Protest the pill?

[Ree]

Okay. Sure. All she needs to do is find a doctor who won't tell her 'oh, but you'll change your mind' or 'we don't do that unless you are over 35 and already have two children'.

I've inquired with nine doctors now. Haven't found one yet.

You say that like it's so easy. There are women who have been trying for years to get a tubal and haven't found a doctor yet.

Odd. I guess I just come from a different part of the country, but almost all the women I know in my group have had a tubal ligation, knowing they did not want any more children, and none of them got any grief from their doctors about it.

[Amethyst Hunter]

as far as taking them for medical reasons-

PCOS/endometriosis-caused by a hormone imbalance-why are they not tring to find out the cause ad treat that rather than just taking the cop out of treating the symptoms? To me that is bad medicine.

Maybe, but I doubt any of us who have those disorders are willing to sit around and wait for a cure while suffering the symptoms (some of which are excruciating) - which could take YEARS, if ever. I've spent at least ten years if not more with a wonky cycle. I'm not waiting around for a Miracle Cure that may never come. The pill works just fine for me and I'm quite happy with it, thankyouverymuch.

almost all the women I know in my group have had a tubal ligation, knowing they did not want any more children, and none of them got any grief from their doctors about it.

There's your key. For women who do not want ANY kids at all and who have *not* had any at all, it's damn near impossible to get a doctor who will do a tubal or other form of sterilization (at least, not without a lot of BS runaround), especially the younger one is. Partly this is a CYA measure - thanks to the few fools that did go and get themselves spayed/neutered and then turned around and decided to sue, doctors are now leery of winding up in costly lawsuits. But a lot of it is also due to a certain mentality that "you're not a real woman unless you have kids."

[Ree]

There's your key. For women who do not want ANY kids at all and who have *not* had any at all, it's damn near impossible to get a doctor who will do a tubal or other form of sterilization (at least, not without a lot of BS runaround), especially the younger one is.

Ah, but you see, before Zyanya decided to make my comments into a sweeping commentary on the availability of tubal ligations for all women, I was addressing them specifically to idrinkarum, who has had one autistic child already and has stated that pregnancy for her could be fatal, so I would think it might be easier for her to find a doctor willing to do the procedure.

[BlaqueKatt]

If you are 28-day regular.
However, quite a few of us are on the pill precisely because our periods are NOT regular.

yes and there are specific identifiable signs that you are ovulating even if you are not a 28 day regular-I was actually 37 days with two ovulation cycles-once I learned how to tell when I was ovulating and off the pill I did not get pregnant again as I knew when I was fertile. It was 3 years between the birth of m son and my tubal and I used no form of birth control outiside of being aware of what my body was doing-now I use that to figure out when m erratic periods will come.

I threw up after taking the pill one morning. Got pregnant.

I was on the pill used a condom(that didn't break) and still got pregnant-your point?

Proof?

first result from a 5 second google search
The estrogen ethinylestradiol in contraceptive pills that women secrete via urine and feces is not always degraded in purification plants and can leak into ambient water with purified wastewater. "We have been able to show that male fish that are exposed to municipal wastewater in certain cases begin to produce an egg yoke substance that normally only occurs in sexually mature females. We have also managed to detect the natural estrogens, the contraceptive pill estrogen ethinylestradiol, and the estrogen-like chemicals nonylphenol and bisphenol A in purified wastewater. The same estrogen substances were also found in gall fluid from fish that had been exposed to wastewater, which shows that fish take up the substances from water,"

So you vote give them a hysterectomy? Awesome. Now convince the doctors that women should actually have a say in their reproductive health instead of being told that the cure for endometriosis is 'have a kid'.

where exactly did I say that don't go putting words in my mouth, and no the "cure" is to stop using products laden with dioxins(tampons and other bleached paper products)

You are lucky. Not that you had a good OB/GYN, plenty of us have those. You were lucky in that your root cause was treatable.

the root cause was dioxin-from tampons-my doctor had me start using menstrual sponges(sea sponges) and menstrual cups(the diva cup)two years later it was 50% reversed, less bleeding and less cramps and no big pharma involved, I'm actually part of his study as childbirth did not reverse it and actually made it worse-and before you ask here's your proof for that: dionxin and endo linked


evidence from animal and human studies indicating that dioxin (and other dioxin-like compounds) causes endometriosis via its ability to disrupt immune and endocrine system function. They conclude that existing data support this interpretation but that the details of the mechanisms are not yet clear.

and this

There is much research underway around the world today, with huge amounts of money being invested, looking at ways to treat Endometriosis. But if as much money was spent looking at how the disease starts in the first place, then developing treatment that leads to a 'cure' would be much more focused and meaningful. The key problem here is economics and the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and research funding.

