Word: rhythms
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Roman Catholics who have long com plained that the rhythm method is a highly unsatisfactory means of birth control because it is so uncertain now have added cause for concern. Two em inent gynecologists, one Irish and one Italian, say that when the rhythm method fails, it carries an added risk that the baby will be fatally malformed, suffering from anencephaly-literally, absence of a brain...
Stale Components. Cross's original concern was to help subfertile couples to have normal babies. Now he has come to believe, as have other embryologists and physiologists, that an unusually high incidence of abnormal births may result from couples' using the rhythm method for birth control and miscalculating the date of ovulation. An ovum may remain fertile for at least two days, and sperm for about 36 hours. Cross says that in the first half of the ovulation cycle, a stale sperm may fertilize a normal egg, and in the second half, a normal sperm may fertilize...
...couples who use rhythm for contraception, Cross prescribes a more rigorous schedule than most have practiced: intercourse is permitted for only seven clays before a menstrual period and for only seven days after the period begins. Since most couples will abstain during the period, this reduces the "safe" season to nine or ten days...
Reduced Risk. Milan's Professor Carlo Sirtori agrees with Cross and adds mongolism to the list of congenital defects associated with outdated ova. The conventional Ogino-Knaus schedule for contraceptive rhythm bars intercourse from the twelfth to the 15th day of the cycle; Sirtori would prolong the ban through the 17th day. This way, says Sirtori, both the risk of an unwanted pregnancy and the possibility of a malformed baby are reduced...
Cross, a widower with four children, is a prominent professing Catholic. But he does not see rhythm as the only permissible method for many women. "If a woman has heavy or irregular periods, or painful periods, or sometimes has none, or if she has premenstrual tension or endometriosis, bleeding between periods, excessive hairiness or pimples [caused by an excess of androgenic hormones], or is excessively fat or is approaching the change of life, her doctor is morally justified in prescribing any treatment he likes. And that includes the pill." Dr. Cross's list is comprehensive enough to qualify about...