Today, Natural Womanhood provides the public with evidence-based information about the science and benefits of fertility awareness, all its applications, and how it changes people’s lives. We help young women and couples obtain this information regardless of their income, ethnicity, or religion.
But back in 2007, our founders, Anna and Gerard Migeon, had never even heard of natural family planning (NFP). They were simply seeking to renew their 17-year marriage vows, when someone mentioned NFP to them.
Intrigued by these effective, scientific, and marriage-building methods of spacing children, Anna and Gerard dove into the research, and discovered several amazing things: an entire body of science, a movement that lived under the radar, dedicated organizations that worked hard on research and education, and couples who were in love and eager to share all this knowledge, but struggled to have a voice.
But the Migeons also found immense doubt, confusion, and misinformation about NFP, fertility awareness, and the truth about female fertility. Birth control, big pharma, and doctors ruled over women’s bodies, and the women who refused to comply were mocked, disrespected, and ignored. Justice was denied to the young women and teens (and their parents) who were harmed by birth control.
In 2012, Natural Womanhood was founded to be a new voice for the fertility awareness and NFP movement, seeking:
- to bring knowledge about these alternatives to the public,
- to share the truth about birth control side-effects,
- to speak for the goodness and beauty of women’s natural fertility,
- to empower women and couples to learn charting for body literacy, for more authentic and personalized healthcare, and for a more respectful and loving way to plan their families.
It wasn’t easy. Our very first in-person information meeting in San Antonio brought…no one. Starting from scratch as an idea on a kitchen table, the organization slowly built its following by attracting and nurturing other people’s voices that needed to be heard, via a website launched in 2014. Many readers loved our content from the beginning. It was a new, fresh, authentic voice. It wasn’t focused on one method of natural family planning, but became a centralized place where people could find solid, evidence-based information for their fertility awareness journey.
Today, Natural Womanhood is the largest and most visited website on this topic. We have become the online magazine of natural fertility and women’s health, fulfilling our calling to share the truth of womanhood widely. We’ve also become a leading voice on this message in the media, at conferences, and at professional organizations, reaching wider audiences than we ever could have dreamed.
In 2018, we successfully petitioned the CDC to update their report on fertility awareness-based method (FABM) effectiveness. In 2020, we joined a group of scientists to petition the FDA, asking them to update their warnings about the evidence-based side effects and risks of birth control, which they’ve begun doing (still in progress).
In 2021, we started our Guidance Program, providing a free in-person service to help women and couples determine the next steps in their fertility awareness journeys. In 2022, we launched the first-ever fertility appreciation support group for young women: our Cycle Mindfulness Clubs on college campuses. In 2023, we launched our first online course, designed to help moms teach their daughters the full (and powerful) story about their menstrual cycles.
Natural Womanhood’s vision is a bold one, but it’s one we believe we can achieve through our four core values of friendship, truth, passion, and beauty:
That someday, all women will claim their natural fertility as beautiful, powerful, and healthy.
Natural Womanhood is a non-profit, Texas-based, 501c3 corporation.
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