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Detecting fertility could empower couples to spurn IVF, says instructor
For many women, the menstrual cycle is treated as a nuisance to be suppressed, predicted by an app, or endured in silence. Fertility instructor Marie Sandison, however, views the cycle as something far more profound: a readily available, everyday indicator of a woman’s overall health, fertility, and sense of who she is.
An accredited teacher of the Billings Ovulation Method®, Sandison works with Fertility Care Scotland, the Scottish affiliate of the World Organization for Ovulation Method Billings (WOOMB).
The organization portrays itself as Scotland’s sole body for training and accreditation in the authentic Billings Ovulation Method®, providing free and confidential one-to-one instruction for women and couples.
Sandison’s message is simple but countercultural: women deserve to understand their own bodies.
“It’s knowledge that every woman ought to know,” she stated, citing Dr. Evelyn Billings, co-developer of the method.
Sandison originally tried the sympto-thermal method of natural family planning, which she found limiting.
She turned instead to the Billings Method, which she describes as liberating.
Sandison now works with Fertility Care Scotland, helping women understand their bodies through fertility awareness.
Sandison’s interest in fertility awareness arose from her own experience.
Before discovering the Billings Ovulation Method®, she had read extensively about natural family planning, and used the sympto-thermal method, which blends observations of cervical mucus with daily temperature readings.
But Sandison found the sympto-thermal method to be limiting, especially during breastfeeding, stress, illness, or other circumstances that can disrupt a woman’s usual cycle. The Billings approach, she believes, provided something more adaptable.
“It is relatively simple but requires the woman to make observations as she goes about her normal daily activities,” Sandison told Live Action News.
“Firstly, how she feels at the vulva and anything she sees leaving her body. No internal investigation is needed. Completing her chart every evening gives the woman an understanding of her menstrual cycle.”
The Billings Ovulation Method® helps women acknowledge when they are fertile or infertile by paying attention to natural sensations and visible mucus patterns at the vulva. Instead of relying on calendar predictions or regular cycles, it can be referred to after childbirth, during breastfeeding, following a miscarriage, after stopping hormonal contraception, and throughout perimenopause.
For Sandison, realizing this was not merely practical, but a type of personal liberation.
“Recognition of these fertile signs is like remembering something about ourselves long forgotten,” she said.
Sandison’s dedication to fertility education is deeply attributable to her pro-life beliefs.
She attributes much of that formation to her mother, who counseled women facing pregnancy and after abortion, and spoke publicly on behalf of the LIFE organization.
Those early experiences persuaded her that fertility awareness is not merely a tool for preventing or pursuing pregnancy; rather, such awareness is a means of protecting women’s health and upholding their dignity.
“As a young woman, I realized that understanding one’s fertility was crucial to protecting it,” she said.
That belief currently influences how she supports couples who, after months or years of trying to conceive, feel pushed toward in vitro fertilization (IVF). Sandison does not minimize their pain, but instead, hopes they understand that fertility-awareness methods can sometimes unravel underlying, treatable causes before more invasive treatments become the default option.
“Learning the Billings Ovulation Method® gives women valuable knowledge and understanding of their own fertility and reproductive health,” she said. “By recognizing changes in their menstrual cycle patterns, women may be able to identify potential medical or environmental factors that could be affecting their fertility.”
A woman’s cycle should be viewed as an important indicator of overall health, Sandison added. Shifts in cervical mucus can occasionally indicate infections, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, cervical abnormalities, or other issues that warrant medical evaluation.
“Charting the cycle gives a window on a woman’s reproductive health,” she continued. “Disturbance of the mucus pattern may suggest the presence of infection, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, or other abnormalities, particularly of the cervix.”
Among the most sensitive aspects of Sandison’s work is walking alongside couples who arrive feeling that all hope is gone. Many have already been mistakenly informed that IVF represents their only realistic path to parenthood.
In turn, Sandison’s approach begins not with criticism, but with advice.
