The Medical System Should Be Blamed For The Decline In Birth Control. Not Women.
my response to The Washington Post
I was 16 when I had a piece of my cervix cut out of my body, without anesthesia, as a treatment for HPV. It was the first time I was gaslit by a doctor. I was told the procedure would not be painful, and yet I can still remember how I left my body to cope with each incision. At 19, a cyst burst in my left ovary. While screaming for help in the ER, a gynecologist assured me the pain I was feeling was normal. She sent me home with some Tylenol. At 22, I walked into a new doctor’s office. I told her sometimes I have sharp pain in my left breast. I told her sometimes I find clots in my menstrual blood. I told her sometimes I think the pill is making me crazy, maybe even depressed. She didn’t perform a breast exam, nor did she ask me a single question about my history or symptoms. Her response was a prescription to a different brand of birth control. At 24, in what can only be described as a manic state, experiencing menstrual symptoms worse than ever before, I furiously threw my pill packet across my bedroom and swore I would never touch it again. I didn’t have a medical degree, but I held a knowing deep inside my body that something was wrong — and it told me to scream and run, and I did.
I felt the urge to scream again, when I saw a recent headline on The Washington Post: “Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion.” The recent decrease in birth control has left many OBs and gynecologists stunned, some of them blaming the decline on “misinformation” spread by health influencers and alt-right conspiracy theorists on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. “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,” the article states. Rather than listen to women, and consider our experiences and symptoms — consider why we’re going to social media for solutions — we’re denigrated, not believed, and maybe even worse, party-lined.
Women are used to not being believed — a doctor’s office is not usually where women find answers about their bodies. In one study, four out of five women claim to not feel heard by their healthcare providers. Another study revealed the key factors for women being commonly misdiagnosed were due to implicit bias and lack of research on medical conditions that affect women. This harms all women, but women of color even more so, as they are 20-30% more likely to experience a misdiagnosis.
“There’s a pain gap, but there’s also a credibility gap. Women are not believed about their bodies — period.” — Anushay Hossain, author of "The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women."
Almost every woman I know has a story similar to mine: Walk into a doctor’s office, share experiences of discomfort and pain, share worry and concern about state of health, and leave with no acknowledgement of symptoms, no solutions, and no education. The general lack of care, urgency, and concern by the medical system has forced women out of their offices and into the arms of social media and online forums for answers.
I was taught that the pill meant freedom for women. So when my family doctor prescribed me the pill at the age of twelve to prevent teen acne, I felt proud — I felt like a woman. The clear skin felt like a bonus. In my early 20s, I started hearing whispers of other women’s pains, ones that sounded similar to mine, ones I kept to myself, and ones that felt the opposite of freedom. Like stories of low libido, depression, swelling, bloating, severe cramping, heavy bleeding, long periods, mood swings, and clotting. The stories of our bodies were soaked in shame the day of our first bleed. My mother never let herself complain about her debilitating menstrual cramps — because like every woman, she was taught to hide it. We were taught to accept the troubles of our bodies like we accept the sky is blue. We were taught to accept that menstrual pain is a part of our fate as women. And when doctors affirm this with their carelessness and indifference towards the pain and issues birth control can cause, women are left feeling like we have nowhere else to go.
“The truth is, the pill hasn’t kept up with the times, and there’s been a bit of an “If it ain’t broke, then don’t fix it” attitude about it.”― Jolene Brighten, author of Beyond the Pill
The rise of social media (and the internet) meant women like myself suddenly had access to information we’d been desperate for. A spiritual healer taught me about the four phases of my menstrual cycle. A model who lost her legs taught me about the toxic side effects of menstrual products. A hormone expert taught me about the importance of food and its impact on our menstrual cycles. A pelvic floor expert taught me the importance of using my voice in a medical setting. And a naturopath taught me about the impacts of excess estrogen and low progesterone on fertility. The things I learned on the internet are things I should’ve been taught as a teenager, not a woman in her 30s. It was through social media that I learned that women who use birth control have a 79% percent increased risk of depression and an increased risk for chronically elevated inflammation — one study even found that going off the pill can alter who we are attracted to. It was through social media that I learned that being a woman is not synonymous with pain, and what seemingly every generation has deemed normal, was in fact, not normal. Social media has become a safe haven for women being gaslit by their doctors. It has become a place of refuge and education, where women are believed, but more importantly, where women are for the first time finding answers — and therefore finding autonomy over their reproductive health.
