Oral Contraceptives—”The Pill”
The oral contraceptive method known as the pill is based on the discovery that the hormones estrogen and progesterone in the right combination can actually prevent ovulation. These are the same hormones that halt ovulation during pregnancy. Therefore, some women who begin taking the pill experience symptoms like those in early pregnancy, such as breast tenderness, a full feeling, or morning sickness.
The contraceptive tablet is taken every day for twenty-one days. To start out, a woman takes the first pill five days after the start of her menstrual period. She then takes one pill every day, until she has taken twenty-one pills. Then she stops taking the pills, and within two or three days her period should begin. Seven days after taking the last tablet, she begins taking the pill again for twenty-one days, and repeats the cycle. This routine continues month after month, for as long as the woman wishes to prevent pregnancy.
The pills are basically composed of two hormone substances, closely resembling the natural hormones estrogen and progesterone, which are normally manufactured by the ovaries in the woman’s body. They signal the body not to produce an ovum, and thus none is present to unite with the male sperm released during intercourse.
It is important to understand that as long as a woman is taking the pill, it is the pill that controls the timing of her menstrual cycle, not her own hormones. Since not every woman has the same response to a particular hormone dosage, there may be times when some bleeding or spotting will occur between menstrual periods. There also may be some increase or decrease in the amount and duration of menstrual bleeding, or a woman on the pill may completely skip periods at times. If you do miss a period while taking the pill, you must still continue your same schedule dosage to be assured of protection against becoming pregnant. If you skip two periods while taking the pill regularly, return to your doctor for a checkup. Usually the pill makes menstruation more regular and menstrual cramps are almost always eliminated.
We know of no harm in continuing your pills a few extra days if you occasionally desire to postpone a menstrual period. The delay of the period may be particularly desirable if the husband has a job that allows him to be at home at irregular but predictable times. To regulate the time for onset of your menstrual period in this way, you must confirm from your doctor that you are taking the combination pill that has both estrogen and progesterone in each tablet.
If you decide to discontinue the tablets, ovulation usually will begin again in the first menstrual cycle after the tablets are discontinued. However, some women have difficulty in resuming ovulation and menstruation. It may take up to ninety days to ovulate again.
Many women ask if taking the pill will delay the menopause. The use of the pill may in some instances cover up the onset of menopause, but there is no evidence that its use will delay it.
What about discontinuing the pill to become pregnant? Some experts recommend that to be on the safe side, women should wait three months before attempting to become pregnant, using an alternative form of contraception in the meantime such as the condom or diaphragm.
The pill is the most effective of the artificial contraceptive methods, with less than one pregnancy occurring per one hundred women per year. However, mounting evidence concerning serious risks for pill users is being reported in medical literature. One of the most disturbing conclusions was made by researchers involved in a continuing study of forty-six thousand women in Great Britain begun in 1968. As reported in the Lancet, a leading British medical journal, the study’s authors conclude that pill users in general face a 40 percent higher death rate than women of the same age who have never used the pill.
The United States Food and Drug Administration has warned of a definite relationship between the use of the pill and blood-clot disorders. Death from blood-clot complications occurs in three out of every one hundred thousand women taking the pill.
To put this into perspective, consider the mortality rate resulting from pregnancy: 22.8 deaths per 100,000 women, and the mortality rate from abortions: 100 deaths per 100,000 women. Statistically, the pill is less of a hazard to life and health than is smoking, driving, or swimming. For example, a woman who drives twelve miles on an urban freeway takes all the risk of dying that she would if she used oral contraceptives for her entire reproductive life, approximately thirty years.
However, the woman who smokes should realize that the pill is extremely dangerous for her so much so that the experts today assert that any woman who wants to use the pill should give up her smoking habit. Otherwise, she must choose another means of contraception. It is known that the incidence of fatal blood clots and strokes quadruples in smokers, ages twenty to thirty-four years, and is twenty-five times higher in smokers, ages thirty-five to forty-four years. So if you smoke, do not use the pill!
Strong evidence also links birth-control pills with an increased incidence of gallstones in younger women. Oral contraceptives are suspected of causing ten thousand new cases of surgically documented gallstones in the United States alone. Another study of 16,638 women over ten years reports that a number of specific diseases, including malignant melanoma, may be linked to the pill.
Some research results are admittedly inconclusive, however, because of lifestyles among the users, which may influence the results. For instance, researchers point out that girls now using the pill seem to have earlier and more frequent sexual activity, and this may account for their strong tendency to have more cervical cancer.
In light of these findings, the individual woman must weigh the health risks of the pill against its effectiveness and convenience as a birth-control measure.
Lesser side effects of the pill may include nausea and vomiting, but these problems can often be overcome by taking the pill after dinner, when food in the stomach can slow its absorption and help avoid unpleasant effects. The symptoms usually disappear within a few days, as the body adjusts.
If any of the following conditions occur, the woman using the pill should consult her physician: frequent or persistent headaches; discoloration of the skin; unexplained pains in the chest; unusual swelling of the ankles; shortness of breath; disturbance of vision, such as seeing double or seeing flashes of light; unusual, persistent, or unexplained pain in the legs; lumps or growths in the breast; frequent or persistent vaginal bleeding.
Oral contraceptive pills are presently the most popular form of birth control in the United States. However, the associate executive director of Planned Parenthood of New York City predicts that in the future women will use the pill for much shorter periods of time. She believes that very few women will remain on oral contraceptives for as long as fifteen years.
Posted in Planning and Achieving Parenthood
To Ed Wheat Sr. and Gladys Gibson Wheat, whose commitment, devotion, warmth, generosity, and integrity stood for fifty years as a beautiful picture of genuine agape love.