Category talk:Fertility awareness/Archive 1

I believe recreation of the category is in compliance with Wikipedia policies per discussion with the closing admin of the deletion nomination. Lyrl ^Talk _C 02:37, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

What a lousy thing to do, Lyrl. See you at the CfD. Joie de Vivre 02:39, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I realize JdV has also left a message for the closing admin, which I believe is a good idea - both to get an outside opinion and as someone more familiar with the rules regarding category rearrangement than JdV and I. However, Xdamr has a history of very low or no activity on days other than Saturday. In the interest of not waiting until next Saturday (June 2) to begin resolution, I will go ahead and offer my belief on what the relevant rules allow in this situation.

Severa and I both believe that "periodic abstinence" can also mean abstinence from unprotected intercourse and do not see anything wrong with the current categorization of the articles. JdV and Andrew both believe that the connotation of complete abstinence from all sexual activity was too strong, making the category inappropriate. If I'm counting correctly, this is a no consensus situation. In this situation, the articles are supposed to remain in their most recent stable state (in this case, where they have been for the past ten months).

Obviously, a no consensus situation is not desirable. I would like to continue discussion to find a category name acceptable to all interested parties. Lyrl ^Talk _C 11:49, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Below is my response. Its length is partially attributable to the first subsection, which clarifies the terms for people who may just be joining the discussion. Joie de Vivre 17:29, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Categorization concerns

I would like to address my concerns with the current use of the category Category:Periodic abstinence. Currently, the category contains Fertility awareness, Basal body temperature, Billings ovulation method, Rhythm method, Creighton Model FertilityCare System, Natural family planning. They are abbreviated, respectively, to FAM or FA, BBT, BOM, Rhythm, CrMS or CM, and NFP.

Understanding the six terms

Here is a short primer for anyone just joining the discussion. Two important concepts are Natural family planning (NFP) and Fertility awareness (FAM).

Natural family planning (NFP) refers to Catholic-approved methods of birth control. The Rhythm Method involves statistically estimating the likelihood of fertility based on past cycle length. Rhythm is very old; the Catholic Church's first recorded official statement on periodic abstinence to avoid pregnancy is from 1853.[1] The no-contraception directive in Pope John Paul II's 1968 Humanae Vitae clarified that fertility-detection methods were acceptable (see section 24). The Billings ovulation method (BOM) was developed in the 1960s by a Catholic couple, Evelyn Billings and John Billings, who extensively researched the significance of cervical mucus when it comes to a woman's fertility and did much to raise public awareness of the link between cervical mucus and fertility. The Creighton Model FertilityCare System (CrMS) was developed in the 80s as an offshoot of the BOM, it is very similar as a cervical mucus method. Thomas Hilgers, who developed the CrMS, founded the Pope Paul II Institute for promoting the CrMS. Hilgers asserted that the CrMS was superior to the BOM, but the Billings' refuted this claim.[2]

Fertility awareness (FA) refers to tracking biological signals of fertility. Toni Weschler was one of the first prominent teachers of the FAM; she began lecturing on FAM in 1982.[3] Weschler's 1995 book Taking Charge of Your Fertility is one of the best-known FAM manuals. Weschler's method is symptothermal, meaning that it tracks cervical mucus changes like the BOM and CrMS, but it also involves Basal body temperature (BBT).

Category:Behavioral methods of birth control also contains Coitus interruptus (the withdrawal method), and Lactational Amenorrhea Method (LAM), the latter of which is also a form of NFP.

Concerns

I feel that using the word abstinence in categorizing the above methods is misleading, because the word abstinence, in regards to sex, means "abstaining from sexual activity" (see Sexual abstinence), and many users of the cycle-tracking methods do not engage in periodic abstinence; in fact, they do not engage in abstinence at all. Many use the methods to determine when they will use barrier contraception during intercourse. There is no sexual abstinence among these users.

Relatedly, the phrase Abstinence-only sex education refers to "teaching teenagers to abstain from sex entirely", not "teaching teenagers to use barriers during intercourse" or "teaching teenagers to abstain from certain kinds of sex". Abstinence means "abstaining from sexual activity". Periodic abstinence means "periodically abstaining from sexual activity". Stretching the term periodic abstinence to mean "use of barriers during full vaginal intercourse" is just plain wrong. My view is that there must be a change, so I would like to come to a consensus here as to what to do.

Suggestions

A main question on which I would appreciate input is whether we should categorize the statistical Rhythm Method with the methods which detect biological signs of fertility; Fertility awareness, Basal body temperature, Billings ovulation method, Creighton Model FertilityCare System. (Another concern is where to put Natural family planning, which I will get to in a moment.)

My two suggestions are Category:Methods which detect fertility (which would not include Rhythm), or Category:Methods which detect or estimate fertility (which would include Rhythm).

Coming back to Natural family planning; NFP includes periodic abstinence and the Lactational amenorrhea method (LAM), which neither detects nor estimates fertility. There are three main options I can think of (both of which involve implementing either of the suggestions for a "Methods which detect (or estimate) fertility..." category.) The only difference between suggestions 2 and 3 is where to place NFP. I believe suggestion 3 is best.

