In Even the Queen, Nancy Kress postulated a future where women could duck menstruation completely. Her no-period world sparks a feminist movement to return women to the “natural” way. But women are, in Kress’ vision, deeply reluctant to return to those two to five days a month of bloating, cramps, bleeding and discomfort in the name of feminism.

Over a year back, this column mentioned research on a birth control pill called Seasonale, which promised to make Kress’ period-free future a reality. In late 2005, Seasonale and a similar pill, Anya, were made available in the US and several other European countries. Seasonale cuts down the number of periods women have in a year to just four; Anya does away with periods entirely.

Both pills operate on a principle that doctors have known for years. If you’re on the birth control pill, you can skip periods by shifting seamlessly to the next pack instead of stopping at the end of the month’s pack or taking the placebo pills.

The benefits of fewer or no periods are glaringly obvious. For many women the temptation to do away with the “curse” is enormous. For women with specific jobs ?journalists, government officers, doctors and NGO workers who must travel in the field, athletes and sportswomen ? the ability to control the time of the menstrual cycle and the number of periods is immensely empowering. For women with low incomes, the relatively low cost of birth control pills versus the relatively high cost of sanitary products or cloth for sanitary napkins is a serious consideration.

I don’t buy the argument that women should not tamper with the menstrual cycle because it is not “natural”. It was “natural”, just 50 years ago, to have children before you turned 18, or to have six or seven children in the course of 20 years. The birth control pill is not “natural”; the chemicals we’re exposed to in city water and food is unnatural; the conditions in most 21st century offices and factories are not natural.

But however tempting the period-free future is, it raises serious questions that women have to consider before they put a full stop to periods. The problems with contraceptives like Norplant, Depo-Provera and the first birth control pills were dismissed for years; the IUD’s tendency to increase bleeding was ignored.

It is troubling that Anya and Seasonale have such wide disparities: if one pill advocates four periods a year and one no periods a year, which should you believe? The debate on whether the pill itself is safe, let alone in such continuous doses, is still wide open. Would Anya and Seasonale affect fertility in the long run? Is the no-period lure just a way of locking in lifelong customers for the Pill? Most important, what would the long-term consequences of doing away with periods be for women?

The next generation of women is the first that might experience the whole of their lives with no periods, or with just four periods a year. That freedom is tempting; so tempting they might not want to look at the question mark that follows the end of periods.