Sunday, November 28, 2004

Ambra and the Pill

Ambra Nykol has a piece up on the birth control pill for good or ill. Evidentally some stores refuse to carry the perscription or fill them. She lauds these people for taking a moral stand against the sexual "liberation" culture. She has a point.

My problem is that a good friend of mine has Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). PCOS is a chronic disorder she inherited from her mother. She has been on various forms of birth control for most of her adult life in order to regulate her hormones and minimize the disease's side effects. Those side-effects include sterility. So in this case she is using birth control so that she can have children.

I think this is an important point that often gets lost. Birth control drugs are used to prevent pregnancy, but also to control disorders that involve the same *ahem* equipment.

Not carrying birth control pills may take an important social stand, but it also hurts people that need them to treat real health problems. Where medicine is concerned, I'm "first do no harm" kind of guy. This policy fails that test.

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