1. We could retain Category:Periodic abstinence and categorize it under the new "Methods..." category regardless of which Methods suggestion is chosen. We would place NFP and perhaps Billings ovulation method and Creighton Model FertilityCare System under Category:Periodic abstinence. Frankly, though, I think this tends towards overcategorization.
2. We could rename Category:Periodic abstinence as the new Methods... category, and place NFP outside, under Category:Behavioral methods of birth control.
3. We could rename Category:Periodic abstinence as Category:Methods which detect or estimate fertility category, and place NFP and Rhythm therein. The phrase "natural family planning" is frequently associated with the use of detection/estimation methods alone, so I would not oppose this categorization. The other reason to support this solution is that Rhythm is considered NFP, so this way they would stay together. (LAM, another form of NFP, would still remain under Category:Behavioral methods of birth control, with Coitus interruptus.

My main concern is that it is quite misleading to apply the phrase "Periodic abstinence" to methods which do not involve sexual abstinence. I feel that it is not sensible to interpret the meaning of "abstinence" to include "periodically abstaining from unprotected intercourse, by having full vaginal intercourse with a barrier". This interpretation is counterintuitive. Let's come up with a more accurate solution. Joie de Vivre 17:28, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Reply

Periodic abstinence is a much more stretchable term than periodic sexual abstinence. I don't find the category to be a bad description of these methods when used to avoid pregnancy. However, I would like to find a category name that does not exclude use of these methods to achieve pregnancy.

As a clarification, the symptothermal method promoted by Toni Weshler has a brand name of Fertility Awareness Method (FAM). While confusing, FAM is not the same as fertility awareness-based methods (FA methods). Rather FAM is one type of fertility awareness-based method. Also, Rhythm Method is not a specific system, but rather an umbrella term for systems that use a woman's cycle length to estimate fertility - the term "calendar method" is also commonly used. The Knaus-Ogino Method was not developed until 1930, yet there are multiple references to "Rhythm" in the mid- to late-1800s, and I've even found a reference from the fourth century describing such a method. The Standard Days Method is a new system - developed in 1999 - and is currently covered in the Rhythm Method article.

Many discussions of fertility awareness-based methods describe mucus, temperature, calendar rules, and then how symptothermal methods use all three systems - such as Planned Parenthood. Other discussions divide fertility awareness-based methods into "symptoms based" and "calendar based" - such as the World Health Organization. In both treatments, Rhythm is included in the same discussion as mucus-based and symptothermal methods. As this seems to be the accepted way to treat these methods, I support including Rhythm in whatever new category is created.

Fertility may be estimated by the presence or absence of fertile types of cervical mucus; while fairly reliable, this is not a certain indicator - there are occurrences of both false positives (presence of fertile mucus on days that turn out to be too far from ovulation to be fertile) and false negatives (no observed mucus on days that turn out to have intercourse resulting in pregnancy). While symptoms-based estimates of fertility may be more accurate, they are still estimates. Furthermore, in temperature-only and symptothermal systems, the pre-ovulatory infertile period is frequently calculated from a woman's past cycle length (as in calendar-based systems). I believe the line between the symptoms-based and calendar-based systems relationship to fertility is too fuzzy to use separate adjectives such as "estimate" and "detect".

I support suggestion number 3, I'm just not sure about the name. Maybe we could go with the WHO naming and call it "Calendar- and symptoms-based methods of identifying fertile days". Lyrl ^Talk _C 20:53, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Categorisation thoughts

Regarding the accuracy of the term "periodic abstinence," I don't interpret it to necessarily mean complete sexual abstinence, and I don't think it is possible for category titles to account for everything — such as the fact that "abstinence" can also refer to abstaining from consumption of alcoholic beverages. So, if we were to try to account for this, too, we would need a category titled Category:Methods of birth control requiring partial or total sexual abstinence, which is rather ungainly. I've always believed category titles should be kept as simple as possible and that their scope/applicability can be determined by the kind of articles which are sorted into them.

As for whether Rhythm method belongs with the other FA methods — as it only statisically estimates and doesn't detect fertility based on biological signs — I would say it would probably be best to simply sidestep the issue and go with a broader, more inclusive title, like "Periodic abstinence" or "Observational methods of birth control." Although I think it is acceptable to create categories with only a couple of articles in them, if the alternative is less accurate categorisation, in this case I don't see subdivision as warranted. I do think that a seperate category for the fertility-detecting methods is warranted, in some form or another, as there are six or seven behavioral methods that depend on monitoring or estimating fertility, whereas there is only one method which depends on withdrawal during intercourse and one that depends upon breastfeeding (so these two would stay in the parent "Behavioral" category while the "Observational/Periodic abstinence/Fertility detection" methods would go in a subcat). Having these articles grouped together would enable readers to easily find related subjects.

