Our dependence on hormonal contraceptives in order to prevent unplanned pregnancy
Each day, over 100 million women take a tiny little pill for their daily dose of synthetic hormones. These contraceptives, colloquially known as “the Pill,” give women the ability to inhibit their fertility and offer a 99 per cent success rate in avoiding unplanned pregnancy. The fear we have instilled upon ourselves in regards to becoming unintentionally “knocked up” is great enough that millions of women take these hormones, often without seriously contemplating the potential side-effects.
Sex hormones are defined as a substance that is “held to influence behaviour or mood,” and while most women are often taking the pill to inhibit fertility (among other reasons), we rarely consider how strongly it can affect our physical and emotional self.
Now, not every woman will experience any of the 600 adverse side-effects as listed by Health Canada, but many do deal with the ramifications, however subtle, because the anxiety over an unplanned pregnancy is so great.
Some of the side-effects of the pill include pain and cramping, unpredictable bleeding, impairment of muscle gain, increased chance of heart attacks/stroke, an increased risk of cervical cancer, and most commonly, an increased risk of blood clots.
This little pharmaceutical can also alter a woman’s emotional wellbeing with side-effects such as depression, sexual dysfunction, a loss of sex drive, intense mood swings and other mood disorders. It is unfortunate that a drug meant to prevent pregnancy and offer women the freedom to have sex without the consequences of bearing a child also has the ability to decrease or totally diminish one’s sex drive.
A 2011 study revealed that these contraceptives altered how women remembered information. Women both on and off and Pill were told a story and shown photos of a car accident. The women on the Pill remembered more emotional aspects of the story while the women not on the Pill were more likely to recall the details of the scene. Only a handful of studies exist that research the cognitive effects of the Pill, and this specific study demonstrated that the Pill had the potential to alter one’s ability to recount information regarding an event.
The alteration of testosterone is another effect of the Pill, and it has the ability to modify a woman’s choice in sexual partners by making them more attracted to those with lower testosterone levels, therefore altering one’s choice in long-term partners.
What many are unaware of is that two of the most popular pills, Yaz and Yasmin, have been suspected as the cause of death for 23 Canadian women as a result of complications from blood clots. Many have predicted that even more deaths have occurred, but these deaths go unreported because doctors do not recognize the link between the cause of death and the risk of these medications.
It is estimated that about 10 in 10,000 women taking pills containing drospirenone will develop a blood clot, compared to six in 10,000 women on the regular pill. With either option, the risk of developing a blood clot exists, and many women are uninformed about this potentially fatal side effect. Pharmaceutical company Bayer has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits that alleged these hormonal contraceptives were responsible for the deaths, heart attacks, strokes, blood clots and gallbladder ailments of thousands of women.
In the least extreme of cases, women on the Pill do not experience any side-effects at all, but in the most extreme, it can result in death. Why are these drugs so widely distributed and accepted as the norm? In addition, why are these drugs only commercially available to women?
The popular use of the Pill also drives down the use of condoms as a method of birth control, and many stigmatize the use of condoms as being “unsexy” and “intrusive” to an enjoyable sexual experience.
Heather Corinna states in her article Love the Glove that “Condoms are the LEAST intrusive and demanding of all methods of contraception…If we’re going to talk about condoms changing how sex feels, we need to remember that something like the pill does too, and, unlike condoms, it changes how a woman feels all the time, both during and outside of sex.”
As a society we should be working on promoting non-hormonal methods of birth control by making them widely available to all men and women, because men are equally capable of taking steps towards preventing unwanted pregnancy.
We also need to release ourselves from the stigma that condoms muffle sexual sensation in such a burdensome way that we must turn to hormonal methods as the ultimate solution to achieve freedom from unplanned pregnancy.
When a drug such as the Pill has the ability to alter one’s physical and emotional state, the most logical solution is to turn to a method less intrusive. Even though condoms are a slightly less effective method of birth control, the increased risk of unplanned pregnancy should be a fair toss up if it means we no longer depend on synthetic hormones that chemically alter the state of our bodies in such a dramatic way.