The birth control pill tends to help skin problems (at least the ones I've heard/read about), weight gain is associated with many medications (including the [non bc, obviously] ones I'm on), but that really has to do with the individual...As the point of hormonal birth control is to even out your hormone cycles, I find it hard to believe that mood swings are a side effect.

You have yet to explain how "the rod" is somehow better, considering it is also hormonal in nature (unlike, say, IUDs or condoms).

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if we were created in god's image
then when god was a child he
smashed fireants with his fingertips
and avoided the tough questions