Friedman points out that the original pill was manufactured on a 28-day cycle as a way to convince Catholics that it was natural, not because it was actually any more natural than these newer versions. Friedman also notes that "the uterine lining does not build up as quickly for women on the pill, there's actually no medical need to slough it off every three weeks."

In other words, all the research thus far has shown that these pills are safe, so why all the fuss? As Sarah Haskins told us already, it's all about marketing.

When Seasonale first came on the market in 2003, it had Candace Bushnell as a spokeswoman. In the ads for the pill, the Sex and the City scribe said, "When you think about what women have accomplished with thirteen periods a year, think about what we can accomplish with only four." This makes the pill sound like a lifestyle choice, rather than a real medical decision with discernible benefits, Friedman points out. These benefits can include lower risk for uterine and ovarian cancers and hindering the progress of endometriosis.

On the anti-pill side is anti-choice crazy Leslee Unruh. Leslee said of the period supressing Lybrel, "[It's] a war on women and children…[it's proponents are] wanting us women who are feminine and have fertility…to be like men." Of course, neither Bushnell nor Unruh have it right: regulating your period in whatever way you see fit is neither a lifestyle choice nor unnatural. It's a decision to be made with research and medical professionals.

Like A Natural Woman [Ms. — Article Not Online]

Earlier: Sarah Haskins Wishes You A Happy Period Control
The Many Contradictions Of Leslee Unruh, Anti-Abortion And Purity Advocate

Unruh's journey from hippie to anti-abortion activist began, she says, with her late-seventies abortion of her fourth pregnancy — an abortion that she claims her doctor encouraged for less-than-accurate medical reasons. Unruh's public story departed from the truth of the situation some time long before Robb got to her — in the course of the research, she admits that Allen Unruh was not her first husband. By her accounting, she met him in 1976 — though a she told the Washington Post they married in 1972. Actually, she married her first husband, Larry Kutzler, in 1973 (while she was, apparently, already pregnant), divorced him in 1977 and it was his child that she aborted "sometime in 1978 or 1979." She married Unruh in late 1978 and had two children with him after that.

In 1984, Unruh opened a crisis pregnancy center, followed by a home for unwed mothers in 1986. In 1987, she pled "no contest" to charges that she paid young women not to have abortions and arranged adoptions without a license. But she'd apparently already decided that the best way to stop abortions was to prevent unwanted pregnancies — but not through birth control. She got into the chastity movement, which started eating from the federal trough after Bill Clinton signed into law his 1996 welfare reform bill — the first time abstinence-only education was federally funded. Like many other government programs, it's only gotten bigger.

Unruh's obsessions include pedophiles, rape, molestation, pornography, disease, peer pressure to have sex and the idea that having multiple sexual partners automatically makes sex less intimate. She swears her daughter never even kissed her own husband until her wedding day. She thinks that taking birth control pills that limit menstruation is an effort to turn women into men. She also loves to hand out dolls of baby fetuses.

It would be — and often is, if you Google Leslee Unruh — easy to mock her politics, her religious beliefs, her fanaticism for her causes and her looks**. But if you're an advocate for reproductive freedom, then mocking her doesn't help your goals any more than demonizing us helps her achieve hers. Leslee maintains a memorial garden for women (and men) to commemorate their abortions and doesn't go off on rants about how women who've had abortions (or premarital sex) are going to hell and — when she's not ranting about Big Pharma wanting to control our uteri, not that any Jezebel would ever hate on the pharmaceutical industry — it's why she's effective. Sometimes, when you're tired or scared or whatever, part of you wants your mom to tell you what to do. And Leslee's apparently very effective at playing Mom and telling you to have the baby.

So who's the Leslee Unruh of the left? Do we even have one? Or in the midst of talking about "safe, legal and rare" to try to convince the right that we're all sort of vaguely in agreement, did we forget to talk enough to scared women about why it's okay to be scared and to have an abortion?

**Please don't body snark her here. There's enough to discuss without that.

Leslee Unruh's Facts Of Life [More]