which gives better results than the ovulation method currently being promoted in New Zealand.

The unnatural prominence given to the 'natural' family planning methods in the report is clearly a reflection of the Catholic bias. Why list the 67 Natural Family Planning centres in a special appen dix but not other clinics ? If 67 clinics sec just over 1000 couples in a whole year this means an average attendance of 15 couples per year per centre !

A list of Hospital Boards that conduct family Planning Clinics and a report of their activities would have been more relevant, not to mention the well used Family Planning Association Clinics. Naturally, failure rates are omitted by the Commission. In the Health Department's Hull Valley survey the failure rate for the periodic abstinence method was 13.55 per 100 women using the method for a year. Compared to all other standard methods including the diaphragm and condom this was the least reliable of methods.

Quit Gambling.