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As a CBS News correspondent, I learn something new every day. My latest education: oral contraception and its history. It came through reporting on Lybrel, the controversial new birth-control pill that was just approved by the FDA.

Lybrel eliminates the monthly menstrual cycle — indefinitely. Women take it every single day for as long as they hope to avoid pregnancy.

The choice to keep or dispense with periods is now up to the women of America. Lybrel's maker, Wyeth, and even doctors involved in its clinical trials say it's no riskier than taking traditional birth-control pills.

Other health care professionals would prefer more study on Lybrel's long-term effects. But no matter where you fall in the argument, here are some facts I found very interesting:

All forms of the pill work by stopping ovulation and suppressing periods.
That should mean, technically, women taking the traditional "three weeks on/one week off" pill packet shouldn't bleed every month. But they do.

According to longtime contraceptive researcher Sheldon Segal, a professor of pharmacology at Cornell Medical School, those aren't "real periods." Women on traditional birth-control pills aren't shedding an unfertilized egg with the uterine lining. They're experiencing hormone withdrawal bleeds from the placebo effect.

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