Then in 1993 researchers from the Harlow Primate Center at the University of Wisconsin published dramatic and unexpected findings. Their study was of monkeys used in research on the long-term reproductive effects of dioxin.(my doctor knew the researchers as I live in Madison where the primate center is-and we have several herbal pharmacies here as well that sell the diva cup and menstrual sponges)

When three of the dioxin treated animals died of severe endometriosis, a new study was initiated to compare the presence and severity of endometriosis with the animals exposure to dioxin. The study found a dose-dependent relationship between dioxin and endometriosis. Animals with more exposure were more likely to develop the disease, and the greater a female monkey's exposure to dioxin, the greater the severity of the disease.

You mean earlier than 200 years ago when women were getting pregnant/married at 12?

no I'm talking around the age of 4-7

The average age of menarche, or first menstruation, had already fallen dramatically from age 17 between the middle of the 19th(1800s 200 years ago) century to age 13 the middle of the 20th--mostly owing to improvements in nutrition.----what's that about pregnancy at twelve 200 years ago?--that looks like the number 17 to me.

and proof for that as well

"Laura Stover took her daughter Karen to a specialist when the girl began growing pubic hair at age 5. " If these were isolated cases, they might be chalked up to statistical flukes. But the truth is that all anyone knows for certain is that the signs of sexual development in girls are appearing at ever younger ages. Among Caucasian girls today, 1 in every 7 starts to develop breasts or pubic hair by age 8. Among African Americans, for reasons nobody quite understands, the figure is nearly 1 out of every 2.

Significant numbers of white girls--some 15%--were showing outward signs of incipient sexual maturity by age 8, and about 5% as early as 7. For African Americans, the statistics were even more startling. Fifteen percent were developing breasts or pubic hair by age 7, and almost half by age 8.

doctors say early development has become too widespread to be treated as a medical aberration. In the past, girls who developed breasts before age 8 were often given hormone therapy to slow things down. But in a report being prepared for the Pediatric Endocrine Society, Kaplowitz and co-author Dr. Sharon Oberfield of Columbia University argue that most girls between 6 and 8 who develop breasts or pubic hair should be reclassified as normal and left untreated.

[the_std]

yes and there are specific identifiable signs that you are ovulating even if you are not a 28 day regular-I was actually 37 days with two ovulation cycles-once I learned how to tell when I was ovulating and off the pill I did not get pregnant again as I knew when I was fertile. It was 3 years between the birth of m son and my tubal and I used no form of birth control outiside of being aware of what my body was doing-now I use that to figure out when m erratic periods will come.

You know, that's awesome that this technique works for you. It really is. It's a fantastic method that uses no intrusion from anyone or anything and is completely natural from listening to the flow of your body.

I wish it worked for everyone that way. My aunt was a strict, true believer in the planning method and it worked for her for ten years. She had two kids when she wanted them because she knew when she was fertile, and she had no scares in between. She didn't want any more than two children, so she carried on how she always had, taking temperature, monitoring mucous levels, everything... And she became pregnant. It was a very complicated pregnancy due to some of her health issues (one of the reasons she didn't want to get pregnant again) and nearly cost her her life. She's fine now and her youngest daughter is a healthy kid, but it just goes to show that nothing is 100%. Nothing works the same for everyone.

I tried the planning method for a while when I was single, but because I'm young and my cycle is still settling (I'm nearly 20), it's not stable enough for the planning method to work. Yet I still wish to be sexually active without the risk of having children. So, birth control it is for me then. I don't really have much other choice.

Yes, it will be a happy day when we can move away from synthetic hormones and "toxin"-infused health products, but our society as a whole just isn't at that level yet. It can't happen overnight. Cost and availability have a role to play in all of this as well.

[AFPheonix]

It hasn't actually been proven that is isn't an abortifacient, either, as evidenced by the use of the word, "unresolved" in the quote that you used.

Just because something only happens in such a small percentage of the population, that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, period. It simply means that the frequency is not enough to affect a study.

There are still some scientists, and not necessarily pro-life scientists, who claim it does cause the body to miscarry.

Since the risk of pregnancy while on the pill is 0.1 per 100, it can't be said with 100% certainty that pregnancy will not occur while on the pill, because it does occur in very rare instances.

If it does occur, that's a pretty small test group, so of course the miscarriage rate among that .1 per 100 women will be very small as well, but it is not saying with 100% certainty that miscarriage will not occur, or that the miscarriage was not the result of the pill.

