Chewable Birth Control Pills?

On Thursday Warner Chilcott, a company that makes women's health products, launched their new line of spearmint flavored chewable birth control pills. Reportedly this new line of contraception is geared towards women who sometimes forget to take their pill daily.

Here is how the birth control pill works: it basically tricks a woman's body into thinking that it is pregnant, thereby preventing ovulation from occurring, hence there is no egg to be fertilized. In order for this to occur you must take the pill at the same time every single day. If you don't take the pill within an hour of the time that you have been regularly taking it, it gives your body a time frame for ovulation to occur. When taken as directed the BC pill is 95-99% effective (these are approximate values).

Now here is the part that matters, and it has nothing to do with science: if you can't remember to swallow a pill, how can you remember to chew one? I appreciate the fact that developers have made the pill mint flavored; perhaps this will be a more alluring premise for taking the pill if that person is not a fan of taking pills to begin with. But the assumption that someone will suddenly remember to take a pill just because they can chew it instead of swallowing it seems like an odd way to market a new type of contraception.

Doctor Lee Shulman chairman of the Association of Reproductive Health feels that "this isn't a great leap forward, but I think this is a helpful step." And I think that is a helpful statement to clarify that this pill isn't the answer to being able to regulate your contraceptive schedule.

Shulman also added, "I think it is a better approach in the group of women that have a very high rate of unintended pregnancy, which is younger women." And I suppose this is true, vitamin companies have been marketing chewable vitamins for years in order to make them more appealing to younger age groups. However, the same issue stands, and let's not forget, missing a vitamin each day won't lead to major a major life changing event. Not only that, but you also don't have to take a vitamin within an hour each and every day to make sure that it has the desired effect.

While I am an advocate of anything that can help young mothers or those that are not ready for the responsibility of not only having a child, but pregnancy itself, I hope that this new marketing has the desired effect. I really would like to see this hit the market with a great deal of popularity; I just hope that it is out there for the right reason. This pill has a great deal of potential, not for profit, but to help to combat the growing pregnancy rates of both teens and pre-teens alike. Kids are going to think about sex. Kids are going to talk about sex. Kids are going to have sex. It is going to happen, no matter what we may want to think or hope can be changed by abstinence-only education, kids are going to have sex. The key is that we must teach them how to be safe. We must find ways to try and keep them from making a bigger mistake than having sex before they are mature enough to handle the responsibility.

There are those out there that might hate the thought of a birth control pill that is more or less being marketed to a younger generation of women that are being sexually active. For years it has been an argument that teaching safe sex practices just tells teens that it is okay to have sex, but that's not it. At no point are (responsible) sexual educators saying that students should just go out and have sex without thinking about the consequences. The educators that are going out into our schools and churches recognize that kids think about sex and are going to experiment. These educator's goals are to reach kids and teach them that they need to be safe.

By safe I am referring to pregnancy. Birth control pills are not, and have never been, used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, hence the name birth control pills.

In the end think about it this way, no matter how much you might want to, you can't control everything that your children do, think and say. There are moments that you will not be there to protect them from what you think is wrong. There are times that they are going to make decisions based on their hormones and not their better judgment. And when that happens, would you rather that there are products out there that can prevent them from making an even bigger mistake? Or would you just like to hope that they always make the right decisions?

If chewable birth control pills are what it takes to get more people to regularly take a form of contraception geared towards keeping those that are not prepared to be parents from going through the difficult of pregnancy and parenthood, then so be. Put them on the shelves and sell them to the masses. Just remember, just because it is minty and chewable, doesn't mean that people will suddenly be more likely to remember to take it in the first place.