As per Lyrl's suggestion that this category's title should accommodate the fact that FA methods are also used to help increase the chances of pregnancy, perhaps "Fertility control methods" or "Family planning methods" would work better than "Birth control methods," as either of these would be inclusive of both efforts to become pregnant and efforts to avoid becoming pregnant. -Severa (!!!) 21:30, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

How about Category:Observational fertility methods? Joie de Vivre 21:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Just realized that "...fertility methods" doesn't really mean anything, how about Category:Fertility tracking methods? Joie de Vivre 21:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Gah. I can't think of any words that work to describe both "directly observing fertility signals" and "guessing when you ovulate with a math formula". Why can't we distinguish between the two? Joie de Vivre 21:54, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

With a failure rate of only 5% per year (that's the same effectiveness as the female condom), I would not call the Standard Days Method "guessing". A WHO study of the Billings method, which only included women with regular cycles, and only included women who consistently identified at least 5 days of cervical mucus per cycle, found a failure rate of 3% per year. Lower, yes, but not THAT much lower. Lyrl ^Talk _C 23:20, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Do you have any other suggestions? Joie de Vivre 23:37, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

The most common usage seems to be "fertility awareness", with use by major relevant organizations like Planned Parenthood and WHO. This has the advantage of name recognition, brevity, sharing a title with the main article in the category, and being noncommittal on pregnancy avoidance vs. achievement. "Fertility tracking" would also be fine by me. If we need to have the word "methods" in the category title, it would probably be better to use "fertility tracking methods", or "fertility awareness based methods" to help minimize confusion with Weschler's brand name. "Fertility charting" is another alternative. "Methods identifying fertile days" or the more unwieldy but also more specific "Calendar- and symptoms-based methods of identifying fertile days" might also work. Lyrl ^Talk _C 23:48, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Time out

This is not a first time occurrence. Joie de Vivre also restructured the long-established categorisation system of WikiProject Abortion, without first discussing it or attempting to seek consensus, and then nominated the original categories for deletion (see CfD discussion 1 and CfD discussion 2). I hesitated from mentioning this because I believe JdV was honestly unaware of the pre-existing WikiProject Abortion categorisation system at the time. However, if the CfD guidelines state, "do not remove the category from pages before the community has made a decision," then an editor should not go through a category and systematically remove all the articles from it ([4] [5] [6]). This is not merely a minor quibble, or a "technicality," but, rather, an apparently deliberate attempt to manufacture a situation that would be favourable to a "delete" result in a CfD. Lyrl was completely justified in restoring this category, as she had been advised to do so by Xdamr, the admin who closed the CfD debate, and there was no consensus to delete this category. As far as I can tell, it's currently 2/2, with the closing admin's "delete" vote not being counted, as his stated reason for closing the discussion as he did was, "However category is empty so eligible for deletion per WP:CSD#C1," and the diffs I provided above demonstrate that the circumstances under which the category became empty might be questionable. We can discuss the individual merits of this category and try to find ways to address concerns over it, but, this is not going to be achieved the way things are going now. Good articles and categories are never made through process of reaction. Discussion needs time to progress — and it will never progress if it is prematurely cut off. I'm glad we're participating in discussion now, but, ideally, this should have been the first course of action, not a last resort. -Severa (!!!) 16:20, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Call it what you want. I did not set out to delete the category entirely. I set out to remove the FA methods from Category:Periodic abstinence, because so many users use barrier methods, not abstinence. I realized that nothing but NFP actually belonged there. I didn't think single-article category was a good solution. I do think the FA and NFP categories are a good solution. Joie de Vivre 17:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe JdV in good faith thought WP:BOLD was applicable here. At the same time as the attempted deletion of this category, Category:Methods of birth control was created, and no one has contended that. I think the problem was in judgment of what would be controversial: everyone who looked at Category:Birth control could see that the related topics were beginning to overwhelm the specific methods, and apparently agrees that it's navigationally useful for the methods to be separated into their own category. To me, the similarly bold removal of methods from Category:Periodic abstinence was poor judgment, but not any attempt to "manufacture a situation." From what I have seen, JdV has in the past made a consistent effort to follow all the correct procedures per Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lyrl ^Talk _C 17:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

NFP and FA categories

So I realized that creating Category:Fertility awareness and Category:Natural family planning could solve a lot of problems. I was able to pull in John Billings, Humanae Vitae, and Winnipeg Statement into the NFP category, and Toni Weschler and Barrier contraception into the FA category. I cross-referenced between the methods and placed links at the top of both categories for easy referencing.

The NFP category is in Categories: Behavioral methods of birth control | Theology of the Body | Religious views on birth control.

The FA category is in Categories: Behavioral methods of birth control | Gynecology | Feminism.

I think these are really good categories.

This way, we can build upon each concept without muddling the two or causing confusion. Even Lactational Amenorrhea Method and Rhythm method have a place; (in Category:Behavioral methods of birth control as well as Category:Natural family planning. I don't think there's a need for Category:Periodic abstinence anymore. Let me know what you think. Joie de Vivre 16:32, 28 May 2007 (UTC)