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"When Mari Hall realized she was pregnant with her second child at 21, she desperately wanted to prevent the chances of conceiving a third one. Her marriage was falling apart. She wanted to finish school. And she knew she&amp;#039;d be raising her kids alone. Her doctor recommended a new form of permanent birth control called Essure. The procedure involves the placement of small, metal coils in the fallopian tubes. The coils cause the body to form scar tissue, which blocks the tubes and prevents fertilization. The coils are inserted via catheter through the uterus, without surgery, anesthesia or a hospital stay.  &amp;quot;I had never heard of it, but my doctor was extremely adamant that it was the safest, quickest and most pain-free route for me,&amp;quot; says Hall, who lives in Tucson, Ariz. &amp;quot;She presented it as my only option.&amp;quot; She had Essure placed 11 weeks after her daughter was born. Three months later, Hall&amp;#039;s health began to deteriorate. She felt sharp pains in her cervix, fatigue overwhelmed her, and migraines made her black out. And there was the bleeding. &amp;quot;Not just a regular period, but bleeding that would soak through a tampon, a pad and onto my clothes,&amp;quot; Hall says. &amp;quot;Some days, I woke up to the sensation of a gush, almost as if I wet my bed. It got to the point that I was living my life around the bleeding.&amp;quot; Hall suffered through these symptoms for more than a year, unaware that they might be related to the Essure procedure. In fact, her doctors insisted that they weren&amp;#039;t. Her OB/GYN assured her that irregular bleeding was normal and suggested that her fatigue was circumstantial. Hall&amp;#039;s primary care doctor put her on antidepressants.  &amp;quot;I thought being single, young, with two kids, that I probably was depressed,&amp;quot; Hall says. &amp;quot;But it got to the point where I was taking antidepressants and there were still days when I couldn&amp;#039;t find the energy to get out of bed. I just kept telling myself, this isn&amp;#039;t my personality. I just didn&amp;#039;t feel right.&amp;quot; Eventually, an allergy test revealed that Hall had a hypersensitivity to nickel, the metal used in the Essure coils. Her OB/GYN then offered a definitive course of treatment: full hysterectomy. Following a five-year clinical trial, Essure was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and introduced to the market in 2002. According to the FDA, approximately 750,000 women have had the procedure. Many of those experiences have been positive. Online forums and comments sections at sites such as BabyCenter.com and Caf\u00E9Mom.com are filled with women discussing their satisfaction. Women who react negatively to birth control hormones call it a &amp;quot;miracle.&amp;quot; Others celebrate how quickly the turnaround time is for the procedure. One of the members on the Aphrodite Women&amp;#039;s Health forum, who asked to be identified by her online moniker, Vegan Candy, is particularly enthusiastic: &amp;quot;I couldn&amp;#039;t use any kind of regular birth control on the market. [The birth control shot, Depo-Provera] made me so sick I nearly died,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I found Essure eight years ago when it was still new and took a gamble. I had cramping for a few days afterwards like a heavy period, but I have never had any pain or side effects. Essure has given me so much freedom.&amp;quot; But traumatic scenarios like Mari Hall&amp;#039;s are hardly unique. She is one of thousands of young women experiencing complications after receiving an Essure device. They have banded together and are rallying for awareness online, in private Facebook groups, and through a special page developed by Erin Brockovich. The famed consumer advocate became involved when hundreds of women started writing to her about their negative experiences with Essure. Angela Desa of Marysville, Calif., was one of these women. She had Essure implanted when she was 28, after her third child was born, and suffered through a perforated uterus from a broken Essure coil, resulting in a hysterectomy at 33. Shana Fallowell, a 25-year-old from Harrodsburg, Ky., was another. She had two kids and wanted permanent birth control. She had Essure implanted in December 2013 and has been to the emergency room twice because she thought her heavy bleeding would kill her. Other women testify of burning internal pains that prevent them from working, back pain that cripples them, excessive weight gain, and thoughts of suicide.  &amp;quot;At least once a month, I have someone tell me they want to kill themselves,&amp;quot; says Desa, one of the founding members and administrators of the Essure Problems Facebook group, which lists more than 5,400 members, ranging in age from 19 to 50. &amp;quot;They don&amp;#039;t have insurance. They are single moms. They can&amp;#039;t get surgery. They have no help. They don&amp;#039;t know what to do. That breaks my heart. What do I tell them? You gotta keep fighting when you don&amp;#039;t see a light at the end of the tunnel?&amp;quot; Brockovich is trying to help these women find some kind of justice. But even with her star power, it will be an uphill battle. Because of a law called preemption, in which federal regulations overrule state law, certain manufacturers are exempt from financial liability. Government agencies decide which companies and products are granted preemption. And when they are, they are immune from lawsuit liability. This means consumers who feel that Essure has negatively affected them cannot sue for damages. &amp;quot;When I found out that there was no recourse for these women because of preemption, it really upset me,&amp;quot; Brockovich says. &amp;quot;Call me old-fashioned, but I still like to believe that we have a system and a Supreme Court that hands down rulings that err on the side of caution and protection of the consumer.