To bleed or not to bleed

While the religious right debates the ethics of contraceptives and politicians take a sledgehammer to reproductive rights, some women are taking control of their own bodies by choosing not to menstruate at all.

Some doctors think that, if you're not planning on getting pregnant, "there's not a lot of point to having periods." So says Dr. Leslie Miller, a University of Washington researcher and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology.

But while I'm all for women controlling their own reproduction and would even agree with professor Linda Gordon that "the period is "way over-romanticized," something about the idea of completing getting rid of the natural cycle strikes me as wrong. It's not just that there isn't enough research, any really, on the long-term affects of stopping your period. It also just seems like there's got to be a way where we strike a balance between overromanticizing women's biology as destiny and believing that we should take every technological "choice" simply because it's possible.