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| Tue, 07-24-2007 - 11:20am |

IN May the Food and Drug Administration approved a new birth control pill, Lybrel. It is as effective at preventing pregnancy as the other pills already out there (about 98 percent) but boasts one advantage: Women who take it will never get their periods.
Lybrel is landing on pharmacy shelves this month. And now war has been declared on menstruation.
Already the first few volleys in this battle have been exchanged. Gird yourselves, women, for a barrage of advertising and research highlighting the debilitating effects of periods and the joys of menstrual suppression.
After all, periods and their mood swings are bad for family values (who wants to have a stay-at-home mom when she’s so darn cranky?), bad for women’s health (women were never meant to menstruate so much; natural selection designed their bodies for back-to-back pregnancies and breast-feeding), bad for the fashion industry (how can beige be the new black if women won’t wear it all month?) and bad for the economy (everybody knows women take to their beds at the merest whisper of “cramps,” fueling the nation’s employee-absentee rate). Western civilization, it seems, hinges on our ability to wrangle our messy cycles to the ground and stomp ’em out once and for all.
Sound absurd?
Share your thoughts!

If I was younger I'd buy it. I used Depoprovera shots which did the same thing. I didn't have a period for 7 years. Loved it. So I don't have a problem with it. I find it purely a convenience factor. Why deal with cramps, buying products, dealing with the inconvenience if you don't have to?
Ok, I'm a bit freaked out by that! I was on a regular birth control pill in college and it pretty much stopped my periods for about a year..imagine my suprise to discover I was 4 1/2 months pregnant! No missed periods...no symptoms...no freakin way!
Periods are a fact of life and a badge of womanhood in my opinion!
Denise
*edited to add that I NEED that week break from Dh sometimes! LOL!!!*
Edited 7/24/2007 11:47 am ET by woodbabe
As someone who can't use hormonal birth control or hormone products at all, I do have concerns about interfering with the natural hormone balance in the body.
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I wouldn't do it. I
Linda
mom to
Alex (16), Rachel (14), Matthew (12)
I would not take it, I think that women should embrace their bodies, irritants and all, menstruation is NOT a disease and we need to teach our daughters to celebrate the uniqueness of being a woman.
I worry that in a decade they will discover that pills such as this interfere with fertility, it's not a risk I would take especially if I had not had my children already.
Kelly
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Lisa