“I should go on the pill, but I’m nervous. I’ve heard it can have really bad side effects”.

For the past number of years, I’ve frequently heard some variation of this statement from women in my life, whether it’s friends, relatives or even acquaintances on nights out. 

When I ask these women and girls what side effects they are concerned of, the risk of weight gain, low mood and a potential decrease in their future fertility are the most commonly shared answers. 

The rise of these sentiments has not surprised me. Like the women in my life, I have seen how the negative rhetoric surrounding hormonal birth control has spread rapidly across social media.

In recent years, countless content creators, most of whom have no certified medical background, have built large social media presences off of their content criticising the use of hormonal contraception. 

Influencers with large followings, who are often also young women, have gone viral on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram for their worrying, and often anecdotal, claims about the pill. 

Just from typing “the pill” into my Instagram search bar, I am inundated with posts making all sorts of claims about the contraception, many from accounts with thousands of followers.  

Looking at the first 20 posts on my search feed, I am met with a video that the long-term use of the pill decreases women’s fertility and causes “lazy ovulation”.

Lazy ovulation, medically known as anovulation, is a condition where the ovaries do not function properly. The condition is most commonly caused by hormonal imbalances as a result of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome or chronic stress. There is no scientific research to suggest this condition is caused by the pill. 

Other posts suggested that hormonal contraception significantly increases a woman’s risk of developing certain cancers, such as breast cancer. Again, there is very little medical evidence to suggest this to be the case. 

Yet these posts had thousands of likes and hundreds of comments and the false statements made had received no fact-check warning from Instagram. 

The creators who push these inflammatory and misleading claims are only incentivised by the failure of these social media platforms to crack down on misinformation, receiving increased account engagement with their fear-mongering content, leading to subsequent monetary gain. 

In an article about birth control misinformation on social media, Lauren Weber and Sabrina Mahli of the Washington Post put it plainly:  “negative content draws more clicks, allowing [influencers] to reach a wider audience to sell their products and services”

This misinformation has certainly had real world consequences on women and their choice of contraception. Though Ireland has seen an increase in the number of women taking the oral contraceptive pill in recent years, likely attributed to the recent introduction of free oral contraception for women between the ages of 17 and 25, our neighbouring countries have experienced significant declines. 

In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS) has reported data that shows that the proportion of women using the pill as their main form of contraception has dropped from 47% in 2012-13 to 27% in 2022-23. 

Consequently, the number of abortions in England and Wales are at the highest level on record, with 251,377 in 2022, up from 184,122 in 2012.

Dr Sue Mann, the NHS clinical director for women’s health, has described online misinformation surrounding female contraception as “damaging”.  

“Online misinformation about the pill and other forms of hormonal contraception is a real cause for concern — we are seeing young women coming into our clinics who have come off the pill as they think it could make them infertile.” 

But what interests me the most is the question of where this distrust of the pill comes from? I believe there are a multitude of factors which have led us to this point, notably the historic lack of medical research into women’s health in comparison to men’s and a widespread societal ignorance surrounding the reproductive and gynaecological health of women. 

But an aspect which I believe has directly enabled the rise of anti-contraceptive-pill rhetoric in recent years is the collective lack of awareness amongst the current generation of young women of just how significant of an achievement the introduction of the pill was for the feminist movement and the progression of women’s rights.

The sale of contraception was banned in Ireland in 1935 and only married women were able to access hormonal birth control from their doctors, exclusively under the prescription of it being a “cycle regulator”. 

Former professor of women’s studies in University College Cork, Sandra McAvoy stated that the lack of legal contraception “delayed the emancipation of Irish women – not least by subordinating their rights to life and health to their reproductive functions”.

Following legalisation of the pill and other forms of contraception in Ireland in 1979, which was likely after the parents of many Gen Z  young adults were already born, women were granted the freedom of family planning for the first time in the state’s history. 

Access to hormonal contraception granted women the autonomy to choose when they became pregnant which allowed them to pursue careers outside of the home and was a vital step in destigmatising the sexual liberation of women in Irish society. 

In a state whose governmental policy and social values were so deeply influenced by the Catholic Church throughout the 20th century, it is essential that we exercise extra caution to ensure that another unqualified, bad-faith actor does not entrench itself in our social consciousness and stray us away from trusting scientifically-back medical advice. 

Women are entitled to choose any form of contraception that they would like to use and we should celebrate that Irish women in 2025 have that choice.However, we must acknowledge the difficult battle that the women before us fought to ensure we have access to basic contraception and family planning services. 

We must strike a balance between creating open dialogue surrounding the real issues that many women face due to use of hormonal birth control while also ensuring we do not create irrational fear of these contraceptive methods and contribute to the already-rampant misconceptions that plague women’s reproductive health.