“We can provide reassurance by discussing the processes involved in reproduction and emphasizing the most fertile time of the cycle,” she said. “By teaching how to make observations and providing the rules to conceive, we maximize the chances of conception.”
One woman experienced persistently dry cycles and had never noticed any signs of fertility. After six months of learning to observe her body more attentively, she identified a single day of fertile mucus. The couple had intercourse during that time and conceived.
Sandison often recalls this case because it captures her core argument: fertility awareness is not an abstract spiritual aspiration, but a practical discipline rooted in reproductive physiology.
“Cervical mucus has properties that play a huge role in sperm selection, transport, and survival,” she said. “This allows for conception to occur with healthy sperm and ovum, with adequate hormones to maintain the pregnancy.”
Fertility Care Scotland reports that its instructors help couples either conceive or naturally avoid pregnancy, as well as provides personalized guidance that can extend over several months or longer if necessary.
Sandison’s opposition to IVF rests on moral grounds as well as health concerns. In her view, the process poses serious moral dilemmas about how human embryos are produced, chosen, stored, and ultimately discarded.
“In vitro fertilization replaces the sexual act with procedures that violate the nature of creation as God intended,” she said. “Egg cells produced through drug-induced ovulation and sperm from masturbatory specimens are joined in a petri dish, then implanted, frozen, and destroyed.”
She contends that the sheer number of embryos lost means the controversial topic of IVF cannot be brushed aside. “It is shocking to learn that for every child born using IVF, there is the possibility of as many as 30 embryos created,” she said.
Sandison also pointed out that IVF detaches conception from the act of marital union and, as she views it, paves the way for a further decline in ethical standards within reproductive technology:
“This separating of the biological from the human and spiritual distorts sexuality. It goes on that two men become parents or two women become parents… this is not the end of the line, unfortunately, as it leads to experimentation of the dystopian kind.”
She recognizes that her anti-IVF views may come across as severe to couples who are longing for a baby. For that reason, empathy has to take priority. Her goal is not to shame couples, but to offer a life-affirming alternative to conceiving babies before these couples feel they have exhausted every option.
“We have taught couples who have been through IVF unsuccessfully,” she pointed out. “Once taught the Billings Ovulation Method®, they have identified fertility and successfully conceived.”
Sandison is careful to separate fertility awareness from the outdated “rhythm method.”
The Billings Ovulation Method® doesn’t rely on forecasting the timing of ovulation. It is built on the bodily signs a woman observes herself, which she records every day and interprets with the help of a qualified teacher.
Women frequently tell Sandison the same thing after learning Billings Ovulation Method®: “Why didn’t we learn this at school?”
In Sandison’s view, this reflects a broader problem in society. Women are often handed contraception as the standard solution to issues with their cycles, yet are taught very little about how the cycle actually works.
“Many women today experience dissatisfaction with all other methods of contraception,” she said. “We are only beginning to realize that nature has the answer.” She added that women "feel a sense of satisfaction from knowing where they are in their menstrual cycle."
Sandison also sees fertility awareness as a means of deepening relationships.
Among the first couples she taught was one who had just come off hormonal contraception, and as the woman’s natural cycle resumed, something unforeseen occurred.
“Contraception had been a barrier, which, once disappeared, they became closer as a couple,” Sandison said. “It was surprising and heartwarming.”
Using the method’s guidelines, the couple went on to conceive a pregnancy they had planned. To Sandison, this captures the greater promise of fertility awareness: it is more than a technique, serving instead as a common language that husband and wife share.
“Men and women can develop a better understanding of their bodily and emotional state through fertility awareness,” she said.
Fertility Care Scotland was established in 1976 to help women understand and appreciate their fertility. Almost 50 years later, Sandison believes the mission of Fertility Care Scotland is more pressing than ever.
Sandison cited declining birth rates throughout Europe, along with the strains placed on marriage and family life. The solution she offers goes beyond mere encouragement, and centers on teaching.
Sandison would like GPs, midwives, and nurses to be trained, based on solid evidence, in modern natural family planning, especially the Billings Ovulation Method®. Additionally, she recommends specialist fertility awareness clinics within the NHS, where women could be given individual instruction, have irregularities spotted, and be treated promptly.
