Her simple secret: Color stamps paint a fertility story

    Imagine, for a moment, Morley Safer of “60 Minutes,” sitting in an easy chair across from Mercedes Wilson. His interview subject, a smiling, straightforward, non-nonsense grandmother from Guatemala who has lived all over the globe, including 21 years in Covington, has a secret to share with the world.
    Her secret would cut into the profits of international pharmaceutical conglomerates.
    Wilson’s secret is a method of family planning – both to help women with their fertility and also to avoid pregnancy – that requires no drugs, costs nothing, is ethically pristine and can be taught in “20 minutes” to any woman regardless of her level of education.
    Sound too good to be true, Morley?
    “It’s not mine – it’s God’s,” Wilson said after delivering a paper Aug. 8 on her simple Ovulation Method (OM) system to the American Academy of Fertility Care Professionals, which met in New Orleans. “It’s the way we’re made.”
    Using a calendar chart, a woman keeps track of her menstrual cycle and observes daily changes. Three different-colored stamps are used.
    “A woman is only fertile for about 100 hours,” Wilson said. “The rest of the time she is infertile. That’s the way God made us. He opens the door to fertility for just a few days – four or five – and then he closes it. The women do these colored stamps, and they coincide perfectly with the laboratory results as they measure the hormones.”
    Wilson, whose husband worked for Shell Oil, was living in Australia in 1968 when necessity forced her to look into a reliable method of family planning. She had had two children by Caesarian section, and doctors warned that her life might be endangered by another pregnancy.
    “In the papers, I read about a new natural method being taught, and so I went to learn it,” she said.
    Her class was taught by Evelyn Billings, whose husband, Dr. John Billings, had created a meticulous fertility mapping system, which also included a temperature component.
    Wilson came away so impressed that she offered her services to Billings to collect urine samples from women who were part of his study.
    When Wilson moved back to Guatemala, she had a passion to teach the Billings Method, especially to the poor, but she felt it was too detailed for them to follow successfully.
    Using symbols the women in mountain farming communities could understand, Wilson  explained that a seed needs rain to flower in the same way a woman is capable of procreating when she is fertile.
    “Even illiterate people can follow this,” Wilson said. “It’s just like the fertility of the land. Everybody knows if you put a seed in dry ground, nothing will grow because it doesn’t have the moisture. Just like the farmer waits for the rains to plant the seeds, a woman waits for her rain. That’s basically all there is. So, we put it into a chart.”
    Wilson has been all over the world explaining her Ovulation Method. She even has made 13 trips to China at the invitation of the Chinese government and has spoken to students at universities in Beijing and Shanghai.
    “And, I speak against abortion,” Wilson said.
    China’s official one-child policy means a couple can be forced into an abortion.
    “Of course it is a horrible policy,” Wilson said. “Actually, the one-child policy is now a two-child policy. If you have a girl, you can have another chance (for a boy), and in the countryside they’re letting them have three, because they know that’s where the food comes from. If they destroy their labor force, they’re not going to have any food.
    “But, my point is, in China, the parents are forced to have an abortion because that second or third child may not be recognized and the parents will have to pay for their education and their medical. But in the western world, people walk to go and kill their baby. Nobody’s forcing them. They happily go and kill it. So, who’s worse morally? Let’s not throw stones until we have fixed our own house.”
    Wilson, who left Covington for Maryland in 1991, said her studies in impoverished areas of Guatemala show that women who regulate their cycle with good nutrition and a multivitamin can end years of infertility using her system.
    “God would not have been so unjust that unless you had thousands of dollars you could not get pregnant,” Wilson said. “God is so good to us, and he’s so good to the poor.”
    For more information on Wilson’s Ovulation Method, go to www.familyplanning.net.
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].