And as for my tubal ligation suggestion, idrinkarum is the one whose health and life are at risk if she becomes pregnant, so, while having her husband get snipped is also a good suggestion, my thinking was that, since it's her extreme risk, what happens if, lord forbid, she should end up with a different partner down the road? It made more sense to me that she get her tubes tied.

I recognized that while it was a possibility, it was a vanishingly small one. While it's possible that Mrs. Duggar's miscarriage was due to birth control pills, it's more likely there was another cause. I'll go out on a limb too and say that perhaps she's miscarried a few other times in between her 17 kids and perhaps didn't know it. Those would have just resulted in an heavier period. Should those be chalked up to the BC she took more than 20 years ago, too? My point is that it's incongruous to say with all certainty that BC causes abortions when we still don't know at this point, but studies are suggesting that it's far more unlikely than some activists would like to think.
Idrinkarum takes BC for reasons other than just avoiding pregnancy, as evidenced by a post further down page 1:

I have to take the pill 'cos I'll go for months (4-6) without a period. Which is bad. Bad things happen to a woman's innards if she's in her child-bearing years and not having a normal period. Then from January to March, I had no period and. I. was. on. the. pill. not. pregnant. I was scared about that. Fortunately, I have a great doctor. Whew!

So what she's doing is appropriate care for her, although of course that's between her and her doctor.

[Zyanya]

Odd. I guess I just come from a different part of the country, but almost all the women I know in my group have had a tubal ligation, knowing they did not want any more children, and none of them got any grief from their doctors about it.

Where is this part of the country? I'll get on a plane. And there are several hundred other women who will also be headed in that direction.

It isn't LA, tried there.

Or New York, my friends have tried there.

[Zyanya]

Ah, but you see, before Zyanya decided to make my comments into a sweeping commentary on the availability of tubal ligations for all women, I was addressing them specifically to idrinkarum, who has had one autistic child already and has stated that pregnancy for her could be fatal, so I would think it might be easier for her to find a doctor willing to do the procedure.

You'd be shocked.

yes and there are specific identifiable signs that you are ovulating even if you are not a 28 day regular

If you have free time in the morning to make all the observations. Some of us have busy schedules.

I was on the pill used a condom(that didn't break) and still got pregnant-your point?

Try looking at the quote my comment was in response to. That BS about needing a year to be fertile again.

first result from a 5 second google search

Sorry dear, but I read the entire article. It's full of can-bes and possiblies. It also covers how to solve the problem.

where exactly did I say that don't go putting words in my mouth, and no the "cure" is to stop using products laden with dioxins(tampons and other bleached paper products)

Funny. I've been using tampons since I was 11 and have never had the problem. So, again, Proof? And by that I mean REAL proof. Not supposeds and paranoid conspiracy theories.

See, unfortunately for you, I'm familiar with how animal testing tends to work. They inject far more of a substance into an animal than a human could intake in a lifetime, then gasp in horror as problems develop.

no I'm talking around the age of 4-7

From your article - But the truth is that all anyone knows for certain is that the signs of sexual development in girls are appearing at ever younger ages.

They do not know what causes it. If you do have some sort of proof, you should probably share it with the rest of the world. I'm sure they'd appreciate it.

My great-grandmother had her first baby at 11. Obviously, this isn't a new problem. It's just getting media coverage now.

While it's possible that Mrs. Duggar's miscarriage was due to birth control pills, it's more likely there was another cause. I'll go out on a limb too and say that perhaps she's miscarried a few other times in between her 17 kids and perhaps didn't know it.

Something like 9 in 10 fertilizations result in miscarriage. I'd say it's a certainty that she has been pregnant more than 19 times.

[Dreamstalker]

a woman is only able to conceive for 72 hours out of a menstrual cycle-why are you pumping your body with excess hormones for the entire month?

BCP is also used to regulate hormones for reasons unrelated to endo/PCOS. Before I went on the Pill, things were so whacked out that I was bleeding 3 weeks out of 4 and at a risk of becoming seriously anemic. I have neither of the two conditions, my OB/GYN wasn't exactly sure what was going on but the pill has fixed it. Nothing else did or does.

[BlaqueKatt]

See, unfortunately for you, I'm familiar with how animal testing tends to work. They inject far more of a substance into an animal than a human could intake in a lifetime, then gasp in horror as problems develop.

try reading the UW study-they did not inject anything-they were exposed to the same levels as a human is through their food/water. And it was done after they found a colony of monkies living near a paper plant the all of them had high levels of dixon and all had endo-a further part of some studies was to test dioxin levels in breastmilk from breastfeeding mothers and monitor the children after puberty.

