“First pill meant to end periods poised for OK: FDA considers birth control pill aimed at freeing women from their cycle.”

This is the title of an article on msn located here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18745930/

Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about it. On the one hand (I say this as I sit here with cramps) not having the inconvenience of bleeding monthly would be pretty sweet, but on the other it is a very fundamental part of my biology. The idea of stopping one’s periods is not new; as the article will attest, women have been doing this for years with birth control pills. I suppose it’s more the idea that a pill has now been created and marketed with this specific intent.

When I was all of twelve I counted up every month from twelve to fifty and estimated how many periods I had left until menopause. I did not go gently into puberty. When I was eighteen I went on the pill—partly for cramps, partly for control, but mostly because I was going to college and wanted to feel “free” to have sex as it were. At twenty-five I’m now off of it. I went off, not because I never plan on having sex again, and not because the cramps have gotten better (though they are a little more tolerable) but because I began to worry. Not about my health or fertility per say, but about my moods and emotions. Everyone that knows anything about basic female anatomy knows that our hormones (men’s hormones do this too actually) affect our moods. As the estrogen drops and the progesterone rises things get shifty. The progesterone then drops as well immediately following completion of the cycle leaving us at our lowest point hormonally and sometimes mentally.

Because birth control pills “trick” the body into thinking its pregnant they mess with our own hormone production to stop ovulation, but what no one tells you is that it also messes with your moods. I would assume the severity would depend on how high of a dose you’re on, what particular brand you use and any number of other factors, but as I crested the twenty-five mark it occurred to me I didn’t remember what it felt like to feel…well, unmedicated. I had been on orthotrycycline for so long that I knew exactly how my moods would go every week, but I had no way of knowing if that was me or the pill or some combination thereof.

What’s more, because I had gone on it at eighteen I hadn’t stopped fully forming yet before this all started. We think because legally we’re adults at eighteen that our body is pretty much done too, but that’s wrong. My hips and breasts didn’t stop changing until around twenty-one and who knows about the mood swings. I had “freed” myself of my period at eighteen before I ever took the time to see what it was like without the craziness of adolescence mucking it up. I’m not saying that the pill is bad—far from it—it does amazing things for women and if I ever find someone I like for more than two days I’ll no doubt go back on. But the pill isn’t a “fix-all.”

We look at everything our body does that is inconvenient and treat it like a symptom or cold to be fixed. But menstruation isn’t a cold. It isn’t something you catch. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of a pill that is supposed to “free” women from their periods because frankly we don’t know nearly enough about women’s medicine to know exactly what we’re freeing them from and if it’s even a good idea. We throw the pill at women and think there are no consequences. I think in most any case the good outweighs the bad tenfold, but I think we have never bothered to research the long term affects. Not just physically, but mentally. People chalk women and their emotions up to pms and craziness and I can’t help but feel like it some men had their druthers us women would all be “free” all the time and thus not bother them with our mood swings. Because there is so much negativity surrounding women’s emotions we never stop to wonder if stunting them or manipulating them is a bad thing. Anything’s better than what’s natural right?

There are a lot of factors that feed into my uncomfortable feelings on this discussion, gender roles and sexism not least among them. The pill isn’t covered by a lot of health insurance but Viagra is. They have tried to classify pregnancy as a disease at least once to make it easier for insurance to “cover” certain things. Because pregnancy and all aspects of it aren’t worth covering otherwise? We teach girls and young women that sexual revolution is all about the ability to have sex as often and as promiscuously as a man; that by flaunting their bodies they have more control than the man that pays for them. We never stop to consider that perhaps promiscuous sex should be the exception as opposed to the rule for both sexes or let women know that even though they take money, the men paying still have a lot more. And despite all our advances we still hold the male body up as the ideal. Women should be less curvy, like men. Women should be less moody, like men. Women shouldn’t be “burdened” with a period, like men.

I love men, but what I love most is that they’re different from me. And frankly, I want a man that loves what makes me different from him. Why can’t we study medicine to improve the lives of women as women and men as men? Then maybe women wouldn’t be ashamed of their moods, and men would have the support they need to acknowledge they have them. Just a thought.