conservatives say women no longer spend enough time in the "natural"
state of
pregnancy.
Like a Natural Woman
http://www.truthout.org/010809WA
What's the real story behind period-suppressing contraceptives?
When Lybrel, a brand of birth control pill that stops monthly
menstruation, became available in July, many women expressed
skepticism that suppressing a regular bodily function could come
without serious side effects. The media quickly latched onto this
attitude, with headlines such as "Many Young Women Wary of a Life
Without Periods." One woman told The New York Times she was worried by
"the idea that you can turn your body on and off like a tap."
A debate over period suppression also erupted among feminists.
Some worried that this new type of pill would pathologize menstruation
- sending the message that a normal female bodily function is
something that needs treatment, and not just if you have "problem"
periods. They argued that, like everything from bikini waxes to
plastic surgery, period suppression reinforces the message that women
need to tame their bodies.
Yet, despite the blogging and the headlines, two-thirds of U.S.
women surveyed said they are interested in such pills. More
importantly, a whopping 97 percent of physicians surveyed said period
suppression is medically safe and acceptable.
In fact, criticism over manipulating a woman's period can apply to
all hormonal birth control methods, because everything from the Pill
to the patch to the ring to Lybrel regulates the menstrual cycle. And
calling it unnatural to manipulate a woman's cycle can be a slippery
slope: What is natural, anyway? In premodern societies, women were
pregnant or breastfeeding for a much larger portion of their lives -
which were shorter, anyway, and often ended in death during
childbirth. Today, we have between 350 and 400 times as many periods
as our premodern sisters did. Furthermore, as feminist blogger Amanda
Marcotte (Pandagon) pointed out, adopting the natural/unnatural
framework sounds awfully similar to right-wing claims that everything
from women CEOs to same-sex relationships is unnatural.
This isn't a new conversation: The idea of "natural" birth control
has been a theme of the contraceptive movement for decades, although
the word has taken on different meanings. With the advent of Lybrel
and other period-suppressing oral contraceptives such as Seasonale and
Seasonique, it's not surprising that we are once again considering the
nature of natural.
It's almost common knowledge that the reason the original birth
control pills, approved by the FDA in 1960, attempted to mimic a
woman's 28-day menstrual cycle is that one of the men who developed
the Pill, a researcher named John Rock, wanted to convince the
Catholic Church that hormonal contraception could be "natural." And
indeed, that's part of the story. But it wasn't just to please the
pope.
Rock created a 28-day regimen to convince himself. As Malcolm
Gladwell wrote in a 2000 issue of The New Yorker, Rock, a devout
Catholic, believed (as the church did) that the only natural method of
contraception was for a woman to abstain from sex when she was
fertile. During the rest of her cycle, and when pregnant or
breastfeeding, a woman produces the hormone progesterone to keep her
ovaries from releasing an egg (although a woman can get pregnant while
breastfeeding). Rock thought that if he could simply extend this
infertile period by giving women progesterone - the combination oral
contraceptive also contains estrogen - he would have a contraceptive
method that complied with church teachings.
There were other key reasons for keeping the 28-day cycle, says
Carl Djerassi, a chemist whose research led to the development of the
Pill: "At that time, giving a woman the assurance that she was not
pregnant - remember there were no home pregnancy kits - was
indispensable, and the only way a woman was certain was to experience
the usual monthly period."
Even though the chemical composition of the Pill has been tweaked
over time - becoming safer and using fewer hormones - that original
cycle of 21 days of progesterone and estrogen followed by a week of
placebos or no pills (thus allowing the bloody inner lining of the
uterus to slough off) has persisted. So, too, has the perception that
this somehow creates natural birth control - or as natural as possible
for a contraceptive method using synthetic hormones.
That view persisted until November 2003 when Seasonale, the first
oral contraceptive to promise women only four periods a year, hit the
market. The drug works exactly the same as the 28-day regimen; in
fact, since the 1960s some doctors had been prescribing continuous use
of the Pill (telling women to skip the week of placebo pills) to help
with medical conditions such as menstrual migraines, endometriosis,
anemia and mood fluctuations due to hormonal changes, and even to help
women avoid having their periods at inconvenient times (such as during
a special event). Because the uterine lining does not build up as
quickly for women on the Pill, there's actually no medical need to
slough it off every three weeks. When the woman has her period, it's
because her body has responded to the withdrawal of progesterone, not
because her uterine lining needs to be shed.
When it came time to market these period-suppressing pills, Big
Pharma rolled out multimillion-dollar ad campaigns selling the idea
that monthly periods hold us back from being truly happy and
fulfilled. "When you think about what women have accomplished with 13
periods a year, think about what we can accomplish with only four,"
said "Sex and the City" author Candace Bushnell in a 2003 ad for
Seasonale.
It was this "periods cramp your style" message that prompted the
Society for Menstrual Cycle Research to release this statement in
2007: "While we recognize that cycle-stopping contraception may be
useful for some medical conditions (such as severe endometriosis), we
caution against its use as ‘a lifestyle choice' until safety is firmly
established. Historically, nasty surprises with hormonal therapies for
women ... have taken many years to surface."
But the pills also have several discernible medical benefits.
Having fewer ovulatory cycles means less regeneration of ovarian and
uterine cells, and thereby lowers risk for ovarian and uterine
cancers. Avoiding ovulation can also hinder the progress of
endometriosis, and resting a woman's ovaries can lower her chance of
developing ovarian cysts. In fact, the main complaint about the period-
suppressing pill - other than the similar side effects experienced by
women on the 28-day oral contraceptives - has been breakthrough
bleeding. Long gone are the days of the earliest formulation of Rock's
birth control pills, which had 50 percent more estrogen and a much
higher risk of heart disease and stroke.
Of course, some of the most conservative anti-choicers would say
the real problem here is that women no longer spend enough time in the
"natural" state of pregnancy. Leslee Unruh, the South Dakota anti-
choice activist who is responsible for pushing everything from
abortion bans to abstinence-only education, warned on Fox News that
Lybrel was a "war on women and children" and a "pesticide." She
described those in favor of FDA approval as "wanting us women who are
feminine and have fertility ... to be like men." (Obviously, this is
not a view shared by many American women, 98 percent of whom will use
some form of contraception during their lifetime.)
This gets to the heart of why "it's not natural" is an ineffective
argument against period suppression. To some feminists, natural may
mean a menstrual cycle unchanged by pharmaceuticals (but we're not
giving up our cramps-reducing Advil!); to anti-choicers like Unruh, it
means women maintaining roles as fulltime child-bearers and
caregivers. So if you're a feminist who opposes period-suppressing
pills, critique Big Pharma. Or, if there are dangers found by
researchers, pass the information along. But please, don't attempt to
once again define "natural."
-------
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
