Could your hormonal contraceptive disable or kill you? (YES)
Remember Emily Letts, the woman who filmed her own abortion?
Letts was willing to engage in unprotected hook-up sex, and willing to submit to an abortion, but one thing even she considered too risky was the birth control pill, as she explained to Cosmopolitan:
I’m a sex educator, and I love talking about birth control. Before this experience, hormonal birth control scared me because of complications I’d heard about from friends - gaining weight, depression, etc…. [and] I wasn’t super interested in putting hormones in my body.
Letts was on to something, which in this day and age of organic, homeopathic lifestyles, appears to be a growing concern among young women, including celebrities Mayim Bialik and Ricki Lake.
And rightfully so. Hormonal contraceptives - which includes the Pill, patch, ring, implant, IUD, and shot – are ridden with all sorts of dangers, such as (all information below compiled on pdf here):
- Yaz and Yasmin bc pill: 13,000+ injury lawsuits filed, DrugNews, March 2014
- Yaz and Yasmin bc pill suspected in 23 deaths, CBC News, June 2013
- Beyoz bc pill: can cause increased blood clots, new FDA warning, December 2011
- AIIMS study finds 9.5 times increased risk of breast cancer if taking bc pill, January 2014
- Even low-dose estrogen pills increase risk of stroke by 2 times: American Heart Association, 2004 and 2012
- Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology issued an urgent warning to women taking bc pill after finding it killed 11 women and caused 350+ side effects in 5-yr study, December 2013
- Nuva Ring users 6.5 times increased risk of blood clots, Decoded Science, December 2013
- Mirena IUD: 600+ lawsuits filed for perforated uterus; 70,000 adverse events since 2000, The Legal Examiner, December 2013
- World Health Organization’s IARC lists combined contraceptives as a Group 1 carcinogen
On June 7, the American Life League will hold its fifth annual Protest the Pill Day to draw attention to the danger hormonal contraception poses to both women and babies.
Hormonal contraceptives can stop a pregnancy by aborting a 5-9 day old baby before s/he attaches to the wall of the uterus. In addition, hormonal contraceptives are poisonous to women.
June 7 is an ominous day, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s 1965 Griswold v Connecticut decision, which legalized contraceptive use by finding a “right to privacy” in the Constitution, thereby opening the door to the 1973 Roe v Wade decision.
ALL is sponsoring informational protests outside Planned Parenthoods or abortion/contraception businesses and pharmacies. Find planning tips and a flyer here.
I am one of several sponsors of this event. Please help us educate women that hormonal contraceptives are extremely dangerous to their health.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
And it affects the environment, too.
Could your motor vehicle disable or kill you? (YES)
Reality,
First of all, women are educated about the risks of a vehicle, you learn about these accidents when getting your license if you already didn’t know.
Secondly, there are precautions taken to avoid these accidents. The way cars are built, restricting driving to only those who have demonstrated the skills needed to drive safely, having licenses renewed, having traffic laws and traffic cops.
I’m pro birth control, I think it’s a useful tool in avoiding pregnancies and it can help a woman control her future and lifestyle. But there are major issues that NEED to be solved with contraception, but instead of solving these issues, advocates just attack those who point it out.
More than one brand of hormonal contraception has caused disability and death. It IS a carcinogen. It CAN cause depression, and as someone who suffers from depression, I assure you, that is a major risk. It’s funny, Laci Green, another woman whose job involves education on birth control had to stop taking it because of the overwhelmingly negative side effects including depression.
Why don’t we try to improve these medications? If it were any other pharmathetical, it would be talked about on T.V. and there would be company promises to go back to the drawing board. The very least they could do is making it required to be told of all the risks before getting a prescription- which is NOT the case, even those two page long information sheets in magazine ads don’t mention all the PROVEN risks of it. But instead they avoid ever mentioning these problems, and then comparing it other potentially risky things to make worrying about it look stupid.
So… She’s totes cool with just having unprotected sex and getting who knows what kinds of diseases and risking pregnancy and then just using abortion as her backup BC…. because she doesn’t want hormones??
It’s disturbing that she’s a sex educator.
Hasn’t she heard of non-hormonal BC methods? Condoms? Female condoms? Diaphragms? I mean, if she’s going to be having sex, okay fine. But surely she knows that there’s a baby that can result?
Abortion is not acceptable birth control.
I mean yeah, hormonal BC is bad. But this chick confuses me.
“First of all, women are educated about the risks of a vehicle, you learn about these accidents when getting your license if you already didn’t know” – yet they still choose to drive. Nor does it stop them being disabled and/or killed. Just like women still choose to take contraceptives.
“Secondly, there are precautions taken to avoid these accidents. The way cars are built, restricting driving to only those who have demonstrated the skills needed to drive safely, having licenses renewed, having traffic laws and traffic cops” – again, death and disablements still occurs. And there are, and have been, cars which have been found to have fatal design flaws.
“More than one brand of hormonal contraception has caused disability and death” – more than one brand of most groups of drugs have caused disability death. Blood pressure and cholestorol drugs are amongst many. Do the benefits outweigh the risks?
“It IS a carcinogen” – have you seen the list of what contain carcinogens? Printing products, dry cleaning, batteries, exhaust gas, plastics. You wouldn’t live in a modern society if you wished to avoid them.
