This is an interesting piece about a woman who got off The Pill and was happier for it:
I first started taking a combined oral contraceptive, which contains oestrogen and a progestin, three years ago when I was prescribed an older style of pill, known as 'second generation'. Although lots of my friends took the same brand and felt fine, I felt as if I was going crazy.
I went from being a fairly rational person to someone whose emotions spiralled out of control. Anything could set me off. I cried at TV adverts, talk shows and soap operas. I broke down in front of friends. I got moody, lost my temper quickly and started screaming rows with Amit. In the end, my unpredictable moods contributed to the breakdown of our relationship.
However, when I came off it I felt like a mist had lifted. Amit and I got back together, I started a newer 'third generation' brand two years ago, and noticed nothing more until last month. Now I am asking again, did the pill play with my emotions?
It is a difficult question. Despite the fact that it is one of the most researched drugs in the world, it is extremely hard to carry out robust studies around how the pill affects mood.
Anne Szarewski, a specialist in family planning at the Margaret Pyke Centre in London, said there was evidence the wrong type of pill could have a terrible effect: 'On the worst level someone who was reasonably happy suddenly has acne or gets depressed. It can affect everything you do, you can lose confidence in work or in a relationship and that has a piling-up effect.' But 'very few' women who tried hard enough, sometimes trying four or five different types of pill, would not find one to suit them. Maybe I had simply not tried hard enough.
Here's an interesting digression:
One friend, Gemma, came off the pill last January and two weeks later fell pregnant after a one-night stand when she was not using a condom. The result was devastating. 'When I found out, I was five weeks pregnant with twins,' she said. 'I am an assertive, confident woman and know my rights but the experience was atrocious. I was passed from pillar to post by doctors who were all "nice" but failed to help. I felt it took away from the main issue: did I want to keep the child?'
Gemma had an abortion when she was 10 weeks pregnant. 'I had been an absolute mess when I was making the decision. A few hours after it happened I was sobbing and could not move. It was the most incredible sadness I had ever felt.' By the end of last year Gemma's depression was so bad she was unable to leave her flat except for work and last week she started counselling. 'I now see the consequences of unsafe sex,' she said.
No....No such thing as post-traumatic abortion syndrome...no ill effects at all...
source
It contraception, collectively speaking, that makes all these abortions possible. If people refused to use contraception, and thereby curbed their sexual behaviour accordingly, there wouldn't be millions of abortions every year in the Western World. Before the Pill and widespread contraception, there were fewer abortions. The sexual culture that we have is predicated on easy access to contraception and makes abortion "necessary". That's why there are so many of them. If we want to stop abortion, we have to stop the contraceptive mentality, the notion that sex should have no physical consequences. We live by biological myths in this culture.