&amp;quot; Brockovich is leaning on members of Congress to investigate not just the Essure device, but also the preemption law that protects it. And she has created a petition to urge Essure&amp;#039;s manufacturer, Bayer HealthCare, to pull the product from the market, an outcome she admits is unlikely. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re probably going to die trying,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;If something does happen, it will happen in years to come. My way to help those who have been harmed is to get them unified, help them use their voices to get somebody&amp;#039;s attention, and to wake up the other consumers to make more informed choices.&amp;quot; Desa and another administrator of the Essure Problems Facebook group have been invited to testify at the Bayer Health Care shareholders meeting in Germany, slated for April 29, and they are currently raising funds for the trip. From November 2002 to October 2013, the FDA officially logged 942 reports of adverse affects from Essure, including instances of pain, headache, hemorrhaging, irregular menstruation, patient rejection (likely allergy), and device migration or malfunction (breaking or not working properly). But the FDA maintains that these claims are not outside of the possible risks discovered during the product&amp;#039;s clinical trial \u2014 risks that are printed on the packaging. It recently removed nickel allergy from its list of official risk factors because the clinical trial revealed that instances of complications were below one percent. Though the product&amp;#039;s packaging still carries a warning about nickel allergy. And the FDA does not recognize fatigue, depression and weight gain to be directly associated with Essure. &amp;quot;To date, there is no valid scientific evidence to link these nonspecific symptoms to the device,&amp;quot; FDA press officer Jennifer Rodriguez says. The organization is monitoring the complaints in online forums such as the Facebook group, and it has updated its website to include a more detailed description of the Essure device and its possible risks. &amp;quot;The FDA takes reports of safety concerns seriously,&amp;quot; Rodriguez says. &amp;quot;We will continue to monitor the safety of Essure to make certain that it does not pose an increased risk to public health and safety and that its benefits of providing women with a non-surgical sterilization choice continue to outweigh the risks of the device.&amp;quot;  Bayer echoes the FDA&amp;#039;s conclusions: &amp;quot;No safety signal has been observed for Essure that would change our position that Essure has a favorable benefit-risk ratio,&amp;quot; says Rosemarie Yancosek, the head of Bayer&amp;#039;s U.S. Communications team. &amp;quot;In addition, a recent practice bulletin issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has recognized that hysteroscopic tubal occlusion for sterilization has high efficacy and low procedure-related risk, cost, and resource requirements.&amp;quot; Like the women who have had drastically different experiences with Essure, doctors, too, are divided on their feelings about the device.  Alison Jacoby, a Harvard-trained gynecologist and attending physician at the UC San Francisco Medical Center, has reduced the number of tubal ligations she performs because she considers Essure to be a safer alternative. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s preferable for the patient because it&amp;#039;s so much easier and there is minimal discomfort,&amp;quot; Jacoby says. &amp;quot;I would caution against inflaming any sense that this is some sort of procedure that is hurting women. Because I don&amp;#039;t believe that&amp;#039;s true.&amp;quot; Jennifer Ashton, an OB/GYN and ABC News senior medical contributor, is opposed to the procedure and won&amp;#039;t perform it on her own patients. &amp;quot;I feel that there are other methods of permanent contraception that offer significantly greater benefits with lower risk than Essure,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;The first premise of medicine is &amp;#039;to do no harm,&amp;#039; and I feel that there is too great a chance of harm with Essure while other methods are less risky and offer greater benefit \u2014 such as the Mirena IUD or tubal ligation, which has been linked to lower rates of ovarian cancer, and male vasectomy.&amp;quot; Ashton and Jacoby agree on one point: They believe Essure is not an ideal choice for women as young as Mari Hall, or the 200-plus other women under 30 who have joined the Essure Problems group. Women younger than 30 have many childbearing years left, Ashton says, and women who get Essure or tubal ligation that young may change their minds later on. &amp;quot;I agree that permanent sterilization in women in their 20s and 30s is potentially problematic,&amp;quot; Jacoby says. &amp;quot;We spend a lot of time talking with a woman to be sure that she fully understands that it&amp;#039;s nonreversible. She also needs to understand the potential risks. That counseling is imperative.&amp;quot; Mari Hall wishes she received such counseling. She was slated for a hysterectomy pre-op earlier this month, but she skipped it. &amp;quot;My doctor says it&amp;#039;s the only way to stop the pain and bleeding, but I want a second opinion,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I know I probably was na\u00EFve \u2014 I was 21! \u2014 but I really didn&amp;#039;t know what I was getting into. If someone would have told me four years ago that two coils would cause me so much pain and that I&amp;#039;d be faced with losing my womanhood before I&amp;#039;m 30, I would have run from this.&amp;quot; Follow Heather Rudulph Wood on Twitter. Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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