Kristan Hawkins is not what you would possibly name a unifying determine. The founder and chief of Students for Life of America, a grassroots anti-abortion community, Hawkins travels to varsity campuses for Charlie Kirk-style debates about abortion and birth control.
She hardly ever shifts college students’ opinions on abortion, she admits — Hawkins says she has a couple of 10% “mind change rate,” based mostly on her post-talk polls – however over the previous few years, she has observed a pattern.
“Talking with students, (both) pro-life and pro-choice … when I talk about contraception, it’s probably one of the easiest things I can get agreement on in an audience,” Hawkins stated. “Even the women who have probably come to protest me.”
Young girls with very totally different backgrounds and political loyalties are discovering frequent floor on the matter of hormonal birth control — drugs, intrauterine units and hormonal implants — and whether or not they wish to use it.
NCS spoke to greater than two dozen girls, medical doctors and consultants from totally different elements of the nation who say that for a rising quantity, the reply is no.
Birth control drugs and intrauterine units, which had sharply elevated in reputation over the previous twenty years, have been nonetheless amongst the most generally used contraception strategies in the US as not too long ago as 2022, based on knowledge analyzed by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive well being analysis group. Other choices embrace condom use, nonhormonal units and surgical interventions.
Birth control drugs and IUDs are some of the most efficient kinds of birth control, and the pill is additionally one of the most accessible. These strategies are primarily used to forestall undesirable pregnancies, however hormonal contraceptives have additionally been prescribed to assist with gynecological situations, and the pill, particularly, for skincare points. The pill has additionally been credited with serving to drive teen being pregnant charges to historic lows.
Yet whether or not it’s conservatives who’ve historically opposed birth control for non secular causes or left-leaning girls who’re questioning medical orthodoxies, skepticism over hormonal birth control is changing into a shared speaking level amongst some girls, particularly in on-line boards centered on well being and wellness.
Many hormonal birth control detractors argue that the divide in attitudes tends to be extra generational quite than ideological. Almost 1 in 4 (22%) girls ages 18 to 25 stated in a 2024 KFF survey that they have been utilizing menstrual monitoring to forestall being pregnant, which the well being coverage nonprofit stated might mirror rising curiosity in nonhormonal strategies which can be mentioned extensively on social media retailers focusing on younger folks.
The difficulty is gaining political salience beneath President Donald Trump’s second administration, buoyed by the momentum of the “Make America Healthy Again” motion and its chief, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
After Kennedy married MAHA’s priorities to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” motion in his second time period, the administration has made some dramatic strikes which have alarmed well being professionals, together with changing vaccine schedules and amplifying an unproven hyperlink between autism and pregnant women’s use of Tylenol. Now, skepticism of the pharmaceutical trade has additionally accelerated debates round hormonal contraception.
Dr. Casey Means, a longtime Kennedy ally and Trump’s choose for surgeon common, has claimed that birth control represents a “disrespect for life” and carries “horrifying health risks” for girls. Although unwanted side effects range relying on the methodology, the US Food and Drug Administration lists temper swings, pores and skin issues, ache and rarer dangers of ovarian cysts and ectopic pregnancies. Some hormonal birth control can be prescribed to assist stop ovarian cysts.
Most unwanted side effects are gentle and short-term, fading “within two to three months as the body adjusts,” stated Dr. Mariam Gomaa, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist affiliated with Johns Hopkins University.
On common podcasts, some MAHA influencers have instructed that birth control can have an effect on future fertility, a false principle universally rejected by the scientific neighborhood however seizing on an anxiety among young women. (The scientific consensus is that hormonal contraception doesn’t have a long-term impact on fertility and can truly assist with fertility care, based on the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.)
At the similar time, there is a political dialog that has been inserting larger emphasis on conversations about fertility, beginning households and having extra “Trump babies.”
“Birth control is poison,” Katie Miller, a former Trump spokesperson and now podcaster who doesn’t have a medical background, instructed NCS final yr. “The most feminist thing you can do for yourself is not take birth control.”