“It CAN cause depression” – so can other medications.
“Why don’t we try to improve these medications?” – the pill today is vastly different to the pill of 40 years ago. Injectable, long term contraceptives are coming into wider usage.
“If it were any other pharmathetical, it would be talked about on T.V.” – it has been.
“The very least they could do is making it required to be told of all the risks before getting a prescription- which is NOT the case, even those two page long information sheets in magazine ads don’t mention all the PROVEN risks of it” – if I do a net search on any med my doctor has ever given me I find a vast amount more information on risks than are listed on any information sheet which comes with the drug or that any doctor has ever mentioned.
The motor vehicle is a much deadlier device in so many ways than any contraceptive, are you going to lead the fight against them?
Reality,
I’m not against contraceptives. But there are fundamental flaws which should be SOLVED. Not ignored. In no way did I suggest the solution of these problems is getting rid of it all together. I’ll respond to your comment piece by piece.
1. It’s fine if women still feel the risk is worth it- IF they are educated. I’m a Canadian student, I received comprehensive sex education, I spoke to my doctor in lengths about getting birth control and decided against it because I suffer depression. I was not educated by teachers or doctors about these risks. I was told it was a myth that it could cause cancer and few people experienced negative symptoms- which even ads of birth control admit isn’t the truth. A majority don’t have cramps or mood swings after 3 months, but even a ten to twenty percent chance is enough you should be informed.
2. These accidents do occur. The point isn’t which one is more dangerous, it’s how these dangers are acted upon. When people observe dangers of driving, they seek to change it. We create laws and get in engineers to build better models, etc. Maybe it’s time to do the same with birth control.
3-4. Yeah, other products are dangerous and they should always be revised to try and avoid these risks when possible. Some products, like cigarettes, will be carcinogenic no matter what, but if you CAN make it safer you SHOULD, especially when so many people use it. 99% of women is a lot. Also notice this list does not contain other medications. When it comes to medicine, it should be common sense to avoid things that cause conditions even more dangerous than the disease you’re treating. Breast cancer is more dangerous than pregnancy.
5-6. I have heard limited things about Yaz on TV, but most pro contraception advocates try to gloss this over. We need to continue making improvements. Even long term, low dosage hormonal contraceptives carry the same risks, simply to a lesser degree. Also, shorter term methods like the Pill and patches will obviously still be available for the obvious reason of being able to stop whenever you want and no invasive procedures. So yeah, improvement is important. It just always shocks me how people will defend BC to no end, even accepting its downfalls, they don’t feel improvements should be made. Medications that are 99% effective at avoiding pregnancy? That’s a fabulous idea. The fact that these same medications can cause and increase depression and anxiety, are carcinogenic, and in extreme- but not extremely rare- circumstances cause infertility and death? Not so cool. But I believe that you can remove the problem, or reduce it, without removing/reducing the drugs.
7. Okay. You can find out information on the Internet. By that logic, there is no need for comprehensive sex education. No need to learn how to drive. I find it funny how when Komen stopped funding PP they argued it was risking lives because they needed the money for mammogram referrals. Referrals aren’t needed to get a mammogram, so why couldn’t all the women who would allegedly wouldn’t get care otherwise google local mammographies? That’s not how informed consent works. Doctors should be obligated to provide this information, not the patients. Anyways, from the way BC educators and doctors speak of it, women do not feel there are any risks to look up.
Motor vehicles are more dangerous than BC, I agree. But, I don’t say that if a person googles it they can find out much more about driving a car than any instructor could. I don’t argue that no changes and serious revisions should be made to make cars safer. I don’t use the fact other things kill you too, or that other things are more dangerous to justify this.
I am not leading any fight against birth control. But I’m also not against anti depressants- but I don’t ignore higher suicide rates and lower dopamine levels as teeny inconvieniences to be ignored. If a medicine is flawed, seek to change it. Especially is it causes can er and has killed people.
Reality says:
Could your motor vehicle disable or kill you? (YES)
Should everyone be allowed to drive at any speed “they feel comfortable with?”
Should we re-engineer roads (at taxpayer expense) so people can drive at any speed “they feel comfortable with?”
Should those engineering “improvements” provide a budget for “educating drivers on how to drive at any speed ‘they feel comfortable with?'”
Should that re-education on how to drive minimize the perception of danger on these expensive and risky roads?
Should we tax people to also include in these “re-engineered, progressive hiways” a way to quickly dispose of the mangled bodies and vehicles so others may drive at any speed “they feel comfortable with” without the slow-downs and distractions caused by the increased amounts of accidents this new way of driving will bring?
Are you comfortable with that? If you are, then you won’t have a problem with the risks involved with contraceptive devices, either.
I took the Pill for a few months beginning a couple of months after my first child was born. It messed me up BIG TIME. The side effects were horrendous, and it took about 6 months for my body to get back to normal.
After that experience, I did a lot of research, and I determined I would never take anything which messed with / changed my body chemistry. And I haven’t. The barrier method is very effective, with no side effects.
P.S. After the birth of my second child, I had an IUD for several years. It seemed okay at first, but as time went on it affected my body in very negative ways too. When I finally had it taken out, it was also another six months before my body was back to normal.
I don’t advocate ANY form of birth control except a barrier method.