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I have a fear when it comes to birth control. It’s not just the whole “you could be aborting your own child” fear– though that is very real. I fear that we are going to find out soon that those ladies that opted to mess with their hormones in order to try to keep from being pregnant are going to have serious long term consequences.
First things first. Doug had a brilliant comment on the topic of Delaying Parenthood:
I think its worth noting in this thread (I think it was mentioned in the referenced thread), that most forms of birth control are actually abortion. Many Christians looking to delay their pregnancy use any of the methods that their D[octor] recommends without looking into what the method actually does. Many forms of birth control are centered around the concept of keeping a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus (Whether that be something blocking it from doing so, or convincing your body you’re already pregnant so it won’t prepare for it to implant). In the process they abort the could-be-baby. As a result the process of “delaying” is really the process of “exterminating”
This is something that we’ve said many times– simply because it says that it does not permit pregnancy does not mean that it does not kill the baby (the fertilized egg).
But what I alluded to in the introduction is something not quite so concrete. If you’ve read any of the labels on modern contraception you’ve no doubt seen that there is a period of time after you’ve stopped taking the pill or other hormone drug where you cannot become pregnant. Bethanie at The Desire of My Heart is sharing her story of what is happening in her life as far as pregnancy— and what scares me is to think that her ovarian cyst and birth control may be linked:
Sometime in late summer 2003 I went off the pill. In October I was late. “Man”, I thought, “That was easy”. I had expected it might take a year and I was anticipating the wait. I did my figuring and I could be 5 weeks along. We were going to wait until 6 weeks to go to the doctor. But, of course we all but shouted it from the mountain tops that we were sure we were pregnant.
— snip —
Somehow, we managed to get the X-ray tech. to tell us that she didn’t see a baby. You know how there not supposed to say anything. I had to stay there at the hospital while they faxed the pictures to my doctor. She called the hospital just to talk to me. She said that I ovarian cysts. She said that one of them was so big that it needed to be removed.
Something tells me that these hormone therapies effect women in unpredictable ways– and may even harm the children when the hormone is still in her system but she’s ceased taking it.
My ob-gyn prescribed a birth control pill a while back when I was having debilitating cramps (almost missed both my high school and college graduation ceremony because of it) and 800mg of pain relievers wouldn’t work. I ofter wonder what it is doing to me in the long run. It there was some other way to not be down for the count a few days a month I’d consider it!
On a side note, I’ve heard of two case of reckless parenting in the media yesterday. One was a guy who was watching his girlfriend’s daughter and put her in a dryer to get her to calms down. He’s now looking at a felony charge and 5-99 years. The second was a mix up of which parent was going to drop off the child at day care. The mother put the child in the father’s car, he thought she was taking care of the child. He comes back to the car from class to find his child dead from the heat. It made me think of the series that you write about here, might be an idea.
“Oral contraceptives have been kept under surveillance for 30 years. In fact,
over the years, more studies have been done on the pill to look for serious
side effects than have been done on any other medicine in history, according
to FDA.
Fears about blood clots, heart attack, and stroke, which spurred exhaustive
research on oral contraceptives in the ’60s and ’70s, have largely been laid
to rest by the safer, low-dose birth control pills on the market today.
Current research suggests that healthy, non-smoking women have little if any
greater risk of these serious health problems than do women who do not use
the pill. “-FDA ‘The Pill:Thirty Years of Safety Concerns’ (1990)
As the above quote states the pill is safe and any major problems have been discovered and either fixed or reduced to the point that they are of almost null importance.
“As the above quote states the pill is safe and any major problems have been discovered and either fixed or reduced to the point that they are of almost null importance.”
I’m sorry, but I have to disagree.
There aren’t enough studies done on the effects of the Pill considering infertility, and those that *are* done, dance around this issue and beat around the bush. Quoting and blindly trusting FDA with something so important just isn’t enough.
I know perfectly healthy women who have experienced grave problems after using the Pill, problems their doctors vehemently deny have been caused by the Pill.
And while I will not disclose personal information, after I posted about the subject on my blog, I received dozens of emails from women, confirming my suspicions. There ARE problems. They are just all hushed up because of financial interests.
“MYTH: THE PILL CAUSES INFERTILITY
FACT:
There is no connection between fertility problems and using the Pill for any length of time. Ask any woman who forgets her pills and becomes pregnant. If you had infertility problems before going on the pill, you will have them after stopping it. Age is an important for infertility. Fertility decreases with age, especially after 35.”-Dr. Bovo is a Board Certified Obstetrician/Gynecologist.
