I was wondering if it is immoral to take birth control to skip or have fewer periods. I’m a lifeguard, but I really hate tampons. I don’t have heavy periods or anything like that, I just hate using tampons. I’m still a virgin and will be until marriage, that is not the reason I’m interested in birth control. Is it all right to take it to have fewer periods? Or, is it still immoral?
Thank you so much for your time in reading this!
~Charlotte
If you had a condition for which ABC could control the symptoms, I would say that it’s not immoral. I’m not sure about using ABC because of being a lifeguard. A priest can better advise whether this would fall under a medical exception.
This is from WebMD. I would take this caution seriously. While some doctors are quick to point out how safe and effective this is, there are others who are not so sure that we have not had enough time yet to discover the long-term consequences of fooling with horomones in such a manner.
"Other doctors, however, urge caution. They say continuous birth control may increase the amount of estrogen and progesterone that some women take in their lifetimes. The health effects of this experiment in convenience may not be known for years. After all, millions of menopausal women took hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for decades before the risks became evident.
If you look at the normal physiology of the menstrual cycle, things like the breasts and the liver need a break from continuous high estrogen, and there’s a break during that time around the menstrual flow," says Jerilynn Prior, MD, a professor of endocrinology at the University of British Columbia. “People who are touting this method say, ‘Well, women years ago didn’t get their periods as much as we do now,’ but it isn’t the same thing.” In the old days, women didn’t get their period as often because they were pregnant or breastfeeding, thus their lifetime estrogen levels were lower than today.
Prior’s colleague, Christine Hitchcock, PhD, researches menstrual cycles and ovulation. She worries that we also don’t know if continuous birth control could affect fertility. “The use of extended birth control pills is suppressing a complex, intricate hormonal system,” she says. “There are no long-term data to show whether changing the schedule of birth control affects how fast your periods come back when you go off, whether they come back, and your level of fertility.”
