Now we have a report from researchers for the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in England. They followed 46,000 British women for 25 years, women who had begun to use the pill 30 years ago. They found that women who take the contraceptive pill have a slightly greater risk of certain types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes and blood clots. Following them for this period of time, however, they report that the risk all but disappears 10 years after pill use ended. They noted that most of the risk is in current users who have other risk factors.
Many current users smoke.
Some have high blood pressure. Well, certainly neither of those is any startling new revelation. We've known all along that smoking aggravates these kinds of heart attacks and blood clot problems. What is new here is their finding that it would seem that the bad effects on the circulatory system fade, and after 10 years away from the pill are essentially gone. So that means that in the women who have taken the pill, and then quit, and then survive 10 years, there's no longer any significant negative effect from the pill.