The following comes from a Feb 20 story on Channel 3 News (WFSB) in Connecticut.
A skeleton skater from Roxbury said her Olympic dreams were denied by a widely prescribed birth control device.
Megan Henry was one of the top five women in the country. She’s an army specialist and part of the world class athlete program.
She was speeding towards qualifying for the Olympics, but she said her 85-mile-an-hour trip down an icy track came to a screeching halt.
“It really flipped my world upside down,” Henry said. “I had a hard time breathing to the point where it was really dangerous. I could have lost my life from it.”
In the summer of 2012, Henry started using the device NuvaRing. It releases the hormones estrogen and progestin into the bloodstream.
The two hormones work together to prevent the ovaries from producing mature eggs.
“Within 10 days of taking it,” Henry said, “I had a hard time breathing.”
She said she continued to use the device because she had not yet made the connection.
However, she said things became worse. She was training in Utah where her breathing became so bad, she could not speak in conversation.
Henry said she saw a total of five doctors. None of them could determine the cause.
She eventually went to see a pulmonologist in Connecticut, who said she had blood clots and sent her to the emergency room.
That doctor diagnosed her with pulmonary embolism and told her it was from the birth control device.
“They just said multiple blood clots in both lungs. It looks like if you took paint and splattered it like that, there were just blood clots everywhere,” Henry said.
She spent 10 days in the hospital. That’s when she said she found out her Olympic dreams had been dashed. She said she had to miss a year of training, and that there was long term damage.
“If I were to have a family,” said Henry, “I’m a high risk pregnancy. The danger of me having blood clots and even the fetus is there, and that’s kind of scary to think about.”
Eyewitness News contacted Merck, the makers of NuvaRing. The company stood by the safety of its device.
“While there is a very small risk of a blood clot when using NuvaRing or any combined hormonal contraceptive, this risk is much less than the risk of blood clots during pregnancy and the immediate post-partum period,” the company said in a statement.
Henry said when her doctor prescribed NuvaRing, she was told about the risks. The warnings were also on the box, especially for smokers.
However, Henry said she does not smoke.
“I’m extremely fit,” she said. “I eat well, healthy. It did not cause me any alarm whatsoever.”
Two years ago, Henry said she joined with 3,800 people as part of a multi-district lawsuit against Merck. Some of those people said they had daughters who died. They claimed it was because of fatal blood clots.
Just last week, Merck announced it was willing to pay $100 million to resolve the lawsuit, but 95 percent of those who filed must accept a deal first.
To read the entire story, click here.
For your information, I believe the man who discovered and developed the birth control pill was a Catholic. Look at all the sins he is responsible for. I would hate to have his conscience. All drugs have after effects, and if the Olympic Commission decides that Megan Henry was on drugs (which the birth control pill is), then she is responsible for her actions, and should have no court case.
NuvaRing is not a performance-enhancing drug.
Dr. John Rock, a Massachusetts native, was a Catholic OB-GYN doctor, and Harvard Medical School professor, famous for the invention of the Birth Control Pill (approved for the American public in 1960 by the FDA), as well as In-Vitro Fertilization and Freeze-Dried Sperm. He campaigned very hard, for the Catholic Church to accept his inventions, but lost. In 1968, with the publication of “Humanae Vitae” by Pope Paul VI, Rock gave up on the Church, and stopped going to Mass.
This is terrible news for her that she had to find out the worst way on the consequences of not living a chaste lifestyle. This woman was mislead into the contraception mentality. This is good news that its made public to warn other women and hopefully many would choose to be chaste. I remember when condoms, birth control pills were always pushed on us, praise God that I was never tempted to use them. BUT Not everyone is raised the way I was, to save their purity until marriage nor know their faith on teachings about birth control because I saw many of my peers being deceived and mislead away from chastity. I guess some just have to learn the hard way.
This is someones daughter and it affects us all.
Young women and men must read the cautions on the packages of all birth control products.
Most can be very damaging to the health of the user.
The FDA should take dangerous health products off the market, but they don’t have the guts to protect women.
Why not – abstainence from sexual activity – if unmarried.
If married use Natural Family Planning (abstainence during fertile times).
Is Obamacare going to pay for these too ?
(All in the name of protecting women !)
The only ‘why not’ I can think of, Dottie, is that NFP is the only method allowed by the Church. As in folks have been conditioned to believe that if the Church says this is the way to go, provided one has sufficient cause, it MUST be wrong.
The push to Go Green and work with nature seems to predominate the Progressive agenda, but not with regard to human beings. Human beings seem to be the only species in which chemical alternation seems not only permissible, but mandatory. (Guilt-induced self loathing?)
So if anybody out there gets grief for having a lot of children (I received an impromptu overpopulation lecture from a complete stranger for having only 3 children – I usually felt entirely inadequate for only being able to have 3 so the ‘talk’ threw me.), try the, “I live Green,” response. That you respect nature. The female form. My body is a temple. (And it is actually.)
You’ll get at least a couple of nods of seeming approval and well directed logic. You know, respecting the feminine. Honoring the earth’s fruits etc. But mention virtue or God at the outset and the conversation is over. Very sad.
God help us.
Very dangerous combination of estrogen and progesterone. These vaginal supplements gave her thrombosis and embolism of the resulting blood clots into the lungs. A small percentage of humans have a communication between the right and left atria of the heart and in these poor people the clots find their way directly to the brain. Progesterone alone will give you extensive uterine bleeding.
Has anyone noticed the increase in breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer? What might be the cause, one wonders? I think it is time to have an ecumenical Vagina Dialogues making the most that now they have developed this previously unsuspected power of speech. S/off
Look, a woman is fertile for the first fifteen days of the cycle, starting to count from the first day of menstruation.
Sorry-not so. NFP is the one way a woman gets to know her body and what is happening during her cycle:fertile and non-fertile days. Husbands and wives learn to sacrifice, respect each other and don’t pollute the body with chemicals or foreign objects that don’t belong there such as IUD’s. They welcome children as gifts of the Lord, not as problems to be avoided.
The article doesn’t address why this Olympic athlete was on such a birth control device. Sexual activity outside of marriage is a risky activity. Pregnancy is not a disease. Healthy lifestyles do not include chemicals in the body that are not supposed to be there. I feel very sorry for her and all women who are duped into believing that chemicals will “protect” them from unwanted pregnancies. Now, it turns out that those same chemicals have robbed her of many of hopes and dreams.
I no longer watch any Olympic coverage because of the information that came out about what goes on between the athletes in the Olympic Village.
Another casualty of the Women’s Peace Movement. :(
New study links birth control pill with multiple sclerosis
PHILADELPHIA, PA, February 28, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new study has found that women who use the contraceptive pill may be as much as 50 percent more likely to develop multiple sclerosis.
The study was conducted by the Kaiser Permanente Southern California medical group, under the leadership of Dr. Kerstin Hellwig, and contradicts previous research that had suggested that use of the pill reduces its likelihood.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/new-study-links-birth-control-pill-with-multiple-sclerosis?utm_source=LifeSiteNew
I applaud Megan!
Folks who try to make the claim that NFP is healthier than birth control are not making a good case for church teaching. Some methods of birth control may harm the woman. But surely there are others that do not. The church does not condemn birth control because of the health affects on the mother, so why muddy the waters with claims that it does? If you agree with what the church teaches, teach more clearly what the church teaches, explain it to people compassionately all the while appealing to the message of the Gospel. Don’t obscure the teaching with side shows like this. And don’t try to use scare tactics thinking that will cause people to change their behavior.