Few are as passionate as Yen about the possibility of a world with far less cyclical bleeding. Its my crusade, said Yen, who also co-founded and runs Pandia Health, a birth-control delivery company. This is my moonshot. People who have periods spend an average of 2,300 days of their lives menstruating. If more people chose to silence their periodor even just dial down the volumethat would mean a decrease in iron deficiency (which women experience at far higher rates than men), and even fewer plastic tampon applicators littering landfills.

Yen envisions the period of periods soon coming to an end. But even though menstruation is often messy, painful, and expensive, its a meaningful fixture of adulthood for some, and one that can be hard to let go of.

Gabrielle, a 24-year-old who lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, got her first period in fourth grade. (The Atlantic allowed her and others in this story to use their first name only, to protect their privacy.)

It felt incredibly, incredibly unfair, she told me, to have been the first among her friends to menstruate. There were all these little moments where it was embarrassing and bad and painful and weirdsneaking off to the bathroom with bulky pads stuffed in her shirt, swimming while on her period, learning how to use tampons. Then, at 20, Gabrielle got a hormonal IUD (intrauterine device) for birth control and, as a side effect, stopped getting regular periods. It feels really good to not worry about keeping the bathroom well stocked or missing a day of work, she said. I will keep getting an IUD until Im ready to get pregnant.

Read: The tampon: a history

Today, any doctor will tell you there is no medical necessity for periods unless youre trying to conceive. The body preps for pregnancy by thickening the uteruss lining, like a bird building a nest for her eggs; hormonal birth control prevents pregnancy, in part, by keeping the uterine lining from ever building up. Many of the roughly 19 million Americans who rely on the pill, the shot, IUDs, implants, patches, or rings see a change in their periodoften its lighter, but it can also disappear altogether. In clinical trials, more than 40 percent of the Liletta IUDs users no longer menstruated by the end of the products six-year life. More than half of people who get the Depo-Provera shot every three months will become amenorrhoeic within a year, and almost 70 percent in the second year. And anyone using the pill, patch, or ring can safely skip scheduled withdrawal bleeding.

But getting a lighter flow as a side effect of birth control is different from choosing a contraceptive method in the hopes of turning off a period completely, and there are all sorts of reasons someone would want to do so. The cost of so-called feminine products can add up to thousands of dollars over a persons lifetime: A recent study found that nearly two-thirds of low-income women surveyed in St. Louis couldnt afford menstrual-hygiene products during the previous year. (This study, and others cited in this story, did not specify whether participants included trans men or nonbinary people who get periods). Amenorrhea can be a medical necessity for people with certain health conditionssuch as those born without an intact uterus and vagina. Its also a treatment option for heavy bleeding or otherwise painful periods, which afflict about one in five women, and can help relieve symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which affects 6 to 12 percent of U.S. women of reproductive age. Or, a period simply may be one burden too many, especially during a pandemic: A tweet in March proclaiming that menstrual cycles also need to be suspended until this ordeal is over started racking up hundreds of thousands of likes.

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No One Has to Get Their Period Anymore - The Atlantic