SMCR and re:Cycling‘s own Chris Hitchcock is featured in a menstrual suppression for-and-against article at MSN today. Chris explains why using hormonal contraceptives to stop periods is generally bad idea, except in very limited medical circumstances. Leslie Miller, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Washington, defends the proposition that there’s no reason to menstruate unless one wants to get pregnant.
The article also includes a Consumer Reports video analysis of that annoying Seasonique ad that presents women as split personalities between “emotional” and “logical”. (Because it’s logical to get rid of menstruation – it only makes you emotional, dontcha know.)
I ran across an interesting news article in a Sussex, Delaware online site yesterday
discussing chemical castration for sexual offenders. Not my area of expertise
and I wondered why this came in on my Google Alerts until I read through the article
and realized that the method they are proposing is “medroxy progesterone acetate —-
popularly called Depo-Provera.”
So do you think if we start calling menstrual suppressants “chemical castration”
women would start listening? Or if they were marketed as such women would use them?
https://holyhormones.com/birth-control/sussex-lawmaker-proposes-chemical-castration/
Interesting. Readers might want to know that this is an article that initially appeared in Glamour magazine in September, 2007.
This comment by Leslie Miller in the MSN article: “There is no medical reason why any woman needs to have a period, unless she’s trying to get pregnant. Menstruating is the way your body expels the uterine lining that builds up each month in preparation for an egg to be fertilized.” — is shortsighted and illustrates the pervasive idea that menstruation and the menstrual cycle are good for one thing only – having babies. As long as girls and women (and doctors)are led to believe that healthy, ovulatory menstrual cycles serve no other purpose than as a means to pregnancy, then we have no reason (or right perhaps?) to ask questions or assert our concerns about prolonged and continuous hormonal contraceptive use. Physicians like Dr. Miller promote body illiteracy and ignorance by choosing to ignore the research and evidence that demonstrates the value of ovulatory menstrual cycles to women’s health and wellness, including breast, bone and heart health, muscle strength, a flourishing libido, etc. Women need this knowledge in order to advocate on their own behalf against the persuasive tactics of docs like Miller.
Has I have said before ask not what continuous use hormonal contraceptives WILL DO TO YOU but what ovulatory menstruation WILL DO FOR YOU. Informed choice requires that we know what we give up when we choose to take these drugs. Leslie Miller and her ilk are insistent that you give up nothing and have much to gain, including it seems all those lost minutes in the bathroom spent changing your tampon or empyting your Diva Cup. (Hey, but don’t we often urinate and/or defecate at the same time?)This approach to the menstrual cycle as a useless nuisance to women’s lives (unless of coure you want to have a baby!)needs to be challenged assiduously.