I'll tell you why ...

[Megan] The New York Times has a piece on the new birth control pills that make you skip your period entirely. For medical reasons, I can't take birth control pills, so the question is academic for me, but I do have friends who have thought about taking them. What I find fascinating about this piece is that the New York Times reporters found any number of granola types to give quotes like "I just feel like there's a reason you're getting it", and explore the allegedly complicated relationship women have with their periods. (In my experience, the relationship isn't that complicated:  women think it sucks weasels, except for the alternatives, which are worse.) Yet they didn't find anyone to mention the obvious reason for not taking the thing, cited by all the women I know as the dominant concern: getting your period tells you you're not pregnant. 

No one wants to end up four months gone and contemplating a late-term abortion; leaving aside the moral issues, and even the difficulties of obtaining an abortion after the first trimester, the surgery becomes much more complicated and risky as the pregnancy advances. Nor, if they think they'd keep the baby, do they want to be suddenly scrambling to arrange their lives around a new baby in four months. But the New York Times tucks this point into a half sentence, while nattering on endlessly about side issues.