Taking The Pill Regardless of Sexual Activity

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adstrinity

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Just came back from my new doctor. Family Practitioner. Was going over some issues with her. Thinks I may have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. Hasn’t yet tested it, I should go to the clinic and get it checked out.

Anyway, she said that should they find anything, they could probably put me on the pill. I cringed. We got to talking and she explained to me that it would not be preventative of a pregnancy but, to treat this issue. …And, if I were ever to get married and pregnant, it would be good to get on the pill to regulate my periods. Basically, getting on birth control would help me get pregnant when I get off it.

I can tell that me not wanting to be on the pill greatly upset her or at least threw a wrench in her thinking because she said, “Why would God allow it to be invented if it wasn’t to help people?” I asked her the same of 8-balls (cocaine).

Anyway, that is right, right? Even if we’re not using it to prevent pregnancy, it’s still a sin, right? Because we’re giving money to those companies and because it’s a treatment but not a diagnosis? A friend of mine’s mother is a nurse and I don’t know if it’s for that reason or because of this woman’s own research but she knows the pill can mess up a body.

What’s the official teaching? …Should I just read On The Theology of the Body again as a refresher?

Thank you muchly.
 
The church prohibits the use of any method to contracept a pregnancy. You have been prescribed a medicine to regulate your menstrual cycle, which has a contraceptive side-effect. I would argue that this is morally justified, because the contraceptive effect is foreseen, but not intended. Moreover, assuming you’re not sexually active, you are not preventing any pregnancies from occurring. If I’m wrong, I’m sure someone will be here to correct me soon.
 
That’s correct. The intention is not contraception, quite to the contrary, the OP mentioned wanting to have children later on and this treatment might help her become more successful.
 
As far as I’m aware the Church doesn’t have a position on using contraceptives for other purposes.

But as said you are giving money to companies that produce the drugs and that could be wrong.

Your freind is quite right contraceptives prevent pregnancy by strong chemicals that altar your fertility cycle. The chemicals can stay in your body for years. This may make it hard/impossible to conceive in the future. Try and do some reaserch into this.

There’s another potential danger, once you use something like this, even if it is for a good purpose, you may become used to it and desensitised to how bad it is. After some time, you could think I’ve taken it this long there’s nothing wrong with it. It could be the start of a slipery slope.
 
Thank you all for the replies thus far. I will look for more replies and do some of my own research as well.

For Newbie2, and others, I don’t think I want children. At least not now. I don’t know what the future holds but, I don’t have anybody I’m seeing let alone dating right now, so, marriage is off for a while (unless my parent’s arrange it or there’s some Las Vegas bender in the future), meaning, I am not planning to have children at the moment. I’m happy being single, having my time, and my own place.
 
It has been argued taht birth control pills are supposedly abortifacients. Abortion is always a sin. So if these pills could cause an abortion, how can they be ok to take?
 
Lee_M said:
It has been argued taht birth control pills are supposedly abortifacients. Abortion is always a sin. So if these pills could cause an abortion, how can they be ok to take?
Click to expand...
Because I’m a virgin and intend to stay that way in the near future.
 
Michael1985 said:
As far as I’m aware the Church doesn’t have a position on using contraceptives for other purposes.
Click to expand...
Actually it is quite clear that when used to treat another condition, they are allowed.
But as said you are giving money to companies that produce the drugs and that could be wrong.
Click to expand...
By that argument almost all drugs could be off limits since many pharmacutical companies produce drugs in many different areas.
Your freind is quite right contraceptives prevent pregnancy by strong chemicals that altar your fertility cycle. The chemicals can stay in your body for years. This may make it hard/impossible to conceive in the future. Try and do some reaserch into this.
Click to expand...
The existing condition, if left untreated, could make it difficult or even impossible to conceive in the future. It also puts women at an increased risk for diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers.

Further the fertility cycle is already altered and her hormones are off balance.

In other word, most of the sympthoms of the disease are actually worse than the general risks associated with Birth Control Pills.
There’s another potential danger, once you use something like this, even if it is for a good purpose, you may become used to it and desensitised to how bad it is. After some time, you could think I’ve taken it this long there’s nothing wrong with it. It could be the start of a slipery slope.
Click to expand...
The key issue here is intent. If taken as a treatment for a disease, there is nothing wrong with taking the pill. Its, in my opinion, quite a leap to argue that an otherwise good woman will start using it for contraception simply because she had been using it to treat a real medical condition.

–
Bill
 
Protect your body - the World Health Organization lists the pill as a carcinogen. In addition woman on the pill don’t like their husbands much.
 
You will probably hear shortly from people who can explain it better but you are being given a standrad line from the doctor that a lot of women with PCOS hear. You might want to consider talking to another doctor who is more pro-life. There is nothign morally wrong with taking a drug to treat a condition. However, the pill does not cure PCOS, it simply masks the symptoms and makes them less. There are other treatments available that do not have the same side effects, but the average doctor will not even mention them because it is simply so easy to prescribe the pill and to them, why bother with anything else?
 