To amass women who are critical of birth control, usually because of their own lived experiences, and then label them as merely “influencers” or conservatives fueling right-wing propaganda is dangerous. Labeling women’s hunt for relief as “misinformation” is yet another way women are being silenced and shamed about the experiences of their own bodies. Women are finding information not only through health social media accounts, but through each other — as is evident in every extensive Reddit forum of women helping one another in the plight towards healing. It is not because of “poor digital literacy” that women are questioning birth control. Access to information is changing the way women learn about their reproductive health. It is allowing for a different type of freedom — one where women can make informed decisions, like getting off hormonal birth control and opting for natural options like cycle tracking instead. This seeking of information outside of the current medical model, and the villainization of those seeking to do so, proves that we live in a culture that does not hear the desperate pleas of women.
Birth control gave women the freedom to work, the freedom to graduate from college, and the freedom to not birth children. Access to birth control is imperative. But the reality of birth control, for many women, is that this reproductive freedom comes with a cost — one that affects our sanity, happiness, and health. Women deserve full authority over their own bodies, they deserve proper medical care, and they merit the right to a proper education about their reproductive health— well before the start of symptoms. Women should be able to make choices about their bodies without external barriers, judgment, or shame. They should not be turning to corners of the internet for answers. The burden on women has been made too heavy to carry.
Instead of blaming women for the increasing distrust in birth control and their own doctors, the medical community should take this as an opportunity to look inward, ask themselves how they have failed women and been culprits of women’s unnecessary trauma. Pain is inevitable, but suffering shouldn’t be. Doctors should be advocating, educating, and demanding that women deserve better. It is their duty to heal and to repair what is broken — whether it be their patients’ bodies or the system itself. And it begins by believing the stories of women, about their own bodies. It continues by radically changing medical settings to become a place of refuge, where women are educated and solutions are provided. And hopefully it results in a future where my daughter’s doctors believe in her innate wisdom and intuition about her body, where they act as guides to full autonomy. It’s what she deserves — it’s what all women deserve.
Oh, my. My 20-year-old-self needed this article, while struggling to figure out why she couldn't escape from a whiplash cycle of depression and anxiety. My 21-year-old-self need this article, in coming off the pill for the first time and wondering where to go, who to talk to about a hidden current theory that the pill had been the root of the malaise. My 27-year-old-self needs this article, angry that neither my gynecologist nor primary care practitioner can offer any advice for helping my body recover from an upcoming IUD removal. Or how long it might take for hormones to cycle out in order to be fertile (it's instant, they swear!). Or what other side effects of coming off having hormones pumped into me for nearly 8 years might be. Or how hormonal withdrawal might interact with long covid symptoms. Or intermediate options for birth control while I get my hormonal system back into balance BEFORE trying to get pregnant. We NEED more information. We NEED more support. We NEED someone to listen and to advocate and to research. We NEED people to care about women's bodies. Thank you for caring, for writing, for seeing, for speaking.
Yes to all of this! I have such an odd personal anecdote with so much backstory that’s too long to explain, but I’ll try to sum this up quickly. I learned more about my body and how it works from the Catholic Church than I ever did from any doctor. That statement is absurd, but it’s true. Your article explains why my statement is possible. The medical system is failing women so severely that the Catholic Church (specifically their Natural Family Planning classes) have a leg up on teaching women how their bodies work. The church’s reasons for teaching this class are not great and yet it still managed to teach me more than anything else ever did. I started cycle tracking in 2008 and became intimately aware of how my body/mind/emotions/hormones were changing throughout the month. I haven’t been a part of the church since 2011, but I’m definitely grateful I got that education from them. It wasn’t until social media came around that I finally started seeing other women talk about their cycles and what they were experiencing. Before this it was only amongst Catholic women that I saw the conversation happening. Social media has been so powerful in allowing women to speak their truths and feel seen. Thanks for writing this!