The liberated woman is certainly looking for ways and means of limiting or even stopping altogether monthly bleeding. Only the regimen available is a bit complicated.

Offering a way out Wyeth, US drug manufacturers, have come out with Lybrel and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to announce its approval Tuesday.

Lybrel, a name meant to evoke "liberty," would be the fourth new oral contraceptive that doesn't follow the standard schedule of 21 daily active pills, followed by seven sugar pills - a design meant to mimic a woman's monthly cycle. It can be taken continuously.

Surveys have found up to half of women would prefer not to have any periods, most would prefer them less often and a majority of doctors have prescribed contraception to prevent periods.

"I think it's the beginning of it being very common," said Dr. Leslie Miller, a University of Washington-Seattle obstetrician-gynecologist who runs a website focused on suppressing periods. "Lybrel says, 'You don't need a period."

Still, some women raise concerns about whether blocking periods is safe or natural. Baltimore health psychologist Paula S. Derry wrote in an opinion piece in the British Medical Journal two weeks ago that "menstrual suppression itself is unnatural," and that there's not enough data to determine if it is safe long-term.

Sheldon J. Segal, a scientist at the non-profit research group Population Council, wrote back that a British study found no harm in taking pills with much higher hormone levels than today's products for up to 10 years.