This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its authentic location you possibly can go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/women-are-giving-up-contraception-but-not-to-get-pregnant-20260616-p607a2.html
and if you wish to take away this text from our website please contact us
Around two-thirds of Australian women of childbearing age use some type of contraception.
A 2021 study and a 2020 report each discovered that the oral contraceptive capsule (a hormonal type of contraception) is commonest, adopted intently by condoms. Long-acting reversible contraceptives, just like the non-hormonal copper IUD, have been comparatively gradual on uptake. But regardless of the plethora of choices, there’s a rising sentiment selecting to reject these types of contraception in favour of one thing extra controversial and surprisingly much less handy.
Contraception in Australia
In 2025, the Australian authorities tried to make as many strategies of contraception as accessible as potential with the supply of their women’s health package, including a number of the mostly used capsules and NuvaRing onto the PBS, in addition to funding free coaching for well being practitioners within the insertion and removing of IUDs.
By and huge, unintended effects from these contraceptives are uncommon, notably for non-hormonal choices just like the copper IUD. But some ladies nonetheless battle, particularly when on the capsule, reporting signs like sore breasts, weight achieve, complications and temper swings. In one large Danish study with information from greater than one million ladies, use of hormonal contraception was related to melancholy.
For a long time, these adverse unintended effects had been merely the associated fee these ladies paid for sexual freedom and autonomy.
A brand new, tech-forward strategy
In 2025, La Trobe University launched findings from a study analysing 100 TikTok movies on contraceptive well being that had amassed practically 5 billion views and 14.6 million likes. Of the content material creators reviewed within the research, 53 of per cent had rejected hormonal contraception, whereas roughly 34 per cent expressed mistrust in well being professionals.
“Women are saying they want something different, they want something that isn’t going to cause irregular bleeding, cause hormonal side effects,” says Deborah Bateson AM, professor of observe at University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine and Health.
On social media, many ladies really feel they’ve uncovered an alternative choice to the prescribed drugs making them unwell: fertility consciousness strategies.
Through a mixture of cycle monitoring, wearables know-how and algorithm-driven apps, ladies are using a recent, tech-forward tackle decades-old pure contraception strategies, together with the calendar technique (depends on monitoring your cycle through a diary), Billings strategies (you observe your cervical mucus because it turns into wetter while you’re fertile) and sympo-thermal technique (you observe your cervical mucus and your basal physique temperature, because it rises when ovulation happens).
“These methods have been around for a very, very long time, but of course, we’ve now added the tech component into them,” says Bateson. “This increased interest relates to women wanting to have control over their bodies. Many young women are very keen on understanding their bodies and of course these approaches allow you to collect a lot of data. But you’ve got to know what to do with that data.”
In one study from Monash University, 15 per cent of sexually energetic Australians reported counting on pure contraception choices, reminiscent of fertility consciousness strategies.
While the sentiment has been percolating for years, the regular stream of girls visiting clinicians asking to cease hormonal contraception is gaining momentum.
“In recent years, there appears to be more interest in hormone-free methods, including fertility awareness methods,” says Dr Clare Boerma, Family Planning Australia medical director.
Gynaecologist and fertility specialist Kath Whitton has additionally skilled this first-hand.
“I’m seeing more patients coming off hormonal contraception and turning to apps like Natural Cycles, often because they’re tired of side effects or want to better understand their own cycles,” she says.
How it really works
Apps like the favored Natural Cycles provide what they name “natural birth control”. You log your interval together with different signs reminiscent of recognizing, cramps and complications, in addition to data like when you might have intercourse, and notes about your cervical mucus.
These apps work together with different wearable know-how, like an Oura ring or Apple Watch, that monitor your basal physique temperature.
They take all this and leverage algorithms to then predict while you’ll be most fertile, basically informing you when to not have intercourse (or to make use of a condom when you do) to keep away from getting pregnant. They declare to be 98 per cent effective when used as supposed, and 93 per cent with typical use. An annual subscription prices $149.99.
Natural Cycles claims to have “the same effectiveness category as the pill with zero side effects”.
An imperfect resolution to a real downside
Experts say, nevertheless, there’s appreciable nice print to those assertions, beginning with the truth that to reap the excessive efficacy, it’s good to be adhering to them exactingly.
