More on the Pill

by Andrea Mrozek

There’s a new book out about the Pill. This review pans the book:

In her new book Sweetening the Pill: or How We Got Hooked on Hormonal Birth Control, Holly Grigg-Spall offers what she calls a “feminist critique” of hormonal contraception. She argues that the so-called liberating force  of the pill has been illusory. She claims that the pill keeps women in the thrall of patriarchal capitalism and destroys their health in the process. The addiction allusion in the title is not a metaphor—Grigg-Spall is convinced that the pill is an addictive drug.

I don’t think it sounds like I would much like the book, either, based on some of what the review says. I have not read it. That said, I do not like the Pill and it’s true, I believe it is anti-feminist, for lack of a better term. Nothing reduces a woman to mere physical/biological function more than taking a Pill every day that suppresses her natural cycle. Furthermore, there is nothing quite so empowering as knowledge. Knowledge of how your cycle works, what it says about your overall health, and having control over that cycle without Big Pharma’s assistance.

The review asks some valid questions, however. One of which is why is the Pill so popular? I believe it is because it is very much promoted in med schools which look to pharmaceuticals for solutions. Doctors are schooled first, later wined and dined by pharmaceutical companies. They are not schooled or wined and dined by Creighton practitioners, for example.

But still, word is getting out there. Any when women discover the many myriad benefits of actually learning more about their own bodies, I believe they will leave the Pill behind. It won’t be because it is capitalist, or anti-capitalist. (Please.) It will be because it improves our overall health. And because it feels good to be able to take care of yourself and be treated like a human being by someone who actually cares about what your cycle is doing, rather than simply suppressing it.

Related posts:

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  3. What are alternatives to prescribing/using the Pill? There’s a free web cast on this topic tonight. Click…
  4. Long term use of the Pill increases chance of miscarriage Interesting. Apparently this has to do with “endometrial thickness.” The…
  5. The dangerous side of the birth control pill An article from Huffington Post: Studies show that newer birth…

http://www.prowomanprolife.ca/2013/09/05/more-on-the-pill-2/

 

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