More young Kiwis opt for natural fertility planning methods

Most of Natural Fertility New Zealand’s clients are aged in their 30s, and their most common motivation is because they’re medically unable to take hormonal contraception. Cultural and religious reasons also figure, along with suffering side effects from the contraceptive pill.

New Pharmac figures show that the number of Kiwis taking funded contraceptive pills has dropped by 13 per cent in the last five years.

Invercargill-based Lena Wells, who is president of Natural Fertility New Zealand, teaches the sympto-thermal method to couples wanting to track when they’re fertile – either to help them conceive or to prevent the woman getting pregnant.

When she became president of the organisation 15 years ago, “we had a huge surge of people coming to us to conceive. Now, 72 per cent of people are coming to us to avoid getting pregnant, which is a huge trend shift”.

Health NZ’s contraceptive guidelines say perfect compliance with the sympto-thermal method to avoid conception should result in less than one pregnancy per 100 women in the first year – similar to the pill. Natural Fertility New Zealand won’t reveal how many unwanted pregnancies clients have had in the past 10 years, but it’s less than 1 per cent.

Ms Wells said that getting it right requires dedication, perseverance and three teaching sessions. She agrees that basic period tracking apps, as well as methods that estimate fertility just by counting days, are risky.

Pharmac contraceptive pill dispensing figures for 2020 to 2024 show a clear trend downwards. A major change was in the 20-29 age group, with a 23 per cent drop. That’s mirrored by a big increase in 20-somethings trying natural fertility tracking.

The number of teens taking funded contraceptive pills also fell, by 9 per cent.

Abortion numbers are also increasing, with a 14.9 per cent increase from 2022 to 2023. Out of 16,124 abortions in 2023, there were 495 cases where unwanted pregnancies happened when using natural fertility methods, but the majority of abortions (61 per cent) were cases where no contraceptive was used.

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