Sorry darlings — the joke is actually on us. Two of the women who most changed our lives in the 20th century might shudder if they only knew what would come to be in the 21st.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, many media outlets having been looking at its social and political impact. Time, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal have covered the story. But what may in fact be more relevant to our everyday lives is the convergence between The Pill’s 50th birthday and the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.

In my recent book, Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Crown Publishing/Ten Speed Press) I explore some of the dangers of hormonal contraception to our body, and how that is inextricably linked with the health and survival of the planet.

An excerpt from the birth-control chapter:

Birth Control Pills

We’ll give the Pill its due: it did indeed change the world. Feminists give thanks to Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan, but the Pill set us free in radical ways. Margaret Sanger, a lifelong advocate for women’s rights and birth control, underwrote the research for the birth control pill in the 1950s and raised $150,000 for the project, which had a huge impact on women’s lives in the second half of the twentieth century.

Unfortunately, there was no way for us to foresee the environmental and health problems the pill would engender years later. The EPA has found that excreted or discarded birth control pills are ending up in our waterways, where they have a DNA- altering, gender-bending effect on fish and marine life. Any woman who’s been on the Pill or considered it has heard that it can cause health complications after the age of thirty-five and for smokers, but it gets worse, far worse.

Pharmaceutical literature warns of migraines, strokes, high blood pressure, blood clots, and heart attacks for women with certain risk factors. These may be rare side effects, but they should serve as a warning: a woman’s cycle should not be trifled with. We ovulate, and then we menstruate in order to cleanse our bodies of eggs that haven’t been fertilized. This natural process is inhibited by the Pill, which serves to trick the body into thinking that it is pregnant all the time. It shuts off ovulation. Many women, after years of being on the Pill, find that they can’t get pregnant for months or years later—their fertility can be impaired over the long term. They are warned, in fact, not to try to get pregnant for some time after stopping the Pill because it depletes folate, a nutrient needed by pregnant women in order to prevent spina bifida in their babies. Studies have also found that oral contraceptives deplete several nutrients, including vitamins B2, B6, and B12, zinc, vitamins C and e, magnesium, and even coenzyme Q10. These nutrient depletions have far- reaching effects; they can contribute to everything from depression, migraines, and anemia to cervical dysplasia—the precursor to cervi- cal cancer. They can also cause inflammation, even in young women. Many gynecologists are Pill happy—they prescribe the Pill for the bulk of sexually active women in monogamous relationships if they’re under thirty-five and don’t smoke. And that doesn’t even include the dermatologists who prescribe it for their acne-prone patients. It’s true that the higher-estrogen pills of the past were more dangerous, but the ones being prescribed today can still wreak full-on havoc with your body’s precious ecosystem.

And there is one last, rather scary item. Anecdotally, many women have revealed that their experience with the Pill made them question their sanity. Its effects on the hormones are such that being on it can make you feel like you have full-throttle PMS all the time, every day of the month. There are stories of women becoming violent with their partners, imagining affairs, and even feeling like they were being followed home by imaginary predators. Just Google “the Pill made me crazy,” and go through some of the hundreds of postings on message boards. With all of this in mind, consider that the Pill is probably also causing our fish to become transgendered. We ingest these pills and flush them back out into the oceans when we urinate. Hermaphroditic fish are a very bad development for the ecosystem, and the birth control pill should be an eco-sexual’s very last choice.

But lucky us! We have a choice. In fact, we have many choices. From Fair Trade condoms made of natural latex to the IUD to getting the snip, there are enough healthy, green and safe options out there. Breaking away from Big Pharma’s hold on our health, sex, emotional and personal lives isn’t easy, but once free, you’ll wonder why you ever needed it in the first place. And that, my friends, is a reason to celebrate.