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Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion

Search for“birth control” on TikTok or Instagram and a cascade of misleading videos vilifying hormonal contraceptionappear: Youngwomen 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 influencersrecommend “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 restrictedin nearly half the states.

Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targetinga vulnerable demographic:peoplein their teensand early 20swho are more likely tobelieve what they seeon their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence. While doctors sayhormonal 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.

Physicians and researchers say little data is available about the scale of this new phenomenon, but anecdotally, more patients are coming in with misconceptions about birth control fueled by influencers and conservative commentators.

“People are putting themselves out there as experts on birth control and speaking to things that the science does not bear out,” said Michael Belmonte, an OB/GYN in D.C. anda family planning expert with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). “I am seeing those direct failures of this misinformation.”

He says women frequently come in for abortions after believing what they see on social media about the dangers of hormonal birth control and the effectiveness of tracking periods to prevent pregnancy. Many of these patients have traveled from states that have completely or partly banned abortions, he said, including Texas, Idaho, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Doctors stand a better chance of dispellingmisinformation when theylisten to patients’ concerns, said Belmonte, noting that some are more worried about the side effects of birth control than the effectiveness doctors have long been trained to emphasize. He has adopted ACOG’s recommendation that physicians candidly discuss common side effects such as nausea, headaches, breast tenderness and bleeding between periods; many of these resolve on their own or can be mitigated by switching forms of birth control.

Women of color whose communities have historically been exploited by the medical establishment may be particularly vulnerable to misinformation, given the long history of mistrust around birth control in this country, said Kimberly Baker, an assistant professor at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health. Forced sterilizations of tens of thousands of primarily Black, Latina and Indigenous women happened under U.S. government programs in the 20th century.

“That’s another huge reason why these negative videos around birth control get a lot of fanfare, because there’s already the stigma attached to it, and that’s steeped in our history,” she said.

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An underlying conservative push

Prominent conservative commentators have seized upon mistrust of medical professionals, sowing misinformation as a way to discourage the use of birth control. Some commentatorsinaccurately depict hormonal contraception as causing abortions. Otherssay they’re just looking out for women’s health.

Brett Cooper,a media commentator for the conservative Daily Wire, argued in a viral TikTok clip that birth control can impact fertility, cause women to gain weight and even alter whom they are attracted to. It racked up over 219,000 “likes” before TikTok removed it following The Post’s inquiry.

In a Daily Wire video, Cooper and political commentator Candace Owens denounce birth-control pills and IUDs as “unnatural,” with Owens saying she’s a “big advocate of getting women to realize this stuff is not normal,” and claiming that viewers of her content told her copper IUDs can harm women’s fertility. Medical experts say there is no evidence birth control impacts fertility long term.

On his show, Ben Shapiro,anotherright-wing pundit,called discussing birth-control side effects a “political third rail,” whileinterviewing a guest who proclaimed that women on birth-control pills are attracted to men who are “less traditionally masculine.”

Shapiro, Cooper and Owens did not respond to requests for comment.

The online magazine Evie, describedby Rolling Stoneas the conservative Gen Z’s version of Cosmo, urges readers to ditch hormonal birth control with headlines such as “Why Are So Many Feminists Silent About The Very Real Dangers Of Birth Control?”

Brittany Martinez, founder of Evie Magazine, said in an email that the outlet’s work has made questioning birth control mainstream. “Women have been silenced and shamed by legacy media, the pharmaceutical industry, and, in many cases, by their own doctors who have gaslit them about their experiences with hormonal birth control,” she wrote.

Martinez co-founded a menstrual cycle tracking app called 28that is backed by conservative billionaire and tech mogul Peter Thiel. The company, 28 Wellness, told The Post it does not disclose itsinvestors, 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.”

The influencers’ messaging helps drive potential legislation limiting access to hormonal birth control, saidAmanda Stevenson, a sociologist, demographer and assistant professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder who is studying how antiabortionactivists and lawmakers are trying to restrict birth control. Already Republican legislators in Missouri have tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the state’s Medicaid program from covering IUDs and emergency contraceptives. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit this month upheld a Texas law requiring minors to obtain parental permission before accessing birth control.

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Side effects of birth control

All forms of medication, including hormonal birth control, can have side effects. Some are rare, but serious:Birth-control pills that contain estrogen can lead to blood clots and strokes.IUDs can perforate the uterine wall.

When Sabrina Grimaldi went to urgent care for chest pain last spring, the medical staff told her she hadpulled a muscle and sent her home. Weeks later, when her left leg started to swell and turn purple, the 24-year-old from Arizona realized it was more than a pulled muscle. Medical providersdiscovered blood clots in her leg and in both of her lungs, which she said they told her were caused by her birth-control pills. Grimaldi wrote about her experience in the Zillennial Zine, an online magazine where she is editor in chief, and also shared it on TikTok.

“There’s all of those crazy things on the package that say you might have a blood clot or a heart attack or death, and you’re just like whatever. You don’t actually think that that’s going to happen,” Grimaldi said in an interview, noting that her doctor never discussed potential side effects with her.

The Food and Drug Administration points out that the risk of developing blood clots from using birth-control pills — 3 to 9 women out of 10,000 who are on the pill — remains lower than the risk of developing blood clots in pregnancy and in the postpartum period. Doctors note that Opill, the over-the-counter pill that will soon be available in stores and online, contains only progestin — meaning it does not have the blood clot risk of estrogen-containing pills.

The algorithms behind TikTok, YouTube and Instagram are designed to surface content similar to what viewers have already watched, which experts say leads viewersto believe that more people suffer complications than in reality.

Jenny Wu, an OB/GYN resident at Duke University, noticed that her Gen Zpatients were turning away from IUDs at higher ratesthan her millennial patients — and were referencing TikToks about the pain of IUD insertion. So she analyzed the 100 most popular TikTok videos about IUDs and found that a surprisingly high proportion — almost 40 percent — were negative.

“It’s changed how I practice,” she said. She now routinely offers patients a variety of pain management options including anti-inflammatory drugs, a lidocaine injection into the cervix, or anti-anxiety medication.

Catherine Miller, a junior at the University of Wisconsin at Stout, had never wanted to be on hormonal birth control after going down a rabbit hole of TikTok videos that listed negative side effects without context.

“It created this sense of fear that if I ever needed to be put on birth control, I would become a completely different person, I would gain a bunch of weight, and my life would be over,”the 20-year-old said. “I was like, well, obviously, this is true. This applies to everybody, because it’s the only thing I’m seeing.”

But in the fall, Miller took a human sexual biology class taught by a family physician who had spent decades counseling women on how to choose the right birth control. The professor walked the class through scientific research to dispel some of the misconceptions they had encountered.

After learning that her understanding of the risks was skewed by social media, Miller said, she worries about her generation of women facing a lack of accurate information — and choices. Abortion is banned in Wisconsin after 22 weeks of pregnancy.

“It’s terrifying to think about our options being taken away, and misinformation about the things that we still have access to,” she said. “That’s a combination for disaster.”

#JFC this is horrifying...#war against women

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