Michael1985 said:
As far as I’m aware the Church doesn’t have a position on using contraceptives for other purposes.

But as said you are giving money to companies that produce the drugs and that could be wrong.

Your freind is quite right contraceptives prevent pregnancy by strong chemicals that altar your fertility cycle. The chemicals can stay in your body for years. This may make it hard/impossible to conceive in the future. Try and do some reaserch into this.

There’s another potential danger, once you use something like this, even if it is for a good purpose, you may become used to it and desensitised to how bad it is. After some time, you could think I’ve taken it this long there’s nothing wrong with it. It could be the start of a slipery slope.
Click to expand...
You make the a priori assumption that taking such medications for a purpose other than for contraception is bad…how is it “bad”?
adstrinity said:
Thank you all for the replies thus far. I will look for more replies and do some of my own research as well.

For Newbie2, and others, I don’t think I want children. At least not now. I don’t know what the future holds but, I don’t have anybody I’m seeing let alone dating right now, so, marriage is off for a while (unless my parent’s arrange it or there’s some Las Vegas bender in the future), meaning, I am not planning to have children at the moment. I’m happy being single, having my time, and my own place.
Click to expand...
My bad…I assumed. 😊
Lee_M said:
It has been argued taht birth control pills are supposedly abortifacients. Abortion is always a sin. So if these pills could cause an abortion, how can they be ok to take?
Click to expand...
Purposeful abortion is a sin. If one needs to be on such meds and an unintended abortion occurs, it is not sinful. However, it would have to be an interesting set of circumstances where a married couple would be on the meds not knowing of a possible abortion consequence.

But in this situation, the OP would not be taking them as a contraceptive i.e. is not having relations and is not at risk for the abortifacient side effect.
 
My wife has PCOS and her doctor pretty much told her the birth control pill was the only solution.

After some research she discovered that there are other ways to help with PCOS, the biggest being diet. You can find numerous PCOS diet cookbooks for sale on amazon or elsewhere. Do some research online and invest in some good books. Apart from any moral implications the pill can cause some physical problems down the road especially as you get older.
 
Hon,

I have PCOS, I know your pain 😦 It is perfectly fine to take the combined pill to ease the symptoms (thank Heavens) as you are not intentionally taking the Pill in order to prevent pregnancy. There are lots of other things you can do, like eating well (try and cut out fatty acids and too many carbohydrates) and exercising regularly can help control some of the symptoms, but the Pill will sort out your hormonal imbalance. 👍
buffalo said:
Protect your body - the World Health Organization lists the pill
as a carcinogen. In addition woman on the pill don’t like their husbands much.
Click to expand...
Johnson’s Baby Shampoo has listed ingredients that are carcinogens. Some toothpastes/ hair dyes and shampoos have carciogens in them, FOOD can be carcinogenic. Some medicines, including certain pain-relieving drugs have known carginogens in them. EVERYTHING in the whole wide world could give you cancer, or you could get it for no apparent reason. The risk of getting breast cancer from taking the Pill increases slightly whilst you are taking it, the risks for other cancers are reduced whilst taking the combined pill (womb and ovarian cancer risks can be decreased by almost half). Once you stop taking it, your risks return to normal.

The OP stated that she was SINGLE, therefore she does not have a husband to offend, and how do you know that women who take the pill don’t love their husbands? What an awful, judgemental thing to say!
 
Karoline said:
Hon,

I have PCOS, I know your pain 😦 It is perfectly fine to take the combined pill to ease the symptoms (thank Heavens) as you are not intentionally taking the Pill in order to prevent pregnancy. There are lots of other things you can do, like eating well (try and cut out fatty acids and too many carbohydrates) and exercising regularly can help control some of the symptoms, but the Pill will sort out your hormonal imbalance. 👍

Johnson’s Baby Shampoo has listed ingredients that are carcinogens. Some toothpastes/ hair dyes and shampoos have carciogens in them, FOOD can be carcinogenic. Some medicines, including certain pain-relieving drugs have known carginogens in them. EVERYTHING in the whole wide world could give you cancer, or you could get it for no apparent reason. The risk of getting breast cancer from taking the Pill increases slightly whilst you are taking it, the risks for other cancers are reduced whilst taking the combined pill (womb and ovarian cancer risks can be decreased by almost half). Once you stop taking it, your risks return to normal.

The OP stated that she was SINGLE, therefore she does not have a husband to offend, and how do you know that women who take the pill don’t love their husbands? What an awful, judgemental thing to say!
Click to expand...
The Pill Makes Women Pick Bad Mates
 
adstrinity said:
Because I’m a virgin and intend to stay that way in the near future.
Click to expand...
I didn’t mean it towards you. I was just responding to some of the other answers. If people who are engaged in sexual activity but taking the pill as treatment for something else, I still don’t see how they would be allowed just because it is a treatment for an illness even if it resulted in the abortion of an embryo.
 
