Flipside: All about Birth Control Pills

As I mentioned yesterday, birth control pills are tricky in the fact that different pills do different things, depending on what is put into them.

This is also a tricky subject because many people disagree on how birth control pills work.  So I’ll tackle this subject delicately, leaving my personal opinion out of it.

Forms

We think of hormonal birth control as coming in pill form, but it doesn’t always.  Examples are IUDs, patches, shots and implants.  It’s just a different delivery mechanism of how to get the hormones into the body and at what frequency.  So, when I talk about birth control pills, keep that in mind that it doesn’t mean just pills.  It just makes it easier for me to talk about it that way.

How they work

There are usually 2 synthetic (man-made) hormones in birth control pill: estrogen and progestin.  These do different things.

Estrogen:
Normally, in the middle of a woman’s cycle, her estrogen levels jump up.  That jump causes ovulation to happen (among other things).  The estrogen that comes in the pill keeps estrogen levels more consistent so that there isn’t a jump.  Without the jump, the pituitary gland doesn’t give the ovaries the signal to release an egg.  No ovulation.

Progestin:
Normally, as part of a woman’s cycle, the lining of her uterus thickens so that if an egg gets fertilized and tries to stick, it has something to stick to.  Progestin works to thin the uterus lining so that is less likely to happen.

Also as part of a woman’s cycle, her body produces a mucus. It happens because of hormones.  Progestin will cause this mucus to thicken, which can make it more difficult for sperm to enter the uterus.

So, birth control pills are thought to prevent pregnancy in several ways:

1. Prevent ovulation            (because of the estrogen)       Affecting step 1 from yesterday.
2. Thin the uterus                (because of the progestin)      Affecting step 4 from yesterday.
3. Thicken cervical mucus  (because of the progestin)      Affecting step 2 from yesterday.

Pill Make-Up

Birth control pills come in 2 make ups:
1) Those that have just progestin.
2) Those that have both estrogen and progestin.  Those are called combination pills. 

Because combination pills have both hormones, they’re considered more effective – which is common sense because it’s only with estrogen that you prevent ovulation.

Why Not?

So, if this is how they work, why do some people object to them?

Different people have their reasons.  Some don’t like the fact that they are artificial hormones.  They just simply don’t like taking pills or medicines when they don’t have to.

Some people believe that birth control pills are abortifacient, which is a big fancy word for saying that something “might, possibly, it-could-happen cause an abortion”.  To them, they would say that life begins as soon as a sperm fertilized an egg (even before it has a chance to implant – Step 3 from yesterday) and if you’re taking or doing anything that could systematically cause that egg to be destroyed, then that’s an abortion.  So, for them, any pills that contain progestin (which is all of them), it is possible for that to occur.  So, for that very reason, they will not go this route.  Randy Alcorn has written much on this here.  Check it out if you’re at all curious.  Some people say that the chances are so remote, so unlikely that it’s not really a risk.  Since the primary way the pill works is to prevent ovulation, they believe this to be incredibly unlikely.  Others would say: “Do I really want to take a chance?”  That’s up to you.

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