As for schools, she contends that lessons on relationships, sexual health, and parenthood should reach further than avoiding pregnancy and infection. Pupils, she says, ought to understand how the whole menstrual cycle works, when the fertile window falls, and the ways lifestyle choices shape fertility over the long term.
“Teaching adolescent girls how to track and interpret their cycles as a vital sign of overall health, rather than just tracking the date of their next period [should become standard],” she said.
Importantly, Sandison also wants boys and young men included in such educational initiatives.
“Educating young males to foster reproductive health and future shared responsibility in understanding the fertile cycle” is, in her view, crucial.
On the policy front, Sandison urges the government to run public health campaigns about falling fertility rates and to fund the training of additional fertility awareness instructors, particularly since contraception can be obtained free of charge in Scotland.
Sandison’s hope is that "Fertility Care Scotland will help transform society by empowering girls and women to understand, value, and appreciate the beauty of female reproductive physiology and the gift of motherhood,” she said, “while encouraging men to appreciate and support them.”
In Sandison’s eyes, natural family planning "invites couples to embrace a life of conjugal harmony and devotion to their children,” she said, “making their life together beautiful in the eyes of God.”
Though not everyone will be drawn to Sandison’s vision, her central point is hard to wave away: a woman who knows how her cycle works is in a better position to look after her health, to try for a baby if she wants one, to avoid conceiving naturally if she does not wish to, and to take a full part in choices about her own body.
At a time when fertility is so often framed as a problem for technology to solve, Sandison suggests a different place to start: pay attention to one’s body first.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Cassy Cooke
·
International
Cassy Cooke
·
International
Right to Life UK
·
Issues
Bridget Sielicki
·
International
Cassy Cooke
·
Activism
Angeline Tan
·Activism
Angeline Tan
·
International
Angeline Tan
·
Activism
Angeline Tan
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Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·
Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·Detecting fertility could empower couples to spurn IVF, says instructor
For many women, the menstrual cycle is treated as a nuisance to be suppressed, predicted by an app, or endured in silence. Fertility instructor Marie Sandison, however, views the cycle as something far more profound: a readily available, everyday indicator of a woman’s overall health, fertility, and sense of who she is.
An accredited teacher of the Billings Ovulation Method®, Sandison works with Fertility Care Scotland, the Scottish affiliate of the World Organization for Ovulation Method Billings (WOOMB).
The organization portrays itself as Scotland’s sole body for training and accreditation in the authentic Billings Ovulation Method®, providing free and confidential one-to-one instruction for women and couples.
Sandison’s message is simple but countercultural: women deserve to understand their own bodies.
“It’s knowledge that every woman ought to know,” she stated, citing Dr. Evelyn Billings, co-developer of the method.
Sandison originally tried the sympto-thermal method of natural family planning, which she found limiting.
She turned instead to the Billings Method, which she describes as liberating.
Sandison now works with Fertility Care Scotland, helping women understand their bodies through fertility awareness.
Sandison’s interest in fertility awareness arose from her own experience.
Before discovering the Billings Ovulation Method®, she had read extensively about natural family planning, and used the sympto-thermal method, which blends observations of cervical mucus with daily temperature readings.
But Sandison found the sympto-thermal method to be limiting, especially during breastfeeding, stress, illness, or other circumstances that can disrupt a woman’s usual cycle. The Billings approach, she believes, provided something more adaptable.
“It is relatively simple but requires the woman to make observations as she goes about her normal daily activities,” Sandison told Live Action News.
“Firstly, how she feels at the vulva and anything she sees leaving her body. No internal investigation is needed. Completing her chart every evening gives the woman an understanding of her menstrual cycle.”
The Billings Ovulation Method® helps women acknowledge when they are fertile or infertile by paying attention to natural sensations and visible mucus patterns at the vulva. Instead of relying on calendar predictions or regular cycles, it can be referred to after childbirth, during breastfeeding, following a miscarriage, after stopping hormonal contraception, and throughout perimenopause.
