Today’s blockbuster health news is that, prior reports notwithstanding, birth control pills are quite beneficial for women’s health. They reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease.
Earlier reports that the pill boosts women’s risk of cancer were particularly influential among American women, depressing rates of pill use here compared with other industrial countries. With this definitive repudiation of those reports, more American women may opt to use the pill.
That’s good news for Cascadia’s population trends, because birth control pills are among the most effective forms of contraception. The lower rate of unplanned pregnancies and births in British Columbia than in the Northwest states is partly a result of BC women’s higher usage of birth control pills. And the low birth rate in Germany, for example, is a product of that country’s exceptionally heavy use of the pill.
