Posts urging women to stop using traditional oral contraceptives are exploding online, in part due to influencers promoting them with hashtags like #stopthepill, #hormonefree and #naturalbirthcontrol.
The late Charlie Kirk often espoused views critical of birth control, once saying, “It creates very angry and bitter young ladies and young women.” But Kirk wasn’t alone in that belief. Liz Tenuto, who goes by The Workout Witch on social media, said in a video, “birth control is one of the most damaging things you can put in your body, specifically for your body’s biological stress response.”
And influencers aren’t the only ones promoting a birth-control-free lifestyle. Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for attorney general, said to Tucker Carlson, “You’ve got these medications that are literally shutting down the hormones in the female body that create this cyclical, life-giving nature of women.”
Approximately 65% of women ages 15 to 49 use some form of contraception. Still, the anti-birth-control movement, which intersects with the growing pronatalist movement, continues to gain popularity.
Obstetrician, gynecologist and sexual health educator Dr. Jessica Shepherd said all of those claims are misinformation.
“ What we do know is the safety and efficacy of birth control pills,” Shepherd said. “Its improved safety has also been established because we’ve had reiterations of it and different combinations of it.”
She acknowledges that some people choose not to take birth control due to side effects, but that’s not the norm. Shepherd said that even in her own medical practice, she’s heard claims that using oral contraceptives can lead to infertility. But she said that isn’t true. Everyone born with a uterus has a finite number of eggs in their ovaries.
“ Those are going to be there whether we use birth control or not,” Shepherd said. “Long-term use, or even the short-term use of the birth control pill, does not contribute to infertility because we all have the amount of eggs that we will ever have, and birth control pills do not take away the amount of follicles that the ovary contains.”
Some of the social media users touting anti-contraceptive rhetoric say taking birth control pills leads to suicidal ideation. While Shepherd said there hasn’t been strong data showing a correlation between oral contraceptives and suicidal thoughts, some women do experience increased depression when using birth control.
That’s because of the estrogen and progesterone present in hormonal birth control pills, Shepherd said. Those hormones can interact with neurotransmitters like serotonin or dopamine and cause mood changes.
“ If you’ve had a history of depression or you have persistent sadness or mood changes,” Shepherd said, “these are the people that shouldn’t be counseled necessarily to take a birth control pill.”.
But, Shepherd said, there are benefits to these hormonal contraceptives, too. She said birth control pills can impact users’ skin by clearing acne. For those with premenstrual dysphoric disorder or premenstrual syndrome, hormones in birth control pills can help stabilize their estrogen and progesterone levels and curb symptoms.
If women want to explore stopping their birth control, Shepherd said they should do so under the guidance of a medical professional. However, Shepherd said patients should know that the symptoms they were using birth control to treat could return. She said it’s important to assess the benefits and risks of any change in contraceptive methods.
“ I’ve had many patients who had bleeding issues or pain issues in the pelvis that were alleviated by birth control. And so coming off of that, they had resumption of bleeding, which can be catastrophic,” Shepherd said. “They get to decide after coming off and maybe having some symptoms come back if they would like to control those and manage those without the birth control or resume taking it.”
Some people in the anti-birth-control movement encourage women to stop taking their birth control and instead use apps to track their menstrual cycle and fertility window naturally. Shepherd said that technology, when used mindfully, can be a helpful tool for many women and can even be used in conjunction with hormonal contraception methods.
“ Using apps and also algorithms that don’t use hormones and use an app form are brilliant ways to actually look at the contraceptive journey for any woman,” she said.
Still, Shepherd said she finds this online anti-birth-control movement more dangerous than beneficial.
“ It really upsets me when I hear these claims,” she said, “because women believe it.”
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Karyn Miller-Medzon produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Robin Young and Todd Mundt. Grace Griffin produced it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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