Naturally Female

Freedom & Empowerment Are Found in Embracing How We’re Made

In a recent issue of America, Pia de Solenni opens with an unlikely bit by female comic Taylor Tomlinson. For those not familiar with Tomlinson, she’s not known for her conservative bent. Like most comedians, Tomlinson tells her share of raunchy jokes, and she has spoken openly about leaving the Christianity of her upbringing.¹ Nonetheless, in a video short, Tomlinson quips, “I’d love to get off birth control, because I’d love to meet me, you know?”

Not quite what you’d expect from a secular comedienne.

Souring on the Pill

Tomlinson then asks her audience, “Has anyone in here gotten off birth control? How did that go for you?” One audience member said she broke up with her boyfriend of six years. Another said that her sense of smell changed. To which Tomlinson answered, “When I was on birth control, he smelled like my future. Now, he smells like the past.”

It’s a funny clip, and Pia de Solenni uses it to make some interesting observations. The title says it all: “Catholic teaching on birth control is unpopular. So why is pop culture starting to agree with it?” The public is becoming more wary of hormonal contraceptives, while interest in non-hormonal types of birth control, known as “fertility awareness methods” or FAM, is skyrocketing. There are currently over 400 apps on the market that help women track their cycles, and more than 100 million women are using them worldwide.

Even women’s soccer has gotten on board. Dawn Scott, high-performance coach for the U.S. Women’s National Team, worked with researchers for help in understanding how her team members’ menstrual cycles affected their athletic performance, and she tailored nutrition and training to her players’ individual bodies. Scott credits this as part of the toolbox that helped the team win the 2019 World Cup.²

Why the interest in tracking? First is the obvious: birth control is bad for you, and cycle tracking is a healthy alternative. Hormonal contraceptives have long been known to bring a host of unwelcome side effects and risks—mood swings, nausea, cramping, breast tenderness, blood clots, migraines, deep vein thrombosis, stroke, and even increased rates of autoimmune diseases, heart disease, and cancer. They have also been linked to increased rates of depression and anxiety, which should come as no surprise, seeing as they operate by altering a woman’s natural hormonal balances—a process that changes her very brain structures.³ All of this might explain why, when Margaret Sanger and Gregory Pincus were first developing the hormonal contraceptive pill back in the 1950s, they had to recruit poverty-stricken women from Puerto Rico and even women from American asylums to serve as test subjects. Healthy American women would not have put up with the side effects—nor would they have remained silent about them.⁴

For decades, medicine’s answer to most female complaints has been birth control. Whether a patient is facing irregular cycles, painful cramping, or heavy periods, the first solution offered is usually hormonal birth control. If she doesn’t like the side effects, her physician might switch the brand, but not question the contraceptive itself as the source of the problem. The general consensus has been, “It’s better than getting pregnant, right?”

To be fair, for some, birth control does help with these complaints. But at what cost? There is growing recognition in the public sphere that a drug that touches literally every system of a woman’s body might be a powerful and dangerous thing. There is also the risk that, when one does want to conceive, it won’t be as simple as “flipping a switch” and stopping your birth control method of choice. There are a host of hormonal and other physiological reasons why a woman may struggle to get pregnant. If her body had been allowed to operate naturally, she may have recognized signs that something was amiss. But when symptoms are masked, too often the result is confusion and heartache when a pregnancy doesn’t happen as planned.

Free to Be Female

For too long, women have bought the lie that to function in America, it is best to effectively operate like a male. Turn off some of the stuff that comes from being biologically a female and turn it on again when it’s time to have a baby. Abort when you get pregnant at an inconvenient time. Freeze your eggs to preserve the chance of pregnancy. Use IVF when you can’t conceive naturally. Women are beginning to reject this package, and for good reason. There is always the temptation to “play God” by trying to alter the reality around us, but the greater wisdom lies in seeking a deeper understanding of our biology.

I have learned, as a woman, that I am more capable when I understand my limitations, physical or otherwise. I used to be a runner. Then, with my fourth pregnancy, I injured my foot and hips. I could pay thousands to try to fix and push through these issues, while taking ibuprofen every night to handle the pain. But I’m trying to listen to my body and treat it more gently.

Instead of running, I’m discovering the trails in the mountains around our home, and hiking has become my preferred form of relaxation and exercise. I used to assume I couldn’t handle the pain of natural childbirth, but then my third child came faster than I could have expected, and it became one of the more empowering moments of my life. There is great value in understanding when, during a certain month, I can tackle the world, and when I’d be better served by getting some extra rest, catching up on more mundane tasks, and allowing the kids and myself some extra grace. I became a writer, in part, because I knew I wanted to be a mom. Now, I have the flexibility to work from home and have been able to dial my work up or down as they grow.

In trying to fit into the male corporate world, women have shut themselves off from the mysteries and even the powers of being a woman, and in so doing, they have subjected themselves to some pretty awful side effects. It’s time for women to throw out the pills and meet themselves. You are capable of more than you realize.

Notes
1. Matt Wilstein, “Taylor Tomlinson Got ‘Canceled’ by Church. Then Her Comedy Career Exploded,” The Daily Beast (September 28, 2021).
2. Katie Kindelan, “USWNT used innovative period tracking to help player performance at World Cup,” Good Morning America (July 15, 2019).
3. “Study finds key brain region smaller in birth control pill users,” Radiological Society of North America, News Release (December 4, 2019).
4. For more on this, see The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution, by Jonathan Eig.