“These apps are TGA listed and there is some emerging data behind them, but there’s a meaningful gap between perfect use and typical use,” says Whitton. “In practice, that gap is where we might see unintended pregnancies happen.”
These apps additionally don’t make it clear what number of ladies aren’t truly a superb match to be utilizing them within the first place.
“People don’t realise how many common situations can make them a poor fit, including shift work, perimenopause, the postpartum period, breastfeeding, recent cessation of hormonal contraception and anyone with PMOS or irregular menstrual cycles. These are all situations where predicting ovulation becomes genuinely harder.”
Whitton provides that journey, sickness, alcohol, and disrupted sleep can have an effect on the temperature readings these apps depend on.
“People enjoy getting information and tracking themselves – you know, you can get Spotify Wrapped for your period,” says Dr Emmalee Ford, who has been researching the prevalence and use of fertility consciousness apps for the final decade. “People like it and enjoy it, but they don’t know what they don’t know and if you have a variable or irregular cycle, the app won’t work for you. They don’t really make a point of telling you this.”
Wearables and fertility administration
Tech corporations have observed ladies utilizing cellphone apps and wearables to assist their reproductive well being and are growing new options to help. In June, Oura launched their newest replace to its in style line of wearable rings, the Oura Ring 5, which features a new “Hormonal Birth Control feature”.
It was knowledgeable by customers desirous to replicate extra on their “unique experiences using hormonal birth control”, says Inessa Lurye, vice chairman of product, ladies’s well being at Oura.
Lurye explains that the replace offers extra particular details about how a consumer’s contraceptive decisions work together with their physique. Well over half of all Oura members are ladies, who’ve sturdy engagement with the ladies’s well being options.
The funding confirms how wearables like Oura, Apple and Whoop have gotten synonymous with fertility consciousness and administration of reproductive well being.
Apple first launched a cycle monitoring function in 2019 and have continued to develop their providing, working with Harvard University to launch a ladies’s well being research in 2023 – though it has been clear that the cycle monitoring function is just not a type of contraception. Whoop additionally has its personal Menstrual Cycle Insights function that works equally to Oura’s in supporting ladies to trace hormonal phases and their related signs.
Women trying to take their reproductive well being into their very own fingers shouldn’t be stunning. “The [Victorian] parliamentary pain inquiry really showed medical misogyny, women’s pain being ignored, and I understand why people might be looking for answers elsewhere than the medical establishment,” says Ford.
“These non-hormonal contraceptives – these apps and wearables – really profit from that cynicism and that questioning, and they present this alternative that is kind of a flawed solution to a really valid problem.”
As Ford and Whitton each observe, the fertility consciousness strategies enabled by apps like Natural Cycles, Flo and Kindara are removed from good.
In some situations, the information being fed into the app isn’t even used within the algorithm. Two totally different research – one in 2020 and one in 2024 – discovered that those that tracked their cycle through an app had been no extra prone to have primary information about their cycle than those that don’t.
“There was a study that came out that showed that some of them will let you track all of these verified signs of ovulation, but they won’t actually use them in the algorithm to give you the prediction,” explains Ford.
“So you could be logging the cervical mucus, but that doesn’t make the algorithm better, it just lets you add that as a data point and completely ignores it.”
It doesn’t assist that developments round contraception – for ladies and men – have been gradual.
Bateson says what works ‘best’ is extremely subjective. Despite understanding how efficient a LARC technique, just like the copper IUD, is in comparison with different strategies, some ladies could merely not desire a gadget inside their physique.
The reply isn’t to keep away from these instruments, advises Whitton, however reasonably use them as a supportive mechanism to raised perceive menstrual cycles and our bodies.
Bateson echoes these sentiments. “It’s important for people to have accurate information to be able to make the right informed choice for themselves.”
Make essentially the most of your well being, relationships, health and diet with our Live Well e-newsletter. Get it in your inbox each Monday.
From our companions
This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its authentic location you possibly can go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/women-are-giving-up-contraception-but-not-to-get-pregnant-20260616-p607a2.html
and if you wish to take away this text from our website please contact us
