What You Weren't Told About the Pill - by Camille Saunders

TW: breast cancer

It’s time to talk about what we’ve been taught is the fairy godmother of modern feminism, The Pill. Introduced in the UK for married women in 1961 and extended to single women by prescription in 1974, it has undoubtedly advanced the social rights of women to allow them to enjoy sex without the risk of an unplanned pregnancy. Essentially, it does the same job as a man wearing a condom, except it doesn’t protect from STDs and comes with a host of side effects. Luckily, it doesn’t make men feel emasculated so it’s all worth it.

Many of us will have heard of the link between women taking the first versions of the combined pill and contracting breast cancer later in life. However, while I thought this link no longer existed (and as I was assured by every GP I’ve asked), according to the NHS, “research shows that women who take the contraceptive pill have a slightly increased risk of developing breast cancer. However, the risk starts to decrease once you stop taking the pill, and your risk of breast cancer is back to normal 10 years after stopping.”[1] While, like me, you might be focussed on the fact it will take 10 years after stopping the pill to get back to the normal likelihood of breast cancer, let’s not forget the “slightly increased risk”, which varies between negligible to up to 30% depending on which papers you read, while others say that the combined pill cannot initiate tumours, only aggravate existing ones.

All of this stems from a gaping lack of research into women’s health problems, not only in how best to cure them, but apparently also in developing drugs that don’t actively make them worse, so much so that something as critical as its link with breast cancer is so little investigated that the statistics vary by up to 30%.

For example, due to the lack of research into endometriosis (which you can learn more about in our episode on it here), the pill is the only thing that can currently help, as it is easier to prescribe the “women’s medication” for all women’s health problems than actually develop a specific drug to fix each one. Unsurprisingly, this causes more problems that then still don’t have a cure. For example, between the heavy blood flow caused by endometriosis which is usually roughly double that of a normal period, and the tricycled pill stopping you from shedding this for 3 months at a time, you can then experience large fibrous clots that in every way resemble having a miscarriage. For me, it came with a month of bleeding despite still taking the pill every day, 3 nights of no sleep due to the pain, and hours spent each day writhing on the ground screaming at the floor. Perhaps if there were as much research going into endometriosis as there are for erection disorders, which to my knowledge don’t cause this kind of pain, this wouldn’t be something that we’re just expected to deal with.

The dangers of the pill were put into sharp focus during the Covid pandemic with the fear of getting a blood clot after getting the vaccine. According to the UK Government official website, the risk of the vaccine giving you a blood clot was 1.8 in 1,000,000.[2]According to the National Blood Clot Alliance, the risk of the combined pill giving women a blood clot is 1 in 3,000.[3]One was cancelled and led to millions of people rioting against it despite it saving their lives, and the other is regularly prescribed to women all over the world either so their boyfriend doesn’t have to put on a condom, or in the hope that it can help you postpone a problem that it mostly fixes and sometimes makes worse.

All of this is in addition to the other, non-life-threatening side-effects that mean that taking the pill is in no way an easy fix. Because it throws off your hormones, it can fix hormonal acne, and over time make endo cramps lessen. However, it can also make your skin worse and I still need a whole TENS machine to manage my cramps. It can make you lose weight, but it can also make you gain weight; women all over TikTok are recording their weight gain, including one showing herself go from a size 8 to a size 14 since beginning taking the combined pill. It can hurt when you’re too full and when you’re hungry, when you need the toilet and when you’ve just been. Much like pregnancy, it can change your sense of smell, and make you nauseous at the thought of eating your favourite dishes. You can come to hate your own smell, and no amount of showers or perfume helps. Other women have even come off the pill after years and broken up with their significant other because they couldn’t stand the way they now smelled, or because their hormones had changed their whole personality and they were no longer compatible. Some women have reported losing chunks of their hair, not to mention the week-long nausea that comes at the beginning of a new pill cycle.

Therefore, while the pill has undoubtedly helped women take control of their pregnancies, the onus should not be on women to put their bodies through this mess rather than the options for male contraception which don’t come close to these lists of side-effects. It is every woman’s choice what she does with her body, but when all the options are bad and nobody’s making it better, it’s not much of a decision and more of an obligation. All I would suggest is that you don’t believe the hype. Taking the pill can fix your problems, but more often than not it can also give you new ones. Therefore, you should always think twice before jumping on board with the medical fairy godmother when she usually turns out to be the big bad wolf.

by Camille Saunders

[1] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/breast-cancer/causes/#:~:text=Research%20shows%20that%20women%20who,normal%2010%20years%20after%20stopping.

[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccination-blood-clotting-information-for-healthcare-professionals/information-for-healthcare-professionals-on-blood-clotting-following-covid-19-vaccination

[3] https://www.stoptheclot.org/learn_more/womens_health_faq/