“Never in history have so many individuals taken such potent drugs with so little information available as to actual and potential hazards.”1
“For women’s health -it was the "most important thing in the latter half of the century - no question about it". Dame Valerie Beral.2
How popular is the pill?
The birth control pill is prescribed for a multitude of reasons, the main one being as a form of contraception. They are also prescribed for PMS, painful/heavy periods, migraines & acne. The pill is currently the most popular form of contraception in England. A guardian article reveals: “almost nine in 10 women who receive contraception from the GP or pharmacies take either the combined pill or “mini pill” – a total of more than 3.1 million women in England in 2017-18”.(2) This article suggests that despite an increased awareness surrounding the adverse effects of the pill; the trend that women are shunning hormonal contraception in favour of hormone-free ones, has been greatly exaggerated. The popularity of the pill has been explained by Julia Hogan, a sexual health nurse for Marie Stopes. She states that it is the easiest and most well-known option, and that women are often ill-informed about other options of birth control.(3)
Popping (the) pill - A revolution of female liberation or further disregard for women's bodies?
Although the pill is now safer to use than when it was first produced, there is still a lack of knowledge surrounding its negative side-effects. Barbara Seaman’s revelations in 1969 seem as relevant today as they were then - she blames the medical establishment for “failing women by not informing them of the risks.”(5) It was hailed by earlier feminists as the key to female emancipation, however, my views are much more aligned with Seaman's. I was woefully uninformed when I went on Dianette at 18, which left me depressed, anxious and gaining weight. Every time I have gone to the Doctors to seek medical help for my periods, I have been offered one perfect solution: the pill. I describe my symptoms: severe migraines, cramps that prevent me from going to school/work, normal pain killers having no effect. However my pain is often dismissed, and the pill is the answer to all these female related ailments, a panacea for period problems.
When I reject this wonder drug and ask if there is anything else they can offer me, I am met with sheer bafflement and judgement. When I explain my reticence to tamper with my hormones, they look at me as if I just showed them my very own homemade homeopathy kit.
One doctor listened to my prior experience on the pill and dismissed it stating I had just not found the right one. He said finding the right pill is like trying on a dress, many don’t fit but you will find one that suits you. This statement epitomizes what's wrong: a careless attitude towards women’s bodies and health, comparing trying a life altering drug that can affect the mental and physical well being of a healthy individual to putting on a piece of clothing. Ignoring this absurd comparison, I declined, and left the Doctors. After years of wasted appointments I am now being tested for endometriosis (after finally finding a Doctor who took my pain seriously). Despite continuous and growing evidence that the pill can negatively affect women's mental & physical health, this is still not taken into consideration by the GPs that I have encountered. There is a preference to prescribing the pill over diagnosing the problem.
‘The Greatest Scientific Invention of the 20th Century’
The (period) Pain Gap
This disregard for women’s period pain and experiences on the pill, feeds into a history of dismissing women's symptoms and pain in general. It is well documented that: ‘women wait longer in emergency departments and are less likely to be given effective painkillers than men.’(6) Author Abby Norman highlights this disparity in her book Ask Me About My Uterus, in which she documents her struggle to be taken seriously by health professionals regarding her abdominal pain. She is eventually diagnosed with endometriosis, a painful condition where endometrial tissue grows on other organs than the uterus. It had been misdiagnosed as a urinary tract infection and doctors had tried to tell her that her pain was all in her head. She exposes the problematic relationship between the male dominated medical professionals and ‘women’s issues’. The vaginal mesh scandal is another recent and pressing example of medics disregarding women's pain. The Transvaginal mesh is an implant used to treat stress incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse which can occur after childbirth. However, they are now suspended due to a government review. The mesh has left ‘many women in excruciating pain, suffering long-term health problems’ - some women can no longer walk or have to use crutches and some were left suicidal.(7) Some women have died: Chrissy Brajcic started campaigning against the implants in 2013 after she suffered problems. She later died of sepsis in 2017 because of her implant. Baroness Cumberlage who led a review on the vaginal mesh stated that: ‘vaginal mesh concerns for women have been dismissed by the medical profession for years’.(8) She asserts that the suffering was ‘entirely unavoidable, caused and compounded by failings in the health system itself’.(9) Victims have spoken up about a lack of understanding surrounding women’s health and feelings of abandonment.(10) The report highlights that the women were not given any information on options or risks.(11) This highlights a clear pattern in the way women are treated by the medical profession - ill-informed about the risks and a disregard of their pain. The mesh scandal demonstrates just how rampant and dangerous the dismissal of women’s pain is in the medical world. As Richard Vize in the Guardian states the ‘Pelvic mesh scandal is what happens when men with power ignore women’.(12)
Liv Cassano explains the pain gap as ‘centuries of unconscious bias and a lack of research (which) has created a phenomenon where women are often neglected, misdiagnosed or prescribed the wrong treatment’.(13)
This lack of knowledge surrounding the female body is down to a variety of reasons:
There is still a tendency to view women’s pain as perceived rather than real, dating back to the Victorian era when women's illnesses were viewed as the result of hysteria rather than any physical illness. Today women are more likely to be given sedatives than pain relief, because women's pain is more often dismissed as imaginary.
The fact that women were banned from clinical trials until 1993 because fluctuations in their hormones meant they were viewed as unreliable case studies - therefore a huge mass of medical research is only based on mens physiology and responses to drugs.
This lack of research has huge ramifications for the way women are treated by the medical institution. Less than 2.5% of publicly funded research is dedicated solely to reproductive health’.(15) Andrew Horne, professor of gynaecology at the university of Edinburgh, blames this lack of research due to the fact that the main funding bodies haven’t been interested in reproductive health. Therefore, it is an area of study that has been badly underfunded and little researched. He mentions that 1 in 10 women suffer from endometriosis which is as common as diabetes, yet there is far more funding and research into diabetes than endometriosis.(16) This lack of research into women's reproductive health problems needs to be tackled if the doctors are going to be able to help women effectively - and stop viewing the pill as a magic bullet for the varied menstrual problems women face.
1.http://93778645.weebly.com/dangers-of-the-pill-and-aftermath.html Gaylord Nelson opening statement 1970
4. Women's hour BBC - Listener Week 2020 - paddlesport; the Pill; Nits; Dating over 45
8.Ibid
9.Ibid
11.Ibid
12.Ibid