Acceptable Casualty Rate

How much is sexual freedom worth to the American culture?

Much has changed over the last fifty years in America with the advent of the Pill, expediting the separation of love and life. This separation has become so ingrained in the culture that it is now viewed as a woman’s right to have free access to contraception.

But is it really free? Or is there a cost? And who pays the price?

A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine Thrombotic Stroke and Myocardial Infarction with Hormonal Contraception by Lidegaard, evaluated the excess risks of heart attack and stroke in the Danish population caused by oral contraceptives.¹ The estimated risk of excess heart attacks and strokes due to the Pill was calculated out at 1-2 per year for every 10,000 women taking the Pill, and about double that for women using the contraceptive patch or vaginal ring. Of the women who had their first heart attack while on the Pill, about 11% died, and of those having a stroke, about 1% died and many more were permanently disabled. The focus of the article was on stroke and heart attack because of the seriousness of these health risks, but also included was the estimate that 6.8 women for every 10,000 women on the pill per year will have a blood clot. Blood clots in the lungs carry about a 20% chance of death. The editorial accompanying the study in the journal concluded  “Women, their physicians, and the public should be reassured… Although hormonal contraception is not risk-free, the evidence is convincing that the low and very low doses of ethinyl estradiol (²

So just how safe is ‘safe enough’? How many women is it acceptable to sacrifice in the name of “sexual freedom”?

In the United States alone, approximately 10.7 million women are on the Pill per year, and if the patches and rings are included, about 12 million are on these forms of hormonal contraception.³ The rate of excess heart attacks and strokes due to the Pill can then be calculated out to be 1200-2400 American women per year.

Let’s put this in perspective. In the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars combined, 6,518 U.S. soldiers died from 2001-mid 2012, averaging 600 lives per year.4 Would anyone say this is reassuringly low? But in war, we accept that there is a price to pay for freedom.

And so, it seems our society considers 1200-2400 women killed or seriously harmed by the pill each year to be an acceptable casualty rate in this cultural war.

Perhaps, as in Collin’s Hunger Games, these women are the annual tributes paid for our sexual hunger games?

Of course, we know there is a better way. There is power, and true freedom, in the knowledge of one’s fertility so you can escape “the reaping”.

Learn NFP.

¹Lidegaard, O. et al. Thrombotic Stroke and Myocardial Infarction with Hormonal Contraception. N Engl J Med 2012;366:2257-2266.

²D.B. Petitti. Hormonal contraception and Arterial Thrombosis -Not Risk-free but Safe Enough. N Engl J Med June 14,2012;366.

³Mosher WD, Jones J. Use of contraception in the United States: 1982–2008. National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Health Stat 23(29). 2010.

⁴www.defense.gov 5/30/2012.