It’s good to see that natural family planning has made the news. The Washington Post has published an article about CycleBeads, a reworked version of the old rhythm method. This article is mostly positive. However, there’s a definite bias against "complicated" methods that involve keeping track of anything beyond what day it is.

"These methods are just too complicated," said Victoria Jennings, director of the IRP. "It takes two weeks to train a provider on these methods at minimum, and eight sessions with a client to learn how to use these methods."

That’s absolute bull. My fiance and I taught ourselves about NFP in preparation for our wedding. She’s been collecting data for some time now so that we have a really good picture of her typical cycle. It DID NOT take "eight sessions" – however long those are supposed to be – to learn it. We both read Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler and bought Ovusoft, a program for keeping track of all the data that supposedly force "a woman to be a fastidious accountant", as the article says. The only thing that takes some learning is how to deal with the program when it predicts strange things. Though, usually it’s caused by forgetting to log body signs for a couple days.

The CycleBeads website asks, "Why choose CycleBeads?" My answer is, "People are too lazy to take a temperature or check cervical fluid".