Abortion and artificial contraception proponents like to use the phrase “reproductive health” as part of a battle cry to justify their strongly held beliefs that a legal right to terminate or prevent a pregnancy is good for a woman’s well-being.
For decades now, women have been led to believe birth-control pills will always prevent pregnancy and abortion will remove what they think is nonviable tissue or a clump of cells. “The pill” also is prescribed by some physicians to treat hormonal health issues.
More recently, another drug is on the market, the so-called abortion pill, that kills an unborn baby inside a mother’s womb after the child is conceived without having to go through surgery. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision last month, the White House and many other entities are working to make this controversial option more readily available.
And looking at the issue from a reverse angle, to help women achieve rather than avoid pregnancy, there are medications and procedures that do not conform to natural law and fall outside what the Catholic Church teaches on conception.
So, what’s a woman to do?
The Church strongly encourages women and their spouses to practice Natural Family Planning (NFP).
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sets aside one week in July each year to promote NFP to couples who are preparing for marriage, newly married or several years into their marriage. This year, NFP Week is July 24-30.
While NFP is mostly associated with fertility, Dr. Lindsay Rerko, DO, suggests that it should be viewed through the lens of benefiting not only a woman’s reproductive health but whole-body wellness.
Dr. Rerko, a family-practice physician in Westerville, is among a handful of Catholic doctors in the Diocese of Columbus trained in the Fertility Education and Medical Management (FEMM) program, a worldwide organization that assists women and girls in managing their health and fertility from puberty to menopause.
FEMM is one of several fertility methods available that blends science and technology to give women a better understanding of their cycles and deal with a variety of health concerns.
FEMM-affiliated professionals are located throughout the globe. A mobile app, used to identify health and fertility patterns, has been downloaded more than 400,000 times in 161 counties.
Dr. Rerko’s path to becoming an NFP practitioner started with her marriage to Dr. Michael Rerko, an orthopedic specialist. The Catholic couple, both 41, have four children.
“I learned the Creighton (fertility) method because I was having trouble getting pregnant, and we saw something in our bulletin that one of our parishioners was a Creighton teacher and our pastor was promoting this and offering to cover the cost of the training,” she said.
Though she had gone through medical school and was working in the medical field, she had no exposure to any of these natural fertility methods, which work by tracking a woman’s ovulation cycle to determine optimal times to achieve pregnancy.
“So, in my late 20s, I was learning about all of this,” she said.
Her initial exposure in FEMM Health came in 2014 when a pilot clinic that was opening in Columbus needed medical providers and physicians.
“That’s where I got involved with them and learning the FEMM method of Natural Family Planning, which I would say was really an easy transition from the Creighton background,” she said. “It’s all based on the same science.”
FEMM’s Reproductive Health Research Institute in Santiago, Chile compiles NFP data and ongoing research to help build the protocols used throughout the world. Once a year, FEMM practitioners participate in an international medical management course. Additionally, doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and nurses come together for courses in smaller groups and to review case studies.
“We use these medical protocols to understand the underlying causes of different issues,” Dr. Rerko said. “Women come with irregular periods and painful periods, and we find like what’s going on really at the root and how can we treat it.
“It’s really great to get back to the science of all of this,” she said. “It’s not just plastering on the Band-Aid of a birth-control pill.
“Unfortunately, what gynecology is anymore, is someone comes in with any sort of period or reproductive problem, it’s, ‘Take this (pill) so the symptoms go away.’ But you’re never fixing the issue, and you actually could be making it worse. So, this is just a better way to approach health care for women.”
As a Catholic doctor, she does not prescribe artificial contraception.
“It’s not just about what I have to offer women as far as pregnancy prevention,” she said. “More importantly, one-third of the things that we are treating with birth control are gynecologic issues. And so, we find the root cause, and we have an alternative way to treat these things through the FEMM medical protocol.”
Over the past few years, Dr. Rerko has trained medical personnel internationally and taken the FEMM teacher training to instruct couples on NFP.
“Even though there’s like variation on where people live and how we practice medicine, it’s all mostly the same,” she said. “We can all kind of grow and benefit in this and offer this to women everywhere.
