Women and Oral Contraceptives

Oral contraceptives are one of those things that modern science has brought to help women bear the burden of pregnancy, helping women to better direct their fate by placing greater control of their reproduction in their hands. In some instances, a woman may wish to defer child bearing especially when childbearing years are so close to each other that they are likely to imperil the woman’s health in the long run. As such, the one thing that woman consult are birth control measures.

There are plenty of options relating to birth control, and oral contraceptives are just one of them. More popularly known as pills, oral contraceptives are used by more than half of women who use birth control methods. Moreover, if they are used correctly, some estimates of their efficiency have been variously estimated at around 90 percent.

The Common Forms of Oral Contraceptives

Oral contraceptives for women are available in the following forms:

1) Combined oral contraceptive pill. The combined oral contraceptive pill is more popularly known simply as “the pill.” It is a combination of estrogen and progestin, and it is taken orally to inhibit normal female fertility. This form of contraceptive is one of the oldest around, their use dating back to the 1960s. The pill is used more often by women in Western countries where 12 million women in the U.S. use it while the figure for Britain is 25 percent of the women population in their childbearing years. On the contrary, Eastern countries do not find the pill too attractive: it is virtually unknown in most Asian countries, and even in Japan, the most advanced of Asian nations, only 1 percent of the female population use it.

2) Progestogen-only pills are also known as mini pills. Unlike in the combined oral contraceptive pill, only progestogens are taken while the estrogen is left out of the equation. One advantage of the progesterone pills and the combined oral contraceptive pill is that they seem to work well on individuals even with migraines and seem to have no negative side effects on most women.

3) The next common oral contraceptive is the Mifepristone. It is a synthetic compound used as abortifacient during the first two months of pregnancy and taken in small doses as emergency contraceptive. In its role as an emergency contraceptive, it can prevent ovulation and so eliminate pregnancy if it is taken before ovulation even after sexual intercourse. The drug was made and developed in France in the 1980s and marketed worldwide under different names.

4) Ormeloxifene. . It is a selective estrogen receptor modulator, which is taken one to two times per week. It is a non-hormonal and non-steroidal oral contraceptive. Though the product is touted to be very effective, the time by which it is taken has a huge impact on its effectivity. The pill should be taken twice in a week at the same time because a difference of a few hours is enough to reduce its efficiency.

Oral contraceptives are now made even more popular because of efforts to help women get more protection during pregnancy. However, the major consideration in choosing which oral contraceptive to use is the health of the woman. No reason is reason enough to imperil a woman’s health.