By that logic sugar should be a controlled substance and we should all be gonadectimized. Gonadectimized animals almost always live longer.
> And contraceptives play with hormones that are central to what makes women women.
Weirdly estrogen in utero is central to what makes male mice male mice, and adult men adult men (20–55 pg/mL estradiol in adult men or about 1/10th the level of adult women). Estradiol plays many important roles in the body of all human adults.
> These hormones are not just limited to regulating when eggs are released from ovaries, they take part in a lot of other processes. It is absolutely not surprising then that there will be other effects of long term hormonal supplementation.
> I think the best course of action would be to work on other, non-hormonal contraceptive alternatives.
Maybe, maybe not, since chronic use of any medication will result in chronic side effects and physical interventions such as copper IUDs are also associated with a host of serious side effects. The best course of action would be to develop interventions that are safe in animal models, give them to humans for a while, and monitor the outcomes, which is what is going on here.
I'm surprised that the outcomes observed aren't worse, given how strongly carcinogenic estrogens are on a dose-dependent basis in animal models. Hormones are strange. Women with many children have reduced amounts of breast cancer despite being exposed to absolutely enormous levels of estrogens and progesterone during and after pregnancy.