Women are complaining of a “shocking gender inequity” because some insurance companies that will cover Viagra for men will not cover birth control pills for women. After all, they say, thirty years of buying The Pill will cost a women close to $5000. According to the ACLU, women of reproductive age pay 68% more than men in out-of-pocket health care costs.

The men have something broken that they want fixed. The women, on the other hand, have something fixed that they want broken. They want their fertility destroyed. The men want a medicine. The women want a drug that does nothing at all to promote wellness and has many harmful effects. Women who would not consider polluting the environment are willing to pollute the “ecosystem” of their own bodies in such as fashion that every cell of every organ is affected. With good reason Dr. Herbert Ratner has called birth control pills “chemical warfare against women.” Obviously he has a different perspective than the women clamoring for The Pill. Why?

The pill has numerous side-effects: migraines, blood clots, increased susceptibility to infection and to sexually-transmitted diseases, tubal pregnancy, depression, and on and on. Just read the insert that comes with the pills. Dentists, for example, are aware that a very painful dry socket is twice as likely if extractions are done while taking The Pill. Several studies have shown that the increased incidence of breast cancer correlates with the increased use of oral contraceptives. A McGill University study reported a 40% decline in sex drive in women tho took The Pill compared to those who took a placebo. The pill is more hazardous for patients who smoke or have diabetes or have elevated cholesterol.

Japan is one of the few industrialized countries that has never legalized The Pill. Besides the numerous side-effects, one of the reasons given is the fear that the powerful hormones in the pill will enter the food chain via the urine. If you think this is far-fetched, consider the fact that 14.5 million German women take the pill and therefore excrete female hormones in their urine. Coincidentally, scientists in Dresden have found estrogen in the drinking water and postulate that this may be a cause of feminization of males. (The poor things are already getting female hormones in their beef and chicken!)

It is against the law to provide steroids to young males. Teenage girls, on the other hand, can be provided similar products without the knowledge or consent of their parents. The younger the girl when she starts the pill, the more susceptible she is to bodily harm. And she is usually too young to have any idea that the pill does not render sex safe. The statistics demonstrating the increase in teenage pregnancies and abortions with the increase in contraceptive information and availability are shocking!

There was a time when a girl could say “No” to her boyfriend without his feeling personally rejected because neither of them was ready to deal with pregnancy. We have taken that power, that “escape hatch,” that reason for abstinence, away from her! Now school-based clinics, her doctor, or even (God help us) her own mother, provide her with the pill. With the pill comes an illusion of safety and at the same time tacit permission. If she forgets to take the pill a single day, or doesn’t take it at the same time each day, or takes some drug that interferes with its efficacy, the next thing you know she’s pregnant. A medical director of Planned Parenthood wrote in 1991: “more than 3 million unplanned pregnancies occur each year to American women, two-thirds of which are due to contraceptive failure.” Of course The Pill provides no protection whatever from sexually-transmitted disease and if she doesn’t get pregnant she gets chlamydia (or some other ugly disease) and becomes infertile.

It is certainly a boon to the manufacturers of contraceptives (700 billion dollars a year) to have millions of women taking The Pill daily but it is hardly a boon to womankind. After years of such abuse can a woman really expect her body to snap back and produce a baby on demand? Perhaps this is why some doctors are talking about an “epidemic” of infertility. A woman can expect six months to a year of relative infertility when she goes off The Pill.

The pill fails to prevent pregnancy 6% of the time, even if taken regularly. The makers of the “mini-pill” claim it does not have the side-effects of earlier pills. What they do not tell you is that it does not stop ovulation at all in 67-81% of women who use it. The result is “breakthrough” ovulation with the possibility of conception which is then followed by the death of this newly-conceived human due to the effect of the pill on the tubes and uterus. The woman never knows that she had been pregnant for day or two. I have seen estimates for such early abortions ranging from 588,000 to 14,700,000 annually in women on The Pill in the USA.

Fertility is not a disease. Women release one egg a month which lives about 24 hours. They are only fertile about one week per month. You’d think they could work around that window of fertility and spare themselves the physical and monetary costs of being on drugs. Actually, they could, if they really wanted to. Natural Family Planning teaches women how to recognize their fertile time so that they can achieve or avoid pregnancy, whichever is desired.

In September 1993 there was an article in the British Medical Journal by endocrinologist Dr. R. E. J. Ryder reporting studies showing that even in third world countries determining the time of ovulation can be easily taught so that regardless of culture and education women could achieve a 98.82% success in avoiding pregnancy. In closing, he wrote “it is important that the misconception that Catholicism is synonymous with ineffective birth control is laid to rest.” The Catholic Church has always forbidden intercourse artificially thwarted with plugs, drugs, jams, jellies, or whatever. On the other hand, birth control by abstaining from sex during the fertile time is not only permitted but is as effective as any artificial means.

Catholicism aside, there is much to be said for living in harmony with nature. In fact, some of the material in this article comes from literature put out by Protestants Against Birth Control. There is an old saying to the effect that God always forgives, man sometimes, forgives, but Nature never forgives. You trifle with Mother Nature at your own peril. Powerful vested interests want to see women on The Pill as soon and as long as possible. Unfortunately, Nature has no lobby.

If Viagra will help some men to function normally, so be it. On the other hand, we need to face the fact that no woman on the pill is functioning normally. Between pre-menopausal women on the birth control pill and post-menopausal women on estrogen replacement therapy, it seems that the “natural woman” if fast becoming an endangered species. I wonder — can we really outsmart Nature?