Word: pill
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...control is quietly decentralized. Out of the basement of Stoughton in Room 13, students give tips on the latest birth control methods or refer people to favorite doctors at the University Health Service. On the third floor of UHS, a social worker passes on information about the morning-after pill or abortion. On the main floor the internists--the closest thing that Harvard has to birth control clinicians--scurry around prescribing the birth control methods to students seeking contraception from UHS. And, up on the fourth floor, gynecologists see patients with particular problems about birth control, or fit interuterine devices...
...facts," however, don't seem to be all that objective from the student point of view. Most women interviewed last week who have used UHS birth control facilities, said they detected a preference, conscious or otherwise on the part of UHS doctors to prescribe the pill over all other methods--especially if couples are living together. Students who staff Room 13, Harvard's most informal dispensory of birth control information, contend that getting the "facts" all depends on which of the 15 internists a student happens to see. They say that the methods favored vary with each doctor...
...internists themselves maintain that they present a standard and balanced repertoire and don't push any particular methods. Wacker, for instance, sizes up the pill to prospective users by first admitting that it has side-effects, but they are all fairly well-known. Since the estrogen levels of the pill have been reduced, "you don't find any increasing toxity," Wacker says, adding that the pill has now been used safely for the past 15 to 16 years. Bisbee advises: "What we say is that there is no connection between the pill and cancer." As for the diaphragm, Harvard...
Regardless of the pitch, the doctors who do most of the prescribing are positive that within the past few years, women are leaving the pill in increasing numbers for the diaphragm. Dr. Pengwynne Blevins, who perhaps sees more students about birth control than any other internist, says she can't give a percentage, but she thinks people are "turning away from the pill. Women are changing their views. The diaphragm is gaining acceptance," she says. Louis C. Brown, another internist, concurs, saying "there is an increasing move away from the pill" to the diaphragm and other methods...
Three women psychologists at Pennsylvania State University found no significant difference in the amount of stress reported by eleven men and 22 women (half of them on the Pill) over a 35-day period. Psychologist Barbara Sommer of the University of California at Davis reports that 29 women she studied had increased positive feelings around ovulation time, but no increased negative feelings before menstruation...