A landmark study in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2013 found that hormone-releasing intra-uterine devices improved health outcomes for women with abnormally heavy bleeding more than traditional treatments like taking hormonal birth-control pills. Danielle Boose is a 31-year-old mother of two who turned to the Mirena IUD after massive bleeding caused her to miss school and her severe cramps caused her life to stop “emotionally and physically,” she said. But she too was met with skepticism. “My girlfriends still say, ‘I would never put something foreign in my body. There are other things you can do,’” she says of her peers who are doubtful of the safety of IUDS. “But there’s risk in the pill, there’s risks in the shot, so for me, it was a good decision.”

As more women turn to long-acting reversible contraceptives that substantially decrease bleeding or sometimes eliminate bleeding entirely, many wonder about potentially negative or “unnatural” consequences. The Mirena is one of the most popular IUDs— it releases hormones and prevents pregnancy for five years. Thompson told me that she inserts hormonal IUDs like the Mirena for women almost every day in her practice. “Women think it is unnatural to not have a period or think that something could be ‘building up’ inside the uterus if they don't have a period,” Thompson told me in an email. In reality, uterine build-up is more likely to occur when a woman is not on hormonal contraceptives. “The risk of not having a period when on no hormones is the unchecked buildup of the uterine lining that has the potential to become precancerous or cancerous,” she said.

Much of the conversation around period elimination is focused on women who have debilitating periods. But there are those, too, who are simply inconvenienced by their periods, and would rather not have them. Susan Shain is a 29-year old travel writer who got an IUD because her hectic travel schedule saw her changing time zones frequently, making it difficult to take a pill at the same time every day. She had used the NuvaRing at one point but it needs to be stored in cold temperatures, and that she was worried that refrigeration could be unreliable where she was going. “I love to travel, I love to spend time outdoors. I love not having to worry about a period,” Susan said. Another woman named Jennifer Hancock is a writer in Manatee County, Florida, who told me she turned to the Mirena exclusively for the purpose of getting rid of her period. “When it is a regular part of your life, you don’t realize how much time and money is being taken away from you,” she said.

I count myself as one of those who was inconvenienced and frankly resentful of the fact that I had to spend three to seven days per month bleeding when it was not a medical necessity that I do so. A Midol slogan famously said, “Because your period's more than a pain.” This is true not only for women like me who just don’t want the burden of buying tampons and avoiding wearing white. There are shift workers who cannot escape to the restroom, women in male-dominated jobs where they feel they have to hide their feminine-hygiene products to prevent further alienation, sex workers for whom bleeding is more than a hassle, and women with young children or otherwise unreliable sleep schedules who don’t need the stress of making sure they take a birth-control pill at the same time every day.