Search for birth control on TikTok or Instagram and a cascade of misleading videos vilifying hormonal contraception appear: Young women blaming their weight gain on the pill. Right-wing commentators claiming that some birth control can lead to infertility. Testimonials complaining of depression and anxiety.
Instead, many social media influencers recommend “natural” alternatives, such as timing sex to menstrual cycles — a less effective birth-control method that doctors warn could result in unwanted pregnancies in a country where abortion is now banned or restricted in nearly half the states.
Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targeting a vulnerable demographic: people in their teens and early 20s who are more likely to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence. While doctors say hormonal contraception — which includes birth-control pills and intrauterine devices (IUDs) — is safe and effective, they worry the profession’s long-standing lack of transparency about some of the serious but rare side effects has left many patients seeking information from unqualified online communities.
The backlash to birth control comes at a time of rampant misinformation about basic health tenets amid poor digital literacy and a wider political debate over reproductive rights, in which far-right conservatives argue that broad acceptance of birth control has altered traditional gender roles and weakened the family.
Weight gain and mood swings are real side effects and impact many women. My wife went on BC while we were dating and she went, what we now jokingly call, completely crazy pants.
It’s not misinformation, it’s possibly exaggeration. They are legitimate side effects that need to be considered carefully. Let’s not pretend that birth control is a universally great thing for women. It’s great from the perspective of controlling your body and making your own choices. But it does wreak havoc on many people’s bodies. If you can get off BC by convincing your partner to get snipped, and you’re sure they’re monogamous and not catching diseases, it’s probably safer for your health.
Propaganda works.
Absolutely agree, but what is the end game? Get women off birth control and then have a bunch of unwanted unplanned pregnancies with poor access to abortions, for what purpose?
On top of conservative ideology, some people also want to make money:
Martinez co-founded a menstrual cycle tracking app called 28 that is backed by conservative billionaire and tech mogul Peter Thiel. The company, 28 Wellness, told The Post it does not disclose its investors, but Evie announced Thiel Capital’s support when the product launched. A spokesman for Thiel did not respond to requests for comment. The app’s website declares: “Hormonal birth control promised freedom but tricked our bodies into dysfunction and pain.” The “feminine fitness” app told The Post it has “never been marketed as an alternative to hormonal birth control.”
To have children grow up poor with access to poor/no education, creating more easily fooled voters. Alongside this, it also creates an increased likelyhood of crime, which means more legal slavery via the industrial prison complex
to own the libs
The economy needs more bodies, please think of the poor shareholders.
I feel like slight weight gain has always been a “potential” side effect going back at least 20 years just like any one of the long list of “potential” side effects that’s listed with any medication. Like yeah it might be a slight risk for 10% of the population or something.
