The first ‘hormonal’ birth control pills were developed in the 1950’s, in an attempt to use recent advances in understanding of the role of the steroids in women’s fertility.
It had been discovered that the high levels of Progesterone produced during a pregnancy cause ovaries to take a vacation from their usual egg-making activities. It was also found that injecting Progesterone in non-pregnant rabbits caused their ovaries to vacation too, even though the Progesterone-injected rabbits weren’t actually pregnant.
Those first birth control researchers first attempted to use tablets made with Progesterone USP to stop human females from ovulating. But this strategy took mega-doses of Progesterone USP ($$$), and didn’t reliably suppress ovulation in the first month. (THIS PROBLEM WAS SOLVED IN THE 1970’s, BUT THE DRUG INDUSTRY DOESN’T CARE.)
So they did what any scientist would do, and asked the chemists for other, similar substances to test. These substances were screened in mice (“if the chemical kills the mouse, do NOT test in humans”). Eventually the first birth control pills reached the market, and people everywhere celebrated the new-found ability to make pregnancy a choice, instead of an inevitability.
Barbara Seaman’s book The Doctors Case Against the Pill was published in 1970. Senator Gaylord Nelson called hearings to investigate the side effects that many women experienced decreased sex drive, weight gain, heart problems, blood clots, and depression. The packet inserts warning of drugs side effects was the eventual result of the Nelson Pill Hearings.
The amount of xeno-estrogen, the cancer/heart attack hormone, in the birth control pills available today is much lower than the amount used in those early birth control pills.
Millions of women around the world still use the pharmaceutical industry’s “birth control” drugs to keep babies away. But these products are almost universally reviled for their side effects.
Women who have the constitution of “Xena, Warrior Princess” claim that they do fine with their daily dose of hormonal drug. Women who have more delicate constitutions can’t tolerate the nausea, weight gain, and/or moodiness. Many women don’t appreciate how their drug’s hormonal assault takes their libido away (the most ironic side effect of all). Very few women can tolerate these side effects over the long term.
We have read countless reports of women who did fine initially, or after a 1-3 month “adjustment” period, but whose intolerable side effects gradually appeared after 8 months, or 3-5 years. Even ‘Xena’ would be healthier, long term, with a genuine hormone cycle than a body perpetually confused with prescription drugs.
It would be one thing if these drugs were the only possible way for women to effectively make pregnancy a choice, rather than an inevitability. But there are several strategies that allow for women to manage their fertility better than taking a pill-a-day and praying that they don’t get knocked up anyways. These strategies respect nature’s system, do NOT make a person’s gender their disease, and cost a fraction of the $100/month that Big Drug is able to charge for their patent-protected female chemical castration prescriptions.
If women weren’t so profitable to industry, conventional wisdom would have standardized on better approaches to gynecological health and fertility management. But as it is, the charlatans, hucksters, and profiteers have created and maintained a system that focuses attention on FDA-approved-but-defective solutions to women’s health concerns.
