It's A Conspiracy
Actually, likely a business understanding between pharmaceutical manufacturers, lawmakers and the pharmacists who dole out prescriptions which amenable physicians scribble in a danse macabre of controlling the lives of women's reproductive rights.
As liberating as the birth control pill became in freeing women from concerns with respect to unplanned pregnancies, and in regularizing their menstrual periods and flows and the pain of that many women experienced as well, it remained a benefit that required the intervention of a medical doctor.
Perhaps at its initiation when the balance between the artificial hormones used had the capacity to complicate women's health issues through the very real potential of dangerous side effects, that kind of monitoring made good sense. Now, with a much safer product, it no longer makes good sense.
There are some chronic health conditions that mitigate against the use of birth control pills. That kind of forewarning, printed on the product packaging should suffice to warn women against its use and/or seek a physician's advice.
It no longer makes any sense for women to continue having to see a physician, for the protocol of physical checks, presentation of a prescription at a pharmacy counter. Physical check-ups are intrusive and many women hate them. Having to constantly renew prescriptions represents another nuisance in a busy woman's life, necessitating she make another appointment for yet another physical before the renewed prescription clasped in her hot hand can be turned over to the dispensing pharmacist.
This is society treating women as though they are immature dependents, incapable of making decisions for themselves. It is past time - as many women now begin to assert themselves in a growing movement to set aside regulatory imperatives of the oral pill - to make the product available as yet another over-the-counter convenience.
The editor of the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada, an expert in reproduction health, admits it to be paternalistic that this self-administered birth control continue to be available only at a doctor's discretion. When potentially health-harmful products like some pain relievers, like tobacco products, analgesics, are available as over-the-counter products, why not birth control pills?
When women find themselves suddenly faced with the prospect of having inadequately planned, and off somewhere far from home without the needed supply of pills, they should be able to enter any pharmacy and pick up what they need without having to supply a prescription, without having to worry about a doctor appointment, and a physical.
Law-makers and the medical fraternity should respect women enough to recognize they are capable of monitoring their own health issues, and to permit them to make their own life choices.
Canadian retail drug stores last year alone filled 10.3 million prescriptions for the pill, statistics tracked by IMS Health Canada. Oral contraceptives are among the top 20 most-prescribed medications, useful not just as a contraceptive but to help control abnormal menstrual conditions. The current pill has been found to reduce the risk of ovarian cancers.
Federal drug regulators should be on their toes on this one, ready to react to a growing demand for loosening restrictive policies. And the country's pharmacies should prepare themselves for the prospect of losing control of what is currently an unneeded impediment to women's freedoms to self-prescribe.
And deal with the concurrent lost revenues.
As liberating as the birth control pill became in freeing women from concerns with respect to unplanned pregnancies, and in regularizing their menstrual periods and flows and the pain of that many women experienced as well, it remained a benefit that required the intervention of a medical doctor.
Perhaps at its initiation when the balance between the artificial hormones used had the capacity to complicate women's health issues through the very real potential of dangerous side effects, that kind of monitoring made good sense. Now, with a much safer product, it no longer makes good sense.
There are some chronic health conditions that mitigate against the use of birth control pills. That kind of forewarning, printed on the product packaging should suffice to warn women against its use and/or seek a physician's advice.
It no longer makes any sense for women to continue having to see a physician, for the protocol of physical checks, presentation of a prescription at a pharmacy counter. Physical check-ups are intrusive and many women hate them. Having to constantly renew prescriptions represents another nuisance in a busy woman's life, necessitating she make another appointment for yet another physical before the renewed prescription clasped in her hot hand can be turned over to the dispensing pharmacist.
This is society treating women as though they are immature dependents, incapable of making decisions for themselves. It is past time - as many women now begin to assert themselves in a growing movement to set aside regulatory imperatives of the oral pill - to make the product available as yet another over-the-counter convenience.
The editor of the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada, an expert in reproduction health, admits it to be paternalistic that this self-administered birth control continue to be available only at a doctor's discretion. When potentially health-harmful products like some pain relievers, like tobacco products, analgesics, are available as over-the-counter products, why not birth control pills?
When women find themselves suddenly faced with the prospect of having inadequately planned, and off somewhere far from home without the needed supply of pills, they should be able to enter any pharmacy and pick up what they need without having to supply a prescription, without having to worry about a doctor appointment, and a physical.
Law-makers and the medical fraternity should respect women enough to recognize they are capable of monitoring their own health issues, and to permit them to make their own life choices.
Canadian retail drug stores last year alone filled 10.3 million prescriptions for the pill, statistics tracked by IMS Health Canada. Oral contraceptives are among the top 20 most-prescribed medications, useful not just as a contraceptive but to help control abnormal menstrual conditions. The current pill has been found to reduce the risk of ovarian cancers.
Federal drug regulators should be on their toes on this one, ready to react to a growing demand for loosening restrictive policies. And the country's pharmacies should prepare themselves for the prospect of losing control of what is currently an unneeded impediment to women's freedoms to self-prescribe.
And deal with the concurrent lost revenues.
posted by Pieface @ 6:04 PM
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