Posted on 09/21/2021 9:31:24 AM PDT by Kaslin
Many women are realizing the synthetic hormones in most methods of contraception come with side effects and risks that are annoying and sometimes dangerous.
If you’ve watched TV in the last week, you’ve likely seen a commercial for a novel form of birth control called Phexxi. You could hardly miss it, starting as it does with “Welcome to my vagina,” and starring actress Annie Murphy from the wildly popular Emmy award-winning Canadian sitcom “Schitt’s Creek.” As the bubbly Murphy struts about in a cavernous pink bedroom, she promises that Phexxi is something that women have always wanted: an effective, “in the moment,” hormone-free method of birth control.
Phexxi was approved by the FDA over a year ago, but only in the past week has its manufacturer, Evofem, begun marketing the product in earnest. With this shiny new campaign, Evofem is betting on the recently heightened search among women for non-hormonal birth control options.
And it’s a good bet, as many women, like Annie Murphy herself, are waking up to the reality that the synthetic hormones found in most methods of contraception come with side effects and risks that are at best annoying, and at worst, dangerous. In fact, many women are increasingly unhappy with the birth control options available to them, fed up with side effects like headaches, weight gain, and more. And those are just the risks and side effects they know about.
When compared to women who are not on the pill or other forms of hormonal contraception, the population of women on hormonal contraception exhibits increased risk (higher prevalence rates) for the following conditions: breast cancer (19-37 percent higher risk), blood clots and other cardiovascular risks (80 percent), cervical cancer (60-220 percent), bone fracture (7 percent for COCs, and 40 percent for progestin-only), certain autoimmune diseases (Crohn’s Disease: 44 percent, Ulcerative Colitis: 18 percent, Lupus: 19-130 percent, Interstitial Cystitis: 131 percent), female sexual dysfunction, depression (10 percent for COCs, and 20 percent for progestin-only), and even attempted suicide (97 percent) and completed suicide (208 percent). When compared to women who are not on the Depo-Provera “birth control shot,” women on Depo exhibit a 40-49 percent higher prevalence for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), the virus that causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDs). In other words, the Depo shot appears to increase a woman’s susceptibility for contracting HIV. (Data supporting all of the relative risks deduced in this paragraph by the lead author of the citizens petition, Dr. William V. Williams, can be found in the complete citizens petition, which is available for download here.)
Furthermore, an estimated 300 to 400 American women die every year from vascular diseases like heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots alone that are exacerbated by hormonal contraceptives. To put that into perspective: Meningitis killed 45 individuals (of all ages) in 2017, and most U.S. states mandate meningitis vaccination for college and university students (and let’s not even get into the number of college-aged individuals for whom the COVID-19 vaccine is now required, despite how low their risk of serious illness is).
Now, that litany of risks and side effects doesn’t sound quite right, does it? After all, women are constantly assured that birth control is safe and effective, and many are baldly told by their doctors that whatever symptoms they experience while on it are “in their heads,” or that “the pill doesn’t do that.”
But in 2019, the non-profit women’s health organization Natural Womanhood and a group of doctors and researchers put together a 90-plus page citizens petition to the FDA citing the robust, scientific evidence for every single one of the risks I listed above. They submitted this petition to the FDA two years ago, asking for greater transparency and evidence-based warnings about the risks of hormonal birth control in prescribing information and in product informational inserts.
After a cursory request for a few additional pieces of information from the FDA (which was promptly provided to them by the research team), Natural Womanhood has heard nothing in response but crickets. This is despite the petition garnering over 150 public comments, many of them from the families of young women who have died as a direct result of their use of birth control.
Women are, quite literally, dying for better birth control. Hence the perennial search for “hormone-free birth control,” and why the Phexxi site is emblazoned with “Hormone Free” in big, bold letters under a confident-looking Murphy. But even hormone-free Phexxi comes with its complications: it’s a gel that works by altering vaginal pH to make it extra inhospitable to sperm, which is why women who have recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) are discouraged from using Phexxi, and why the most commonly reported side effects are “vaginal burning, vaginal itching, vaginal yeast infection, urinary tract infection, vaginal area discomfort, bacterial vaginosis, and vaginal discharge.”
“Women also reported genital discomfort, pain while urinating, and vaginal pain,” continues Phexxi’s safety information panel. “Some male partners reported genital discomfort.” But hey, nothing like itchy, burning genitalia to get folks in the mood, right?
Additionally, Phexxi is about 93 percent effective with perfect use and about 86 percent effective with typical use, putting it roughly in the same efficacy range as condoms. (The other popular hormone-free option of birth control — the copper IUD — is 99 percent effective, but comes with its own significant risks and side effects, including a nasty habit of breaking and migrating in women’s bodies).
It’s interesting that the FDA has chosen to ignore the petition I mentioned above, yet has continued to approve birth control products like Phexxi in the meantime. Is it because they know, on an as-yet publicly unacknowledged level, that women both want and need safer, non-hormonal options for family planning? Or is it that they just want there to be as many products on the market as possible for preventing pregnancy — side effects and risks be damned?
After all, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was at least temporarily yanked from the market after being linked to far fewer cases of blood clots than is typical for hormonal birth control use (yes, even if a woman isn’t a smoker or over age 35). Yet birth control seems destined to remain a sacrosanct, permanent fixture of our Pharma landscape, and without transparent acknowledgment from public health officials that it might be a possible source of a myriad of issues, from increasing rates of anxiety and depression in teen girls, to our autoimmune epidemic, to skyrocketing breast cancer rates, just to name a few.
