WaPo article about birth control

[merrily234]

Editing my post to add this VERY important point that should not get lost in the noise: birth control is overwhelmingly safe and effective. It has empowered women/people with uteruses to chart their own futures and offered a level of agency over our lives that was previously unimaginable. American women in particular should be fighting to keep birth control LEGAL, affordable, and easily accessible. Don’t be afraid to advocate for yourselves at the OB/GYN’s office, but resist the urge to get swept up in mis/disinformation. And definitely don’t trust anyone who is disparaging bc while also trying to sell you something. Also, check out aidaccess.org if your bc fails and you live in a red state.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/03/21/stopping-birth-control-misinformation/

I just read this Washington Post article about birth control misinformation and wanted to hear what others think.

For the record, I fully support people using birth control and think there should be even easier access. I’m pro-choice. I’m on hormonal birth control myself. I’m also not exposed to any right-wing media and I don’t use TikTok.

But what the hell? This article makes it seem like any complaint about birth control side effects is just the result of some misinformation campaign. Women already have a hard enough time convincing doctors to believe us in any medical setting, and we all know it’s even worse for reproductive care. Articles like this diminish our ability to advocate for ourselves even more.

Look, I know there are misinformation campaigns about birth control driven by a bizarre conservative obsession with women and their bodies. And those are bad! But dismissing concerns about very real side effects completely? Not the answer. Two things can be true at once: 1) bad actors spread lies about birth control and scam people out of money through fearmongering and false promises about hormones/health, AND 2) we deserve to be taken seriously when we have questions/concerns about any medication, birth control included.

Also this little part annoyed me because fear about the pain of an IUD insertion isn’t just a gen z “trend.” Shit hurts. “Jenny Wu, an OB/GYN resident at Duke University, noticed that her Gen Z patients were turning away from IUDs at higher rates than 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.”

Anyway, thanks for joining my rant.

 

[mc1983]

@merrily234 I've been in the process of writing a post for this very sub on how to deal with mis/disinformation and being overwhelmed with information overload and I'm kicking myself in the butt for dragging my feet on it and this article is why I feel the need to kick myself. Anyways I don't think the article is pushing all negative effects of hormonal birth control (HBC) on mis/disinformation but rather how bad actors are jumping on the negative aspects of HBC and running with it. I don't like that paragraph about Dr. Wu saying the IUD rejection trend. Trend as in numbers, okay, but trend as in fad, no Dr. Wu! And it seems like she had to cave into giving patients pain management for IUD insertions, which doesn't help her at all. Giving pain management to patients is not a burden.

I'm going to be US centric here:

In this age of post Roe v Wade, where there has been an increase in tradwife content, health influencers and their "hormone balancing", anti-trans rhetoric of "real women have menstrual cycles and they don't need to take ibuprofen for cramps"(I wish I remember who made that TikTok), we need to be honest to ourselves and others and demand change of the US health system. At this time, learning about our bodies is rebellion. Learning to control when to start a family or never start one, is rebellion (and it shouldn't be but it still is). Learning that we don't have to suffer for life and to not accept subpar medical help is rebellion, which can sadly be an expensive one in the US. We should have open and frank discussions about HBC the pros and cons just like any other medication. We can not like being on HBC and also point out bad faith actors who are spreading mis/disinformation. We can be advocates for HBC and acknowledge that it's not for everyone for a variety of reasons and people's personal experiences are valid. We can and should acknowledge our own limitations of knowledge on anything and be open to learning more than what we already do. And without a doubt we should demand are government representatives provide policies that protect us. We desperately need a change in our health care system. Health insurances, private equities, and religious institution owned health practices and hospitals, are upholding racist and misogynistic ideals that are literally putting women to death and in harm's way. Not just birth control, but pregnancy, and general health.

There are people who are fighting to ban contraception (especially morning after pills and IUDs) and they will take the negative responses to HBC and use it against ALL of us. If we have the knowledge, we have the power, and if we work together, we can fight them.

I hope I make sense; I feel rushed and trying to be concise on my thoughts while rushing is usually a disaster for me.

 

[merrily234]

@mc1983 I think you should definitely write a post about bc mis/disinformation and see if the mods will pin it. This is the type of place people come when they aren’t getting enough info/attention from their doctors and are already primed to receive bad advice.

 

[intoyourhands111]

@merrily234 The move to ban birth control in the US legislature will be rooted in it being "unsafe". It will be impossible to argue against because of 1) real complaints and 2) rampant misinformation as the article states. Republicans will say they are removing BC options to make women safer and healthier. Like you said, two things can be true at once, but we need to wise up and adjust our talk tracks QUICK if there's any hope of stopping an incoming ban.

 

[merrily234]

@intoyourhands111 Agreed. It’s the same argument anti-abortion activists made about mifepristone in the Supreme Court yesterday. I think downplaying the side effects just fuels the fire though because it gives an air of legitimacy to those people who claim the medical/political/whatever establishment is hiding something. The messaging should be that birth control is very safe and can have some annoying side effects just like any other medication. But we’re living in a weird world right now so who knows what would work.

 

[illumined1995]

@intoyourhands111 Got to love the “unsafe” in America. I can name 8 drugs I don’t need on every commercial. Listen to the interactions, bonkers.

 

[aaronthestudent]

@merrily234 As someone who does have a lot of social media I agree with the article. The amount of fear mongering about birth control especially on tik tok is insane and dangerous. With the US having declining laws about women’s reproductive freedom this massive push is not good. The amount of younger women I’ve seen saying they would never use birth control and who think things like cycle tracking are just as effective is very disheartening.

