Genevieve has been posting up a storm over at the No Room for Contraception blog, so much I can't keep up. So I've decided to list some links and excerpts...
No menstruating - period! I'm a little late on this one (weird pun, considering the subject matter..) but I thought I'd take note of a form of contraception that's promising to nearly eliminate the monthly menstrual period for women.... (Click the article title to continue reading)
Newly Released ~ The Thrill of the Chaste Dawn Eden, an NYC blogger and an editor for New York Daily News, has published a book whose title is rather intriguing - haven't read it yet, though. She's a recent convert to chaste living...(Click the article title to continue reading)
Birth control & text messaging Another tidbit from the contraception-=-reducing-teen-pregnancy front: "A text messaging service has been launched to remind young women to take their daily contraceptive pill....One in five young women forgets to take her contraceptive pill at least twice a month and Luton Teenage Pregnancy Strategy has launched the text messaging service to remind them.... The new initiative is aimed at teenagers aged between 14 and 19 and it is hoped it will reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies." (Click the article title to continue reading)
Three immediate questions arise about the continuous pills:
How would you know if the birth control had failed and you had gotten pregnant? If you aren't going to have your period anyway, missing it wouldn't be any indication. So you'd go on taking pills longer than you should in an accidental pregnancy, which might or might not cause problems with the pregnancy. It certainly is something to think about, as most doctors wouldn't advise continuing to take birth control pills for a long time during a pregnancy.
What about uterine cancer? I have read that one of the advantages of cyclic pills is that the shedding of the lining once a month guarantees that there is not too much of a build-up of the endometrium, which cd. lead to endometrial cancer over the long term. A one-year trial isn't going to address this concern.
Any side effects (such as mood alteration) of the pills would now continue for four weeks. You wouldn't get a break from them in the fourth week. It's all very well to say (as in the Reuters article) that the side effects were comparable to those with cyclic pills. But if you had unpleasant side effects, who would want them without a break?