If our public health officials really cared about giving women all of the options and information needed to prevent pregnancy, they’d speak more honestly about fertility awareness methods (FAMs) — the only truly side effect-free forms of effective family planning available — instead of actively discouraging their use, and wrongfully maligning them as the ineffective, outdated “rhythm method.” (By the way, many modern FAMs have both perfect and typical use rates that far outpace Phexxi’s.)
But at the very least, the FDA should better inform women and their doctors about the evidence-based risks and side effects of hormonal contraception. Then physicians might stop gaslighting women into thinking that their negative experiences on birth control are imaginary.
If you’d like to help better protect women and be part of the movement to light a fire under the FDA when it comes to the harms of synthetic hormones, I encourage you to sign and share Natural Womanhood’s petition today.
All methods of contraception are evil. Especially condoms and the pill
Every single one of them causes major problems
All are against the teachings of the Bible about Chastity. Marriage. And spirituality
The evil left wants licentiousness homosexuality. Transgenderism. Abortion on demand. And free contraceptives. Paid for
Licentiousness and lust are two of the most deadly sins. They destroy
Birth control or contraceptive pill are not the correct terms for most of these pharmaceuticals that woman use. They are abortifacients.
That is, they allow for conception but not implantation.
Life begins at conception - therefore, most pills are just used to exterminate tiny human beings. Imagine how many babies have been killed in this manner over the past 50 years?
Pastors, garden variety pro-lifers, et al will talk about surgical abortions as being intrinsically evil but not these chemical abortions which are no less evil. Lord have mercy on us.
If you had a 1 in 100 chance of being in a plane crash when you flew, how often & how many would would voluntarily fly.
That alone increases the amount of abortions as a person on birth control will often rationalize that it's OK since they were never intending & took steps to avoid pregnancy.
Nothing has been more destructive to society than the invention of hormonal birth control. It has lead to the promiscuity of the average female, the adoption of abortion & the general lowering of perceived value of human life.
I don't approve of the rebranding.
The Rhythm Method makes everyone assume they can dance if they adopt it.
Why mess with a proven sales pitch?
A prime tenet in feminism is that sperm takes your reproductive rights away, and most pillars involve ways to get your power back. People without uterusi are considered infectious sperm donors, except when conception is desirable (to the individual with a uterus) in which case the sperm donor still retains no parental rights but will subsequently incur financial responsibility. The ability to avoid or post terminate conception is of extreme importance. The individual rights and welfare of both the sperm donor and of the conceived (somehow not yet human) baby are irrelevant. The detrimental health effects of contraception is also considered to be of a lesser significance than to any of the reproductive power pillars (unless of course there is a lawsuit against big pharma) because power is more important than health issues.
They keep publishing false summaries of studies, pretending there is no link, when the actual details support no such conclusion.
From the article: “Or is it that they just want there to be as many products on the market as possible for preventing pregnancy — side effects and risks be damned?”
Scaremongering article with very little useful information. What are the risks and side effects of pregnancy? How do those risks and side effects compare to those of this product?
It’s a danger to everything. Ethinyl estradiol doesn’t break down easily. It enters the water shed where it has an adverse affect on wildlife. Big mouth bass, alligators, water fowl, ect. have developed deformities and abnormalities in males (i.e. eggs in the testes). Studies from 20 years ago have indicated it pollutes water. Surely it’s effecting fertility in humans. I was talking to a young woman a few weeks ago in her late 20s with two children. She said she had a very hard time getting pregnant with the first one when she lived in Virginia. She had no problem getting pregnant with the second child when they moved to rural West Virginia. I can’t help but wonder if the difference was public water versus well water.
Gee, I wonder why Western women are looking and sounding more manly these days...
That is not true of all oral contraceptives. Quite a few work by preventing ovulation. That is why that while on the pill a woman does not have an actual menstrual cycle. The seven day a month break is to create a period which normally is a natural result of a released egg not being fertilized.
I do not hold to the scriptual meandsrings as pozteer number one.
How else to get rid of a posse of stray cats, than to kill off the females. No females,, no succeeding broods.
Thank you for posting this article.
The likelihood of a fertility disaster leading to the inability of procreation in the future is a distinct possibility .
‘Children of Men’ anyone?
Excellent article showing that Alex Jones, though kind of nuts, is often right. I DON'T LIKE EM PUTTING CHEMICALS IN THE WATER THAT TURN THE FRIGGIN FROGS GAY!
By ypur posts, it is easy to believe you were not around in the early ‘70’s, when “public health clinics” were a common thing.
they had birth control foam back in the 70’s and i guess it’s back now
Cows might drink hormone contaminated water and pass it out through their milk at a higher concentration.
Well, a plane crash and a baby are two different things. Still, my advice to anyone who wants to listen is to never have sexual intercourse unless you're one hundred percent prepared to assume responsibility for the results.
Answer: Big Pharma gotta keep the money rolling in.
Many young women are actually using the easy availability of abortion as their preferred birth control method...this is horrifying and mandating that elective abortion be covered under insurance has not helped...
Synthetic estrogens used in birth control meds do wind up entering the environment and this is not good..
The hormones contained in birth control pills do increase the chance of breast cancer and increase the chance of other bad effects.. it is interesting that having a baby and breastfeeding it will decrease the likelihood of developing breast cancer.
On a stranger note, a few years back there was a dubious flirtation with the idea of approving the use of testosterone patches for women to provide a temporary boost in libido for them. My comment to them was along the line of “Are you out of your @#$%ing minds!” Just imagine what could go wrong...
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