BCP is also used to regulate hormones for reasons unrelated to endo/PCOS. Before I went on the Pill, things were so whacked out that I was bleeding 3 weeks out of 4 and at a risk of becoming seriously anemic. I have neither of the two conditions, my OB/GYN wasn't exactly sure what was going on but the pill has fixed it. Nothing else did or does.

again treating the symptom-an OB/GYN is NOT an endocrinologist. and the pill has not "fixed" anything it's made the symptoms go away. Would you consider making the pain of cancer(a symptom) go away fixing it? Or would you want to treat the actual cause of the symptom? Remember I was on BC ills for over 10 years to "treat" edometriosis, all it did was alleviate the symptoms I still had endo, and it was getting worse-my mother was told I needed a hysterectomy at age 14 because it was that bad-now I'm 32 and do not have it anymore, if I had kept just treating the symptom I'd be in worse shape than when I was 14, as I couldn't take BC pills anymore, and my "treatment" would have been a hysterectomy(at age 25), that was obviously not needed, as I've been "cured". Thyroid problems(for example) can cause excessive bleeding-an OB/GYN cannot test for that-but a endocrinologist will.

[Zyanya]

try reading the UW study-they did not inject anything-they were exposed to the same levels as a human is through their food/water. And it was done after they found a colony of monkies living near a paper plant the all of them had high levels of dixon and all had endo-a further part of some studies was to test dioxin levels in breastmilk from breastfeeding mothers and monitor the children after puberty.

I did. I also noticed the name of the website. Then I actually looked at the studies, not what the article claimed the studies said.

Funny how the study said right up front -

Small hospital-based case-control studies have failed to provide compelling evidence for or against an association of environmental contaminants and endometriosis.

And admitted -

Rodent studies support the plausibility for a role of environmental contaminants in the pathophysiology of endometriosis although a convincing mechanistic hypothesis has yet to be advanced.

[IDrinkaRum]

I want another child. My OB/GYN and my regular doctor think that if I lose weight, and get my blood pressure down to an acceptable number, I might have a successful pregnancy. Might is such an iffy word though, you know? And there is no guarantee that my next child will be a normally developing child in all aspects. (And for the record, I've asked my husband if we can adopt, and he's against it ... for right now).

I'm on the pill mainly because my body isn't function correctly. Going for months at a time with no period, then having a gushing one (please excuse the crassness) and then either just spotting or going back to having no period just isn't normal. And there is no physical reason why I shouldn't/can't have periods. I've had my blood checked for reasons, I've had ultrasounds to look at my ovaries. Zip. Zilch. Nada. is. wrong. with. me.

The only thing I can figure is my weight. Whereas some women get too skinny for periods, some women can get too fat. I'm 265 pounds. I'm 5'3" tall. I have a blood pressure range of like 135/89. I've always had painful periods that were unpredictable. Because of my blood pressure, my general doc has heard congestion around my heart. I have, probably, edema. My legs from my thighs down to my feet are swollen. All the time. No matter how much water I drink, I can't get the swelling to go down. I'm going to have to get another medication, I think. Plus, I'm an emotional eater (that's for another post/rant somewhere else). I'm a mess both physically and mentally. I had PPD with my daughter that went undiagnosed for 2 years before it morphed into full blown depression.

I still believe the pill is a God send to me and others who are like me or just don't want kids right now, but want them in the future. Really, do these nuts (and I'm not talking about people on this board who are against the pill) really want to ban the pill & have women go back to either getting BC from black markets or having back alley abortions again?

Just my 2 cents.

[Zyanya]

Really, do these nuts (and I'm not talking about people on this board who are against the pill) really want to ban the pill & have women go back to either getting BC from black markets or having back alley abortions again?

Just my 2 cents.

Yes. They do. They figure if a woman dies from an abortion, she deserved it for going against god's law.

One of these freaks actually stated he would 'make' his wife die if she got an ecoptic pregnancy rather than 'allow' her to get an abortion because it was god's will.

[Ree]

One of these freaks actually stated he would 'make' his wife die if she got an ecoptic pregnancy rather than 'allow' her to get an abortion because it was god's will.

Well, that's just a stupid way of thinking, and he is then guilty of murder.
An ectopic pregnancy is not a viable human being as there is no way that it would survive to full term.

For the record, I don't want to see the pill banned, but I also don't want the truth about its harmful qualities to be swept under the rug, either.

[blas87]

I'm not a doctor, but isn't ectopic pregnancy an accident, and not necessarily something the woman did to herself to make it happen?

I'm not even sure I know what an ectopic pregnancy is...I think it's one that occurs in the fallopian tubes and not the uterus....but it just doesn't sound like something a woman can make happen to herself just to rid herself of a baby.