A Miracle… Right?

The Washington Post reports on the latest innovation in gynecology: A pill called Lybrel that eliminates menstruation altogether. You might say, of course, that generic birth control pills have been doing essentially this for quite some time now, but what’s an extra few hundred million dollars to American consumers…?

The article summarizes my instinctive ambivalence to this development pretty well. A medication that relieves a natural process that, for some women, is unbearably painful and “unpleasant” is completely fine by me. On the other hand, there’s a subtle insinuation of the [insert uncomfortable pause] mysterious, um, period as an ailment to be avoided – not exactly a victory for women everywhere.