The Pill Essay -- Birth Control Pregnancy Papers

Missing Works Cited "Should women alone bear the burden of contraception and its side effects  ­ including its failure  ­ while men enjoy the pleasures of sexual freedom and fatherhood? Must the word wait for the "perfect" male contraceptive to be created by researchers and manufacturers while women continue to experience actual and potential side effects? Can the world afford to wait while unwanted pregnancy and abortion abound in this country and populations continue to soar in developing lands? Might a less than perfect method be acceptable, in order to achieve better population stabilization?" - Diller et al. The above statement comes from an article in Fertility and Sterility written in 1977 appealing for greater funding for research in the field of male contraceptives. Due to the time in which it was written, and consequently, the research conducted up until then, the pill as a carcinogen had yet to be established. Instead, and coincidentally with the "sign of the times", the article took the high moral ground, extolling the importance of mutual responsibility between men and women towards reproductive behavior. However, the major dangers of the pill have extended beyond those of water retention, depression and/or loss of libido in 1977 to breast cancer risk in 2000. As a result of sufficient funding in breast cancer research this valuable information is now available to the general public. Similar information concerning equivalent male contraception and/or alternative female contraception and long term side effects might have been available, as well, had funding been allocated accordin gly some 50 years ago when the pill was invented by John Rock . Hopefully, with the advent of research in male contraceptives, men and w... ...much as simply to find a new contraceptive method, which subscribed to the teachings of the Catholic Church . This idea that a pill-induced regulation of the menstrual cycle is a necessary element in a woman’s life is falsely perpetuated time and again. There are exceptions, of course. "In obese women the failure to menstruate can signal an increased risk of uterine cancer and in female athletes, a failure to menstruate can signal an increased risk of osteoporosis". However, aside from that subset of women, younger women, especially, up the odds of developing breast cancer when they subject themselves to excessive hormones which 1. Are not necessitated in the least by any health condition and 2. Can be readily substituted with alternatives. Pregnancy is not a "disease", the pill is not a supplemental multi-vitamin and the dangers of the pill should not be belittled.