“Oral contraceptives have been kept under surveillance for 30 years. In fact,
over the years, more studies have been done on the pill to look for serious
side effects than have been done on any other medicine in history, according
to FDA.”-FDA article.
Remember correlation does not equal causation. “10.7 million American women now use the pill”-FDA (1990). Of those 10.7 million women (probably more now) there are going to be those that have problems not related to the pill.
As for the perfectly healthy women that had problems. Ma’am when I was eleven I was one of the healthiest girls you would know. I ate well, spent about seven hours a day running around outside, wasn’t on any medication, and lived way out in the country away from pollution. Then one day went to the doctor found out I had a tumor. Moral of this story, sometimes you are born with problems and no matter how healthy your life style is you are going to have those problems. Remember again the 10.7 million women on the pill, which leaves a lot of room for women to be on the pill when the problems they were going to have anyways show up.
Also, how many emails did you get about women having problems with the pill, and did their doctors tell them that the pill caused the problems or did they assume? I’m not asking for any personal information about these women. I’m just asking for two numbers.
One last thing, I know dozens of women who have been on the pill and have had no problems what so ever. My personal experience and your personal experience count for nothing on a subject such as this, because there is no way we can know every woman on the pill or even the majority.
(I’m addressing several points in this so, yes, it seems a little scattered)
I think it should be expected to have something designed to fool Mother Nature, as it were, to have some unpredictable effects.
Naturally, not every woman’s body is the same as another’s, and thus you should consider whether or not you’re willing to take the risks in order to have the benefits.
I work for a very homeopathic chiropractor, and after some of the stories I’ve heard about the FDA, I don’t really trust them at all. Personal experiences are what I want to hear about. Actual people- not undefined case studies.
Beyond that, if you’ve seen a birth control commercial on the television recently, you’ll hear them list all of the symptoms Loc said were “almost null of importance”.
It wouldn’t make sense for them to warn of these symptoms if they were non-existent. That’s bad business sense.
“Of those 10.7 million women (probably more now) there are going to be those that have problems not related to the pill.”
I have to comment on this.
It’s so easy to say ‘This was a pre-existing condition,’ or ‘It could’ve happened anyway’. And they’re right. We have no way of proving it was direct contact with the pill that caused a heart attack, or tumor. However, if more than three people have an ‘unrelated’ condition to a certain thing it’s probably harmful, even if somebody in a suit doesn’t say it is.
I, personally, was offered the pill when I reached that wonderful age in a girls’ life(-note of sarcasm-) and turned it down in favor of a natural painkiller for cramps (no other point for taking the pill at that point). I had researched and heard enough stories to be aware of the effects it could take on my body and decided it wasn’t worth the risk.
Also, if it was one of those ‘Only Three A Year’ pills, I’d probably forget what month it was and have a very bad situation on my hands…
My mother had an ovarian cyst (THAT WAS COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO THE PILL!! Even though she was on it at the time…Hmm..) that was removed, and after which came my brother and two sisters. So, no. I don’t believe it will make everyone that has a reaction completely infertile. However, it can mess you up, so don’t take it unless you absolutely have to.
Yeah, that’s all.
I totally understand the point about causality not meaning causation, but I too do not trust the FDA. The FDA, being a government body, is not unbiased. They can be manipulated, and they have a reputation to uphold.
Like Kaitsurinu said, there is a list of known side effects, and it has been linked to things happening in women. Also, I’m not sure how long and how well we can measure the impact of hormone therapies, and the long term effects of these therapies– since all women are different. I understand statistical sampling, but how can you prove that out of those in the sample that had problems in the ovaries did not have the problem from the pill simply because, compared to the average, the statistics are the same.
Hormones are strong things– and should not be taken lightly.
Trusting the FDA and trusting the results of their tests are two entirely diffrent things. I do not trust the FDA to always run enough tests to make sure a medicine is safe, but I do trust that the results of the tests aren’t falsified. As a quote farther up showed, they’ve run more tests on the pill that any other medicine, making the concern about them not running enough tests void. So why should I be concerned about the pill when I don’t see any facts telling me to be concerned?
I can’t just look around at the women that say they are infertile and they were on the pill. With so many women on the pill there are going to be tons of women on the pill that were previously infertile.