U.S. bishops launch campaign to celebrate God’s design for married love

There are two notable days on the Catholic calendar this week.

On July 25, we remember the release of the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, in which St. Pope Paul VI articulated Catholic beliefs about human sexuality, conjugal love, and responsible parenthood.

And the following day, July 26, we honor the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Sts. Joachim and Anne.

In celebration of these events, the U.S. Bishops have launched Natural Family Planning Awareness Week (July 23-29, 2023). NFP Week is an educational campaign to promote God’s design for married love and the gift of life, and to raise awareness of Natural Family Planning (NFP) methods. Around the country, dioceses and parishes have announced information sessions and programs designed to explain and promote NFP as the only morally acceptable method of controlling family size.

But while Natural Family Planning is an effective means of postponing pregnancy, it’s sometimes a lot of hard work. A woman seeking to track her monthly cycle using the NFP method will need to take her temperature first thing every morning before getting out of bed, to identify a post-ovulatory increase in temperature. Then, she would check cervical mucus secretions at least twice a day.

But an easier method is on the horizon! An innovative method of health monitoring has been developed, which can track a woman’s fertility and her general health using only a pair of earrings. A woman will be able to chart her fertility, as well as monitor her temperature and other health biomarkers including heart rate variability and blood oxygen levels, by simply donning a cute little pair of earrings. The earrings will transmit a report to her cell phone, telling her when she is fertile and likely to conceive a child following martial relations.

Catholic World Report talked recently with Theresa Gevaert, founder of Incora Health, the company which will market the “smart earrings.” Theresa, a Catholic wife and mother whose personal experience with Natural Family Planning led her to seek another solution, explained how as a young married woman, she’d first disliked the rigors of tracking her fertility. She credits her husband, Dr. Matt Gaevert, for encouraging her to practice NFP.

“I was a cradle Catholic,” Theresa said, “except for that. I was one of those people who thought the Church got it wrong with this thing. It took prayer, and having a good husband who wanted to stay in line with Church teachings. I didn’t want to start my marriage off by doing something that my husband had to turn his nose to.”

Theresa admitted that she had had big dreams for what her life was going to be. She was a working journalist, on staff at Greenville, South Carolina’s TV station WYFF. She loved what she was doing, and she was on a trajectory to move up and move forward. But then she met and married Matt, and they embarked on the process of natural family planning. “At this point,” Theresa said, “as a Type A personality, that was a hard thing for me to do; but as much as I hated it, God really did soften my heart.”

Using natural family planning, Theresa became pregnant when they were ready to welcome a child into their family; but the Gevaerts wanted to be in control. “We were in a season of avoiding,” Theresa said. “We wanted to avoid becoming pregnant.”

But her family life was changing. “About ten years ago,” Theresa recalled, “we were about to purchase a mini-van – which I had said I’d never drive. I was pregnant with our third child – which I’d said we’d never have. We were driving together to the auto dealership, and I realized that in just a few weeks, after the baby was born, I’d have to start taking my temp in the mornings again. How I disliked shoving a thermometer into my mouth first thing every morning!”

But then, Theresa had an idea. Taking one’s temperature for NFP required putting the thermometer into your mouth; simply using the forehead was insufficient, because a temperature reading on the skin is imprecise, and it’s necessary to record even slight changes in order to determine when ovulation occurs. But are there other cavities in which a woman could accurately measure her temperature? “I had this ‘Eureka!’ moment!” Theresa recalled. “Wait a minute: My earrings go through my body!”

Matt was driving, and he grew quiet. Could pierced earrings be developed that could take a woman’s temperature?

That crazy idea had merit; and the couple hired a patent attorney to determine whether anyone else had ever tried to patent this idea. They applied for a patent, which was issued in 2019. By that time, Theresa reported, they had four children; and although they were spending their “fun money” on the project, they weren’t ready to move ahead full force until they joined with a biomedical engineer, Dr. Lindsey Calcutt. With Dr. Calcutt’s assistance, Incora Health has moved forward to design and manufacture earrings which are both attractive and comfortable. Piercing the earlobe creates a cavity through the vascularized blood tissue; and the “smart earrings” have temperature sensors in the posts of the earrings, so they are able to accurately read the body temperature.

The project is currently in user testing, and the company plans to soon launch a clinical trial. Incora has launched its official website and has an expanding presence on social media; at the same time, they are working to build their customer base.

“There’s so much beauty when you commit to this!” Theresa believes. “You really experience the beauty of God’s design. It’s incredible: He gives you so many ways to know what’s going on within your body! You wear these earrings to bed, they take your temperature through the night and transmit a reading to your phone. A custom app on your cell phone can find the lowest basal body temperature and insert it into a chart, clearly showing the variances through a woman’s monthly cycle.

Incora Health plans to market their smart earrings by the end of 2023; in the meantime, interested women can learn more about the earrings at the company’s website and can sign up to receive a notification as soon as the earrings are available on a wide scale.