For Sandison, realizing this was not merely practical, but a type of personal liberation.
“Recognition of these fertile signs is like remembering something about ourselves long forgotten,” she said.
Sandison’s dedication to fertility education is deeply attributable to her pro-life beliefs.
She attributes much of that formation to her mother, who counseled women facing pregnancy and after abortion, and spoke publicly on behalf of the LIFE organization.
Those early experiences persuaded her that fertility awareness is not merely a tool for preventing or pursuing pregnancy; rather, such awareness is a means of protecting women’s health and upholding their dignity.
“As a young woman, I realized that understanding one’s fertility was crucial to protecting it,” she said.
That belief currently influences how she supports couples who, after months or years of trying to conceive, feel pushed toward in vitro fertilization (IVF). Sandison does not minimize their pain, but instead, hopes they understand that fertility-awareness methods can sometimes unravel underlying, treatable causes before more invasive treatments become the default option.
“Learning the Billings Ovulation Method® gives women valuable knowledge and understanding of their own fertility and reproductive health,” she said. “By recognizing changes in their menstrual cycle patterns, women may be able to identify potential medical or environmental factors that could be affecting their fertility.”
A woman’s cycle should be viewed as an important indicator of overall health, Sandison added. Shifts in cervical mucus can occasionally indicate infections, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, cervical abnormalities, or other issues that warrant medical evaluation.
“Charting the cycle gives a window on a woman’s reproductive health,” she continued. “Disturbance of the mucus pattern may suggest the presence of infection, ovarian cysts, endometriosis, or other abnormalities, particularly of the cervix.”
Among the most sensitive aspects of Sandison’s work is walking alongside couples who arrive feeling that all hope is gone. Many have already been mistakenly informed that IVF represents their only realistic path to parenthood.
In turn, Sandison’s approach begins not with criticism, but with advice.
“We can provide reassurance by discussing the processes involved in reproduction and emphasizing the most fertile time of the cycle,” she said. “By teaching how to make observations and providing the rules to conceive, we maximize the chances of conception.”
One woman experienced persistently dry cycles and had never noticed any signs of fertility. After six months of learning to observe her body more attentively, she identified a single day of fertile mucus. The couple had intercourse during that time and conceived.
Sandison often recalls this case because it captures her core argument: fertility awareness is not an abstract spiritual aspiration, but a practical discipline rooted in reproductive physiology.
“Cervical mucus has properties that play a huge role in sperm selection, transport, and survival,” she said. “This allows for conception to occur with healthy sperm and ovum, with adequate hormones to maintain the pregnancy.”
Fertility Care Scotland reports that its instructors help couples either conceive or naturally avoid pregnancy, as well as provides personalized guidance that can extend over several months or longer if necessary.
Sandison’s opposition to IVF rests on moral grounds as well as health concerns. In her view, the process poses serious moral dilemmas about how human embryos are produced, chosen, stored, and ultimately discarded.
“In vitro fertilization replaces the sexual act with procedures that violate the nature of creation as God intended,” she said. “Egg cells produced through drug-induced ovulation and sperm from masturbatory specimens are joined in a petri dish, then implanted, frozen, and destroyed.”
She contends that the sheer number of embryos lost means the controversial topic of IVF cannot be brushed aside. “It is shocking to learn that for every child born using IVF, there is the possibility of as many as 30 embryos created,” she said.
Sandison also pointed out that IVF detaches conception from the act of marital union and, as she views it, paves the way for a further decline in ethical standards within reproductive technology:
“This separating of the biological from the human and spiritual distorts sexuality. It goes on that two men become parents or two women become parents… this is not the end of the line, unfortunately, as it leads to experimentation of the dystopian kind.”
She recognizes that her anti-IVF views may come across as severe to couples who are longing for a baby. For that reason, empathy has to take priority. Her goal is not to shame couples, but to offer a life-affirming alternative to conceiving babies before these couples feel they have exhausted every option.
