Endorsement
This is a very useful manual on the Billings Ovulation Method, which is a practical method of family planning for those couples who wish to have a child or to avoid having a child -- and to do so without using mechanical methods of contraception or introducing chemicals into their bodies.
What makes this book particularly useful is that it combines Mercedes Wilson's very clear explanation of the way a woman's body works, which any high school student can understand -- this, with a sophisticated appendix explaining the physiology and endocrinology of the menstrual cycle.
The Late Walker Percy, M.D.
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
Member of the National Institute of Arts & Sciences
Recipient of the National Book Award ‘62
Mercedes Wilson has written an excellent book that clearly describes a natural method for family planning. Love and Fertility beautifully illustrates the Ovulation Method for determining when to conceive and how to avoid conception. The work will continue to help women throughout the world understand and better control their bodies.
Armand M. Nicholi, Jr., M.D.
Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
The perfect scientific procedure of mastering nature is the obedience to its laws. And science reveals to us that the natural regulation of births, or rather of conception, is not only possible but fully effective.
Being able to control the fertility of love without abortion, without an IUD, without a pill and with no artificial method of any kind, is completely contrary to current propaganda. But each woman can determine for herself if her physiological condition will or will not permit her to procreate at a given time. In reality, this basic principle has been known since time immemorial -- what farmer would take his mare to stud without having made sure that she is really in heat? Certainly, the female organism is much more delicately regulated than that of an animal; the signs of fertility at ovulation time are much less obvious. But with the help of feminine intuition, just as she can distinguish by touch between a silk scarf and a square of rayon or between a cotton cloth and synthetic fiber, any woman can recognize the signs of her fertility by learning what to look for.
This awareness of fertility is the basis for the true freedom of love.
The Late Prof. Jerome Lejeune
Doctor of Medicine and Natural Sciences
Professor of Genetics, The Faculty of Medicine, Paris, France
Director of Research and Fundamental Genetics, The Faculty of Medicine, Paris, France
Chief of the Department of Fundamental Genetics, Pediatric Hospital, Paris, France
Member, Royal College of Medicine
Member, Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Rome
Mercedes Wilson's teaching materials on Natural Family Planning are unsurpassed for their clarity and blessed simplicity. She has done the world a remarkable service in developing instructional aids that help any couple the world over, from the illiterate to the most learned to the mechanics of NFP. It has been proven time and again that her method works and that those who use it achieve great confidence in the method. The rest of us have an obligation to make these materials known and used as widely as possible.
Janet Smith, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Philosophy
University of Dallas
Mastery of the Ovulation Method places control of fertility not with the physician, not with the nurse, but where it belongs, with the married couple. Only in this way are the couple respected as autonomous individuals.
Dr. Marie T. Gould, D.N.Sc., RN
The Johns Hopkins Hospital