BMD Examines: The Natural Order of Things

In most any discussion related to the conception, bearing and raising of children, there lies unspoken, the very present and pressing issue of preventing pregnancy. The 1960’s presented women with “the pill” as a safe and effective way to own our reproductive health and liberate us from the worry of bearing children outside of intention.

Today pharmaceutical companies, pill in hand, are pushing past god to offer us another more sinister, illusive kind of liberation; from the very cycle of life.

Dr. Susan Rako has this to say about the pharmaceutical industry’s attempts to “fix” the natural order of things:

"Tampering with the hormonal climate of healthy menstruating women, including teenage girls whose lives stretch ahead for decades, for the purpose of doing away with their periods is, in a word, reckless. Manipulating women’s hormonal chemistry for the purpose of menstrual suppression threatens to be the largest uncontrolled experiment in the history of medical science. Hands down.

What the media has not conveyed, what the public has not heard, what too few health professionals know, and what every woman and her doctor must know about the hazards of menstrual suppression deserves a voice. I am determined that it will have one."

Observing the radical shift in the medical community toward menstrual suppression as a viable option in women’s health, Dr. Rako sees not only a vast information gap for women, but a serious health crisis on the horizon. Drug companies and many health professionals are promoting the idea that it is okay, even preferable, for women to forgo their periods if they are not trying to get pregnant, and many women, when faced with the choice, are seriously considering that option. But what isn’t being discussed enough are the hazards of such suppression, risks that include osteoporosis, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer.

In her book “No More Periods?” Dr. Rako delves into the whys, hows, and musts of women’s gynecological health and takes a reasoned stand for believing that nature and our bodies have an intelligence about this critical issue.


The economics of our community coupled with a lack of adequate healthcare and a concerted move to call quackery our own intuitive knowing, has left too many black mothers undereducated and as a result, at the mercy of medical researchers who are more than willing to offer us a new, improved but untested way to do a dangerous thing.

Conscious conception is a critical issue and one that we must take seriously if we are to raise our children in settings unhampered by poverty and unpreparedness. But the idea that we would do something as counter-intuitive as shutting down completely, a physiological system put in place at our own inception, begs questioning and examination that is not likely to take place in a doctors office.