“One of our FEMM doctors who has been very active in the organization is in Tanzania and training medical residents in the hospital there in the FEMM protocol. It’s just been a great blessing to have this to do with outreach and sharing different ways of approaching care.”
Locally, Dr. Rerko works in her private practice with medical students from Ohio State University and in the past with students in the physician assistant program at Ohio Dominican University and nurses in training from Mount Carmel to educate them on NFP.
“In family medicine, patients come in with multiple complaints, with some pertaining to these kinds of (gynecology) issues,” she said. “So, inadvertently, I’m exposing the students to this.”
One of the aspects she likes most about her profession is presenting options to women who might be seeking artificial birth control. Schedulers in her medical practice inform potential patients that she does not prescribe contraception, but sometimes these women do end up in her exam room as patients.
“They’re having these issues, and I can say, ‘Well, actually, I do a little extra work in this area,’” she said. “Once you start talking to people about finding root causes and trying to restore their health, these are the kinds of universal themes that are really appealing to different people.
“Even people who wouldn’t consider faith a part of these decisions, they are just looking for something without side effects. And they’re not taking another hormone in their body. And they’re like, ‘Oh, a natural way of dealing with things,’ or looking at a more holistic approach.”
She also offers the same type of information to existing patients.
“They’ll bring up wanting to be on something for birth control, and I’ll give them the truth on the matter and present also fertility awareness methods to them, and I’m really often surprised how that’s like very appealing to women,” Dr. Rerko said.
“It’s actually monitoring their fertility from biomarkers from their body, and when they hear that, they are exposed to often like what they hear.”
Dr. Rerko’s fluency in Spanish allows her to see Latino patients who might be seeking help with gynecologic issues in addition to standard medical treatment.
Much of the current discussion on reproductive health is focused on eliminating pregnancies, but Dr. Rerko has felt blessed to assist women who struggle with infertility.
“Under certain conditions, a lot of women are going to seek IVF (in-vitro fertilization), and so it’s nice to be able to say, ‘Give me a chance,’” she said. “‘Let’s check your lab and see what’s going on and see if we can find something treatable.’
“Last week, I got a follow-up call from a patient about the positive pregnancy test,” Dr. Rerko said. “We had just applied the protocols and treated the things that were not good in her health and with her hormones. And she conceived naturally, so that was great to hear.
“But not every single woman coming in with infertility we find an answer.”
Dr. Rerko encourages teens who might be experiencing issues and taking birth control as a result to schedule an appointment.
“When women come in in their late 30s, early 40s and really wanting to achieve a pregnancy, the clock is ticking, and some of these things are beyond my control,” she said. “I do my very best to try to optimize everything in their bodies. Some of those things are diet and exercise with medication. You’ve just got to work at it.”
FEMM has developed a teen program to help young women understand their cycles. One of the obstacles is getting the word out.
“There are definitely women that I meet who are very in tune with this,” Dr. Rerko said. “They are right on board with everything, but others have never even heard of it, and they’re Catholic.
“I think a lot more can be done at the parish level. Certainly, if you’re not asking your doctor these questions, which is probably the majority of people, then where are you going to hear it?”
Now that most abortions are illegal in Ohio, Dr. Rerko anticipates an uptick in pregnant women seeking guidance from doctors and pregnancy help centers.
More expectant mothers might request the abortion pill to eliminate the child they’re carrying now that surgical abortions have ceased in the state for the most part. Dr. Rerko has helped several women obtain the abortion pill reversal drug or directed them to the website abortionpillreversal.com.
She also expects more interest in FEMM as the organization continues to grow.
“At first, you kind of feel alone in this,” she said, “like this is fringe medicine. And then the more people you meet and learn, they are interested. There’s a huge desire for this. It’s been good.
“I’d love to see things moving to the younger women to learn about their bodies. They’re aware of charting (fertility), and this is just kind of the norm for them. It’s not like they have to learn one way and unlearn something else. It’s just part of the natural progression of womanhood.”
For more information on FEMM, visit www.femmhealth.org.