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Karen Heller | An end to menstrual cycles - if you so choose

On matters concerning the female reproductive system, it's important to remember J.S. Bach. Specifically, Anna Magdalena Bach, the second, highly fecund wife of history's most potent composer. Anna gave birth 13 times in 19 years, evidence that she was rarely successful in claiming, "Not tonight, Johann, I'm kaput."

On matters concerning the female reproductive system, it's important to remember J.S. Bach. Specifically, Anna Magdalena Bach, the second, highly fecund wife of history's most potent composer. Anna gave birth 13 times in 19 years, evidence that she was rarely successful in claiming, "Not tonight, Johann, I'm kaput."

Back then, women had far fewer ovulation cycles because they were frequently pregnant, nursing, or, as in the case of the first Frau Bach, died young, age 35, after delivering seven children in 13 years.

Today, women conduct longer, less biologically productive lives, which translates into 400 to 500 ovulation cycles. That's a lot of "that time of the month," so much that there's a branch of family planning and pharma research devoted to "period management." There's concern that so many menstrual cycles may contribute to ovarian cancer, endometriosis and anemia.

Women have never been so fertile for so long nor, except for the occasional courtesan, been so sexually active, for which a grateful pharmaceutical industry thanks them.

Introduced in the early 1960s, the pill has helped cramp fertility. Now, the goal is for it to cramp periods and cramping.

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration approved Seasonique - sounds like a strip-mall bistro - a birth-control pill that reduces periods to four times a year, a low-dose estrogen version of its sister drug, Seasonale, introduced in 2003.

Four times may be too many for some women. Yesterday, the FDA approved Wyeth's Lybrel, which eliminates all periods. Period.

We're talking the Hoover Dam of birth control.

If used for a year, Depo-Provera, approved by the FDA in 1992, eliminates all periods in half its users. But Depo-Provera is a shot, administered every three months, while Lybrel is a pill. American women love their pills, taken by 30 percent of all contraceptive users.

Lybrel is scheduled to be in pharmacies by July. Invariably, consumers' first question will be: "What about weight gain?"

This isn't menstrual management. It's complete banishment. A contraceptive suspending all periods seems extremely ironic, nigh unto alien, counterintuitive to the current trend toward organic and natural in food, clothing and the environment.

If we're honoring all things natural, it's strange to be tampering so much with women's bodies. Our food is becoming increasingly organic while our birth control is loaded with synthetic hormones, shutting down the natural order of things for years at a time.

Five hundred times-of-the-month translates into a lot of time and potential mood swings, to say nothing of bloating. And three decades of using birth control - few of us want to replicate Anna Magdalena Bach's output - can grow tedious. But the menstrual cycle has long helped define women, at least on certain days, and the men who have had to live with them.

With the ultimate in period management, college students will be unable to con dim-witted coaches out of swim practice or extra laps around the field.

Without those moments, there will be nothing to blame for weeping uncontrollably during Gilmore Girls reruns, yelling at inconsiderate coworkers and relatives, or thin jeans that won't fit.

Weight gain won't be temporary but of the more annoying permanent nature. Our tummies will be entirely our fault. Uncooperative skin will be due to diet.

Mood swings will swing all the time, or not at all. The meter may get stuck at grumpy.

And Procter & Gamble, makers of Tampax, will be mightily ticked off.

Without a menstrual cycle, how precisely will a woman know if she's pregnant if she forgets to take a few pills? Gone will be that clarifying moment of revelation and relief.

We'll have to find something or someone else to fault. Most likely the closest available suspect. This may be one strange pill to swallow.