Title: Birth Control Alternatives Without Outside Interference Word Count: 574 Summary: Some people would rather not have pharmaceutical contraceptives in their body and may have religious reasons for not wanting to use birth control items such as condoms. For these people, more discipline and timing-oriented methods such as abstinence and Natural Family Planning are the preferred choices. Keywords: birth control Article Body: Some people just don't like using certain types of contraceptives. There can be a number of reasons for this objection. It is believable to say that they would cite religious reasons for their objections, though that argument may be fading out, if some statistics are to be believed. Another typically cited reason would be that a number of popular methods of birth control are simply flawed. A condom is not always effective and a number of factors can make even the most potent birth control medication still have an appreciable risk of pregnancy. There are, of course, other methods that do not entail the use of pharmaceutical and external tricks but instead rely more on good old-fashioned discipline. These methods present their own risks, largely due to the fact that the less experienced the person is in the method, the less successful it is. There is no arguing that the lack of sex is inevitably going to be the best birth control available. The simple logic of abstinence is hard to deny, since if they're not having sex, there's no chance of getting pregnant. However, this may also prove to be the most psychologically taxing. While the whole “people have needs” argument is not as valid as some might lead you to believe, it does have a level of credence. The extreme discipline that abstinence requires is very difficult to attain, especially in today's environment, which has the patience and attention span of an average child of six. Abstinence as birth control may be the only guaranteed way to prevent pregnancy, but it is hardly the easiest one to get a grip on, especially in the long-term. Most people simply don't have the discipline or self-control for abstinence without years of training and conditioning to help fight the basic urge to procreate. Even the ones that have had that sort of training find it difficult at times, if the various scandals that the clergymen of the Catholic Church have been involved in through the ages are any indication. An alternative to it is a method known as Natural Family Planning, which is still firmly based in abstinence, but is less demanding on the length of time removed from sexual contact with one's partner. This method relies on reading the physical factors of the female half of the relationship, taking notes on things such as discharge and cervical temperature to evaluate whether or not she's in a fertile state. Obviously, as a birth control method, this still poses some risks. Reading physical signs, even ones as scientifically quantified as the ones that NFP uses, can often be highly subjective. Any misreading or misinterpretation of the body's signals can result in a variable risk of pregnancy. In general, experience and knowledge can help lessen the risk of human error, but experience usually comes from “field testing” the method. Similar to NFP, the Creighton Model also uses the body's own signals as a basis for birth control scheduling. The method uses tell-tale signs of fertility and infertility, such as blood discharge and cervical mucus, to determine the time when the female is at the lowest possible risk of pregnancy. Other details, such as blood tests to detect estrogen and progesterone, are used to accurately time a woman's cycle. The method is touted as having an effective rate of 99.5%, along with the ability to be customized to accommodate for biological and physiological traits that are individual in nature.