Pill That Eliminates Menstrual Cycle Is A Bad Idea, Period
May 30, 2007


Let me get this straight: Women now can opt out of their menstrual periods?

Imagine the fallout. Across the land, the boxy aisle at the drug store will be empty, and women will be off enjoying bloodless lives, free from the burden - and reminder - that they are women. PMS jokes will draw blank looks from a generation come of age in a land unpunctuated by periods. A new generation of girls who hate sports will find new excuses to skip gym.

And we will all be the lesser for it.

Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration - whose record for knowing good birth control has been, well, spotty, at best - approved Lybrel, a Wyeth Pharmaceuticals product that uses low-dose hormones to eliminate a woman's menstrual period, so long as she takes the pills.

Why does this make me so squeamish?

Is it because there's no way of knowing the pill's long-term effect on women? Or is it because this looks like yet another societal medicalization of a perfectly natural event?

Before you think I'm the type to take to the woods and run naked with the fawns, let me assure you that I grew up and am now growing old in a household peopled mostly by men. If I celebrate my monthly periods, it is quietly. I've written no poetry to the process.

But I am glad it's been there. What does taking away periods mean for girls already swimming in a sick stew of hurtful and unhealthful information about their bodies? It sends a far harsher message than what many of us got from our own mothers - that, like sin, menstruation is best practiced in secret. (We forgive our mothers. The message they often got from their own mothers was even harsher.)

Like everyone else my age, I was crowded into the junior high gym with other jittery girls to watch a cartoon where the blond girl brushed her hair and mused in the mirror about her Blessed Coming Event. The film told us precisely nothing about the reality of menstruation - it was all rainbows and unicorns. And as I sat there wondering what the hell this was about, I realized I much preferred to join the boys playing basketball outside.

We needed a better film, and the boys needed to watch it with us. A frank and funny approach would have worked wonders for those of us entering our childbearing years.

Believe me, I know that for some women, menstruation is painful, and there should be some surcease for them. But the makers of Lybrel don't pitch their product to them. Instead, the tablet is seen as a freeing thing, one that unchains the woman from her monthly burden.

http://www.courant.com/features/lifestyle/hc-susan0530.artmay30,0,7273651.column(More at the link)

CULTURAL CONDITIONING?  However, Seasonale's popularity ultimately will depend on women abandoning a deeply engrained belief -- that a monthly period is "natural" and somehow necessary. "It's a cultural change for women really, and will be somewhat gradual," says Geoffrey Redmond, endocrinologist at the Hormone Center in New York. Still, notes David Moskowitz, analyst with Friedman, Billings Ramsey: "Women are used to taking the pill. I don't see too many barriers there."

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2002/tc20020523_4148.htm
Much more at the link.