LIFE: I love my period

While monthly cramps, moodiness and nausea sucks, I won't be asking my doctor to write me a prescription for Lybrel, the new pill that obliterates menstruation completely as long as a woman takes it. Here's why:

1) It doesn't quite feel natural.

2) How else to make sure you aren't pregnant than by those three to five days of bloodshed (doctors admit that no form of birth control has a zero failure rate)?

3) I've always viewed my cycle as a rite of passage, a bond I share with other women. Corny, yes. But true.

4) The medical community has no long-term data on the affects of years' worth of missed periods.

5) The company's reasons for creating the pill is partly based on lame research claiming that menstruation causes "absenteeism" at work and school according to an article in the New York Times.