“We have taught couples who have been through IVF unsuccessfully,” she pointed out. “Once taught the Billings Ovulation Method®, they have identified fertility and successfully conceived.”
Sandison is careful to separate fertility awareness from the outdated “rhythm method.”
The Billings Ovulation Method® doesn’t rely on forecasting the timing of ovulation. It is built on the bodily signs a woman observes herself, which she records every day and interprets with the help of a qualified teacher.
Women frequently tell Sandison the same thing after learning Billings Ovulation Method®: “Why didn’t we learn this at school?”
In Sandison’s view, this reflects a broader problem in society. Women are often handed contraception as the standard solution to issues with their cycles, yet are taught very little about how the cycle actually works.
“Many women today experience dissatisfaction with all other methods of contraception,” she said. “We are only beginning to realize that nature has the answer.” She added that women "feel a sense of satisfaction from knowing where they are in their menstrual cycle."
Sandison also sees fertility awareness as a means of deepening relationships.
Among the first couples she taught was one who had just come off hormonal contraception, and as the woman’s natural cycle resumed, something unforeseen occurred.
“Contraception had been a barrier, which, once disappeared, they became closer as a couple,” Sandison said. “It was surprising and heartwarming.”
Using the method’s guidelines, the couple went on to conceive a pregnancy they had planned. To Sandison, this captures the greater promise of fertility awareness: it is more than a technique, serving instead as a common language that husband and wife share.
“Men and women can develop a better understanding of their bodily and emotional state through fertility awareness,” she said.
Fertility Care Scotland was established in 1976 to help women understand and appreciate their fertility. Almost 50 years later, Sandison believes the mission of Fertility Care Scotland is more pressing than ever.
Sandison cited declining birth rates throughout Europe, along with the strains placed on marriage and family life. The solution she offers goes beyond mere encouragement, and centers on teaching.
Sandison would like GPs, midwives, and nurses to be trained, based on solid evidence, in modern natural family planning, especially the Billings Ovulation Method®. Additionally, she recommends specialist fertility awareness clinics within the NHS, where women could be given individual instruction, have irregularities spotted, and be treated promptly.
As for schools, she contends that lessons on relationships, sexual health, and parenthood should reach further than avoiding pregnancy and infection. Pupils, she says, ought to understand how the whole menstrual cycle works, when the fertile window falls, and the ways lifestyle choices shape fertility over the long term.
“Teaching adolescent girls how to track and interpret their cycles as a vital sign of overall health, rather than just tracking the date of their next period [should become standard],” she said.
Importantly, Sandison also wants boys and young men included in such educational initiatives.
“Educating young males to foster reproductive health and future shared responsibility in understanding the fertile cycle” is, in her view, crucial.
On the policy front, Sandison urges the government to run public health campaigns about falling fertility rates and to fund the training of additional fertility awareness instructors, particularly since contraception can be obtained free of charge in Scotland.
Sandison’s hope is that "Fertility Care Scotland will help transform society by empowering girls and women to understand, value, and appreciate the beauty of female reproductive physiology and the gift of motherhood,” she said, “while encouraging men to appreciate and support them.”
In Sandison’s eyes, natural family planning "invites couples to embrace a life of conjugal harmony and devotion to their children,” she said, “making their life together beautiful in the eyes of God.”
Though not everyone will be drawn to Sandison’s vision, her central point is hard to wave away: a woman who knows how her cycle works is in a better position to look after her health, to try for a baby if she wants one, to avoid conceiving naturally if she does not wish to, and to take a full part in choices about her own body.
At a time when fertility is so often framed as a problem for technology to solve, Sandison suggests a different place to start: pay attention to one’s body first.
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Cassy Cooke
·International
Cassy Cooke
·International
Right to Life UK
·Issues
Bridget Sielicki
·International
Cassy Cooke
·Activism
Angeline Tan
·Activism
Angeline Tan
·International
Angeline Tan
·Activism
Angeline Tan
·Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·Human Interest
Angeline Tan
·