Lee_M said:
I didn’t mean it towards you. I was just responding to some of the other answers. If people who are engaged in sexual activity but taking the pill as treatment for something else, I still don’t see how they would be allowed just because it is a treatment for an illness even if it resulted in the abortion of an embryo.
Click to expand...
There are a whole lot of medications that could possibly prevent a blastocyst from implanting. There are even studies that suggest that too much caffeine can cause early miscarriages. Yet we don’t see people protesting Starbucks. I have never understood why we have to worry more about the side effects of the pill when there is a slim chance it might alter the lining of the uterus and prevent implantation. I only ask because I am really curious about this. Does anyone know of any books or papers in Moral Theology that treat this subject in detail?

As for taking medications that might prevent implantion the principle of double effect is applied. You are taking a medication to treat a disease but don’t intend on inflicting any harm. Any harm that comes about from taking the medication is an unintended side effect, so the intent is not to procure an abortion but only to treat a illness.
 
I have PCOS too, and I spent over 10 years dealing with doctors who offered nothing but the pill. Very frustrating.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking it for this reason, especially as a single, unmarried person. But it’s mainly used for symptom relief, not actual treatment. (And, I think there’s some debate about whether it can actually make PCOS worse.)

I ended up getting treatment through the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha. They treat PCOS without the pill. 👍
 
adstrinity said:
Just came back from my new doctor. Family Practitioner. Was going over some issues with her. Thinks I may have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. Hasn’t yet tested it, I should go to the clinic and get it checked out.

Anyway, she said that should they find anything, they could probably put me on the pill. I cringed. We got to talking and she explained to me that it would not be preventative of a pregnancy but, to treat this issue. …And, if I were ever to get married and pregnant, it would be good to get on the pill to regulate my periods. Basically, getting on birth control would help me get pregnant when I get off it.

I can tell that me not wanting to be on the pill greatly upset her or at least threw a wrench in her thinking because she said, “Why would God allow it to be invented if it wasn’t to help people?” I asked her the same of 8-balls (cocaine).

Anyway, that is right, right? Even if we’re not using it to prevent pregnancy, it’s still a sin, right? Because we’re giving money to those companies and because it’s a treatment but not a diagnosis? A friend of mine’s mother is a nurse and I don’t know if it’s for that reason or because of this woman’s own research but she knows the pill can mess up a body.

What’s the official teaching? …Should I just read On The Theology of the Body again as a refresher?

Thank you muchly.
Click to expand...
I’m trying to get the contraceptive pill made illegal in this country. Not yet but soon I will with the help of a confessor. I personally wouldn’t take it under any circumstance. The combined contraceptive pill (estrogen and progesterone) stops you ovulating so it seems dangerous to me to take it when you may already be suffering from infertility. It also contains synthetic hormones which could interfere with meiosis or genetic division of sex cells. I think there’s probably an increased risk of Down Syndrome with the pill according to some sources. Estrogen in particular plays a role in genetic maturation of egg cells. Ignore the Church’s teaching. It’s very bad for health. Here’s an interesting article:

IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF ESTROGEN-MEDIATED EFFECTS ON FEMALE MEIOSIS: STUDIES OF BISPHENOL A AND ESTROGEN RECEPTORS (2007)
Susiarjo, Martha

Abstract
The meiotic process in female mammals is unique: Oocytes initiate the prophase events of pairing, synapsis, and recombination during fetal development, arrest at late prophase around birth, and resume and complete the first meiotic division prior to ovulation, years or decades later. This process requires a complex coordination of genetic factors and is responsive to environmental influences. During the course of meiotic studies in our laboratory, we have uncovered estrogenic effects at different stages of oocyte development. Fetal exposure to the environmental estrogen bisphenol A (BPA) impairs synapsis and recombination in the developing oocyte. These prophase defects are correlated with increased aneuploidy in oocytes and embryos from adult females exposed in utero. To study the mechanism of action of BPA, we have analyzed mice lacking the two known estrogen receptors (ERs), ER alpha and ER beta. The phenotype of ER beta null females is identical to BPA-exposed females, suggesting that BPA acts by disrupting ER beta-mediated effects in the developing ovary. Our data implicate a role of ER beta-mediated estrogen action at the onset of oocyte development, at a time when the oocyte is not yet enclosed in the primordial follicle. Lack of ER beta in the developing fetal ovary profoundly compromises the genetic quality of oocytes. Additionally, ER beta mediates estrogen action during the late stage of oocyte growth, as our preliminary data demonstrate that absence or reduced levels of ER beta increases the level of aneuploidy by disrupting metaphase events. In summary, this thesis presents evidence that estrogen plays critical roles during the early and late stages of oocyte development, and demonstrates that exposure to estrogenic substances during the fetal or postnatal development can profoundly affect the genetic quality of the oocyte.

en.scientificcommons.org/16435808
 
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