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After taking the pill for a decade, Elodie Monnier Legrand decided to try “natural” birth control, an increasingly popular trend that requires tracking fertility to avoid becoming pregnant.<\/p>\n
“I wanted my body to return to its natural state,” the French 30-year-old business owner told AFP.<\/p>\n
However after getting two abortions within six months, she discovered the app she was using had slightly miscalculated her fertility cycle.<\/p>\n
“It’s not an exact science,” Legrand said.<\/p>\n
She is one of a rising number of women who are abandoning hormonal contraception such as the pill.<\/p>\n
In France, 7.5% of women used natural contraceptive methods in 2023, rising from 4.6% in 2016, according to the INSERM institute.<\/p>\n
Helping drive this trend are influencers on social media<\/a>, who often promote natural birth control as a way for women to “liberate” themselves from the hormonal effects of the pill.<\/p>\n However experts warn that some common claims about the pill’s side effects represent misinformation\u2014and that methods based on tracking fertility require strict adherence to be effective.<\/p>\n Geoffroy Robin, a gynecologist at the University Hospital of Lille in France, told AFP that the interest in natural methods was fueled by “a climate of hormone-phobia.”<\/p>\n He also pointed out that the pill had long been seen as a “tool of women’s emancipation.”<\/p>\n Louise, a 26-year-old in France who did not want to give her surname, told AFP that “hormonal contraception was a complete disaster” for her.<\/p>\n When she was 18, her body rejected a hormonal IUD. After getting an implant, she said she suffered from side effects including weight gain, mood swings and depression.<\/p>\n For the last six years, she has been using the calendar method of natural birth control.<\/p>\n This requires calculating the window when women are fertile\u2014which is around 10 days a month\u2014and abstaining from sex during this period.<\/p>\n The temperature method involves daily checks to detect if women’s bodies have gotten a little warmer, which happens during ovulation.<\/p>\n For the “Billings” method, women must inspect their vagina daily to see if there is a build-up of cervical mucus. The “sympto-thermal” method combines the latter two techniques.<\/p>\n The embrace of natural contraception\u2014also called fertility awareness\u2014comes as the use of the pill has declined in many countries.<\/p>\nDifferent methods<\/h2>\n