 

[phyllisgault]

@aaronthestudent Came here to comment on this. I'm not from the US, and yet I still get a ton of content from women from there demonizing birth control, and it's disheartening, considering the political climate surrounding women's reproductive rights.

I understand the sentiment of doctors prescribing birth control without fully disclosing the possible side effects they may cause or dismissing them once you have them as not being caused by the pill. I experienced it myself and wish I had been able to make the decision to go on BC knowing what I was getting into, however, despite the negatives, BC gave me a tremendous amount of freedom and agency over my own sexuality and kept me from getting pregnant. I think the discourse should go into getting better options and making the process of choosing a BC method an informed one, unlike how it is nowadays a lot of the time.

 

[merrily234]

@phyllisgault Spot on about the discourse. I have epilepsy and my medication/treatment experiences have been wildly different than those I’ve had with birth control. I tried a number of different seizure meds before I settled on the combo I take now because my doctor was willing to help find something that worked for me. Everyone understood, and even expected, that there could be side effects. Figuring out the right med was just part of the treatment process. I knew what to expect and I felt heard when I said something didn’t feel right. And there wasn’t a cult of self-proclaimed natural health experts online telling me I should stop treatment all together. That thought never even crossed my mind because all the positives of not having seizures far outweighed any negatives. Just like the positives of being able to have control over my reproductive timeline far outweigh any negatives.

Anti-seizure medication changed my life. Birth control changed my life. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without them. The differences in how the two are treated is why this shit pisses me off so much.

 

[aaronthestudent]

@phyllisgault I was put on it almost 10 years ago for horrible cramps and obviously as a 15 year old I didn’t know what questions to ask and how informed I should be. I learned the hard way that I mentally cannot handle pills at all but I would never say that means bc is bad. It means that like any medication, everyone’s body reacts differently and if you have bad side effects it’s a sign to stop and see a doctor.

 

[phyllisgault]

@aaronthestudent I had a similar experience. Got a combo pill prescribed when I was 18, and it gave me crippling anxiety, for which I did go see my gynecologist, who said it wasn't the pill and prescribed me Sertralin to manage the anxiety instead of accepting it is a possible side effect. I stayed on it for 7 years until I had to quit due to suffering migraines with aura. The anxiety ended two weeks after quitting. Had I known it was a possible side effect, I could have chosen to stop taking them instead of enduring it cause my doctor assured me it wasn't cause of the pills. And yet, despite all of this, I still fully support the use of birth control cause, as you said, it works differently on every single body.

 

[merrily234]

@aaronthestudent This is an important perspective that I admittedly don’t have as someone who doesn’t use TikTok. I used to though (deleted it because I literally wouldn’t do my job if I had access to that infinite scroll), so I know the algorithm is powerful. It’s a terrible time, at least in the United States, for women to start thinking cycle tracking is an effective bc method. Especially in states where the data in cycle-tracking apps can be weaponized against women who get an abortion.

 

[aaronthestudent]

@merrily234 It’s mostly young pretty influencers who if you deep dive are selling a course or a vitamin or whatever to “detox” from birth control. There are some legitimate issues with women’s healthcare but the medical misinformation definitely needs to be tackled to deal with the other issues.

 

[will1999]

@aaronthestudent at the same time, a lot of us aren’t actually told about the side effects, or even what exactly is in the pills and how it can affect us. i was prescribed BC with estrogen despite the fact that i have severe migraines, have had a blood clot in my eye, AND have ehlers danlos! luckily i didn’t take it, but if i had taken it, it could have had quite bad consequences.

i think it’s important to balance how BC can help a person while also being completely transparent with who could and couldn’t take certain medications, and that for some people it might actually not work

 

[cat5dog1]

@merrily234 Yeah, its quite a dichotomy: it's been incredibly empowering for women to have a say in when they have families and if they get their periods or not ect. ect, but also because we live in the patriarchy there is a terrible lack of medical research on women in general, our pain and symptoms aren't taken seriously, and we're generally told to grin and bear it instead of anyone spending time or money looking into better answers for us. Let's face it, its a choose your suck kind of scenario. I learned yesterday in my EMT refresher that women on hormonal BC are at higher risk of pulmonary embolism--something I've never heard from a doctor in my extensive exploration into different methods of BC. *not a doctor, feel free to read the literature or ask your doctor, insert all necessary disclaimers here...*

And more importantly to me, the majority of methods that do exist make us fit better into a man's society instead of complimenting our cyclical nature. If I directed the Barbie movie, I would have gone way harder in my anger on that bit.

 

[saith]

@merrily234 The problem is that when you create a fear around a certain medication, it has real world consequences to it. People need to realize that the data they discuss that can scare people off of birth control actually has nuance to it and should be treated as such because birth control, just like any medication on the market, will have side effects and it boils down to your relative risk of it vs absolute risk. It’s just that the main population does not understand that but instead of going to people that do, like doctors and healthcare providers, they let someone on tik tok or instagram feed into their fears.

Do I believe that women’s healthcare currently sucks in how we are treated? 100%, but we are at a tipping point that any dissent against birth control can be used to strip our autonomy away so it is paramount when discussing birth control it is with the knowledge that whatever we say could be used against us. Is that absolutely terrifying? Yes but that is the political landscape of american right now and we have to play with the cards we’re dealt with.