Dear Katie,

Persona is a type of Natural Family Planning (NFP) through which women can control their fertility without the use of hormones or barrier methods (e.g., condoms, diaphragms, cervical caps, IUDs) that some people consider unnatural or in conflict with their religious or cultural beliefs. Women use Persona as a birth control method or as an indicator of when to try to get pregnant with intercourse. It is a hand held monitor that measures the level of hormones in a woman's urine to help determine if she is ovulating. Eight times during each month, women using Persona pee into a cup and then dip test sticks into their urine. These test strips are fed into the monitor. A green light displayed on the device means a woman is not fertile; a red light indicates that a woman is at or near ovulation. During the days that a woman is most likely to conceive, she can abstain from intercourse or use contraception if she does not want to get pregnant, or choose to have unprotected intercourse if she wants to have a baby.

As a contraceptive, Persona has a 94 percent reliability rate if used as directed and as the only method of birth control. This means that if 100 women use Persona for one year, 6 would be expected to become pregnant as a result of Persona incorrectly identifying the fertile phase. In practice, reliability rates have been lower, because couples need to abstain completely from intercourse or have intercourse with contraception for about six to ten days of each month when ovulation is near. A red light on the monitor means STOP — no unprotected intercourse, no matter what. If you do not think you could be abstinent or limit yourself to outercourse or protected sex (for instance, oral sex or mutual masturbation) during your "red light" times, perhaps another birth control method would work better for you.

Persona is recommended as a contraceptive for women who:

• are in a long-term, committed relationship with a man. Persona offers no protection against sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
• along with their partners, are able to avoid intercourse for several days or a week at a time.
• have menstrual cycles ranging from 23 - 35 days.
• are not breast feeding, or taking hormonal supplements or contraceptives.
• are not experiencing any signs of menopause.

Persona is widely used in England and elsewhere in Europe both as a contraceptive and as a way to know when intercourse is most likely to result in conception. Because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not evaluated its use as a medical device, Persona is not sold in the United States, but it can be purchased legally on the Internet for about $250 and shipped to the U.S.

Alice

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