Does living with only four periods a year appeal to you? Rachel Ragg investigates a potential new oral contraceptive for women

Any woman would say that periods are a pain. So it might come as a relief to hear that a new contraceptive pill could cut the annual period-count by two thirds, without affecting future fertility - and that it could be coming to a pharmacy near you by 2003.

Seasonale, developed at the Eastern Virginia Medical School, contains progestin and oestrogen - the most common hormones currently used in oral contraceptives. Women will take it for 84 days consecutively and then skip a week - giving them exactly four periods a year.

One hundred and fifty years ago, women began menstruating well into their teens and, by the time they'd breastfed their 12 or so children, were plagued by periods over the course of 13 years or so. We, however, suffer for our improved nutrition and living conditions, and start menstruating at 11 or 12. In addition, social changes (and effective contraception) mean that we have on average only 1.7 children, whom we breastfeed for a mere couple of months. All of which means that we suffer some 35 years of period-related disruption.

Are we having too many periods?
John Guillebaud, Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health at UCL, is in no doubt that so many periods can be bad for a woman's health. He says: 'Thirteen periods a year for 30 years increases the risk of anaemia, endometriosis, ovarian cancer and endometrian cancer. While some people may worry that it's not "natural" to suppress menstruation, it's actually more natural than having so many periods.'

But isn't it also risky to suppress them to Seasonale's degree? A Family Planning Association spokesperson believes not. 'There are no specific health concerns that I'm aware of,' she says. 'Seasonale has the same benefits and problems as all oral contraceptives.'

Professor Guillebaud agrees. As he remarks, Seasonale does nothing new: women on the Pill know anyway that their monthly bleed isn't a 'real' period. And, he reminds us, women have long been 'tri-cycling' pills unofficially, yet safely, to suppress menstruation for, say, a holiday or a job interview. So, while Seasonale may be marketed as a radical new departure, it simply legitimises an existing practice. 'It's an argument for the Pill, not for Seasonale,' he says.

Still, he advises a slight degree of caution. 'With Seasonale, you're taking more of these hormones,' he says. 'So you could say there's a theoretical risk - although there's no evidence to prove it.'

Is Seasonale appropriate for all women?
Not every woman can cheerfully abolish her periods. Oral contraceptives are contraindicated for those over 35, and those who smoke or have high blood pressure. There's also some debate about a link with breast cancer and, most notably, heightened levels of oestrogen have been shown to increase a woman's risk of suffering a blood clot or stroke.

So the health implications of Seasonale may be no different from those of the existing pill - which means that all women are stuck between the Scylla of ovarian cancer and endometriosis (if they're au naturel) and the Charybdis of blood clots and breast cancer (if they're popping pills).

What are the social implications?
We may think our generation is totally liberated - but periods? They're the last taboo of modern life. It's even enshrined in our language: it's the 'time of the month' or 'the curse'; if we're off work, it's 'a tummy bug'.

Periods are a fact of female life but something we quickly learn to be ashamed of. The first period is a sign that you're normal, but, after that, you're skulking to the loo, hoping that nobody sees the sanitary towel stuffed up your sleeve. Even as adults, we cheerfully share stories of anything from childbirth to drunken sexual antics, but still harbour the shame of the sanitary towel. Would you like your boss to see you buying a box of them?

While a period-free life may sound appealing, it might also conspire only to make women even more ashamed of their own bodily functions. Beyond the health issues, it seems we believe periods to be some kind of embarrassing handicap that we have to overcome if we want to become Real People. One social benefit of fewer periods is, apparently, that women's careers will prosper as they become more productive at work once their hormones are functioning 'normally'.

But a general pathologising of periods could equally increase discrimination against women, who could find themselves being stigmatised as inferior, ailing, unstable creatures at the mercy of their hormones. Hardly progressive.

So will we be rushing out for Seasonale prescriptions, come 2003? The sanitary produce manufacturers will presumably hope not: if the three million British women currently on the Pill chose to banish their periods, the industry would lose around £3 billion a year. Many women will love the idea; countless others will find the idea of further 'interference with nature' intolerable. But it is another choice - and for that we should probably bethankful.