I'm gonna get hammered here because this is Lemmy and anything even loosely associated with Natural Family Planning is going to get down voted.

There are very specific and narrow methods that work well (not perfectly, obviously). I won't quote and statistics here.

To start up top, if you want to use any method of birth control, do it. It's up to you entirely, I don't judge anyone at all.

Also, anything related to the calendar method, day counting, or any such nonsense fuckin sucks. Some like to rope that into natural family planning because they are super simple... But super simple doesn't work.

If anyone is interested in learning about one that actually has scientific backing, it would be the Billings Ovulation Method. But it's not day tracking or anything... You need to do some work. You need to learn about it, learn your own body, and be diligent. And most importantly, use alternative methods when you aren't sure.

Again, I'm willing to bring on the downvotes, but I hope people research before assuming it's all bullshit.

And just to be clear: If you want something easy, use birth control.

As an edit: I want to fully acknowledge the gap between typical use and perfect use. My wife and I are certainly in the perfect use category... Her dad is a doctor and we are well aware of all the science behind it. If you aren't going to put in the work, the method is NOT for you. At all.

Low birth rates are only problematic to carcinogenic ideologies.

Just want to drop this here.

Birth control is great.

Some methods of birth control are bad for you specifically. Not all birth control is equal. You are a complex piece of equipment. Birth control alters the way that equipment works. There are side effects, no matter what, and they are listed because the were well documented in clinical trials.

That does not mean you should not use birth control. It means you should work with your doctor to find the one that works best for you.

My wife tried a birth control medication that had an interaction with another medication and made her very drousy. My sister took one that made her feel suicidal. They shopped around and found something that worked.

I practice natural family planning

It's called being ugly

The states that imposed these Draconian laws have terrible maternal mortality rates now and they're trying to hide the data so they don't have to acknowledge the harm they did. Same way it was during COVID where some state governments like Florida were attacking independent investigators for having accurate numbers when the state changed theirs to try and look better.

I highly encourage anyone that doesn’t want to ever have kids, to go get tied or snipped so that you won’t ever have to worry about it.

There’s an open source period tracker called drip that doesn’t collect your data. Everything is kept local. My wife used it for a while and learned some things about her cycle. It was also cool being able to know almost exactly when she’d be on her period 2 months ahead of time.

Look into open-source apps. You're on freakin' Lemmy.

I knew a woman who stopped taking birth control because of occasional headaches, and she and her husband both ended up with one that didn’t move out until 23 years later.

Sure, the general "birth control is bad for you" message is not optimal. But the root of this misinformation are insights about the side effects coming up more or less recently. iirc one third to half of all women on hormonal birth control experience major side effects like headaches, nausea or mood changes. I can see how these significant findings combined with patriarchy awareness and associated anger led to exaggerated messages.

Nonetheless, I think people thinking more critically about birth control is a good thing as one should always consider both benefits and risks.

Edit: Or did I misread this post? If so, I'm very sorry...

Gotta grow new soldiers for the next war

It’s being pushed by the TERF/radfems on tumblr (covert alt right movement) as well. Birth control messes up your goddess energy or something.

The whole point of everything they're doing is to create an uneducated population of easily manipulated fodder. Of course people are forgetting. This effort has been running for 20-30 years (or longer) at this point, and it's working.

Back to good old withdrawal method and coat hangers in the US for birth control