Health professionals who spoke to NCS warn {that a} proliferation of misinformation and unfounded theories about the dangerous results of hormonal contraceptives look like a significant factor fueling these considerations.
“Unfortunately, some of that misinformation guides patients to medications or supplements that are not regulated and can be, frankly, unsafe,” Gomaa stated. “It can lead patients to be dissuaded from seeking treatment for things like (polycystic ovary syndrome) or endometriosis, a lot of which we use hormonal contraceptives for.”
Beyond the medical considerations, some see these attitudes reshaping the narrative on contraceptive strategies like the birth control pill, which for many years had been heralded a logo of girls’s liberation and reproductive company.
Alex Clark, a well-liked podcaster with the conservative media firm Turning Point USA, stated she started studying about hormonal birth control by documentaries and books that mentioned the doable unwanted side effects, akin to Dr. Sarah Hill’s “This Is Your Brain on Birth Control,” which supplies a nuanced evaluation of its dangers and advantages.
By 2022, Clark had Dr. Leah Gordon, a self-described pure fertility physician and “IVF mama,” on her podcast to speak about whether or not strategies like intrauterine units factored into infertility points.
At the time, Clark — who now helms “Cultural Apothecary,” a popular culture podcast centered on well being and wellness with a MAHA perspective — stated she was seeing solely “feminist, liberal women who were raising concerns” about how these might negatively have an effect on girls’s our bodies.
Clark has emerged as one of the most outstanding conservative advocates of alternate options to hormonal contraceptives.
She has publicly railed in opposition to the broad use of birth control drugs, arguing that millennial girls have been casually prescribed the drugs as a “one-size-fits-all Band-Aid” to handle every part from interval cramps to zits, with little dialogue about unwanted side effects.
Stephanie Bocek, a mom of two, echoed that sentiment when chatting with NCS from her farm in rural Virginia, the place she shares her kitchen with unpasteurized milk, raises chickens and guinea fowl and tends to her 3,000-square-foot vegetable backyard on a typical day.
“I was at the Naval Academy, and I was prescribed birth control as a solution for like women’s health issues to manage things, you know, just like PMS symptoms in regular periods,” she recalled, saying she then developed unwanted side effects like a loss of her standard sense of optimism.
It was solely not too long ago, Bocek added, that by her personal analysis, she linked the dots to taking birth control drugs and got here to remorse her resolution.
“When I was young, I would have never linked the two. And it was only in a decade later, researching and looking back, and realizing I never suffered from those issues when I wasn’t on it,” she stated.
Some girls, like Bocek, say their medical doctors hardly ever focus on the unwanted side effects of hormonal birth control, whilst they’re fast to prescribe it. Numerous research over the years have confirmed that medical doctors typically dismiss girls’s medical considerations, resulting in avoidable misdiagnoses and distrust.
Brittany Hugoboom, founder of the conservative girls’s publication Evie — which has printed quite a few articles crucial of hormonal birth control — and a menstrual cycle monitoring app referred to as 28, says she began to note an uptick in girls turning away from hormonal birth control round 2019, earlier than an “exodus” these previous few years as extra girls shared their tales of weight achieve, low libido, temper adjustments and despair.
Aversion to hormonal birth control was thought of a “crunchy liberal” place at the time, Hugoboom stated. But as extra girls, together with celebrities, instructed their tales on social media, there was this “bonding over the shared experience of being dismissed — or even gaslighted — by their own doctors,” she stated.
“Women deserve more options when it comes to their bodies, and they shouldn’t be shamed for choosing noninvasive, hormone-free methods that can be just as effective when used correctly,” she stated.
While Hugoboom disputes that questioning birth control is a “right-wing” stance, girls’s dialogue of hormonal contraception has taken on a brand new tinge that dovetails with conservative priorities. In Washington, Trump has debuted methods, together with simpler entry to fertility remedies and childhood financial institution accounts, to propel a US baby boom. Meanwhile, social media has seen the regular however now ubiquitous rise of “tradwife” content material from younger influencers who tout taking on the conventional function of a stay-at-home mom.
More than a half-dozen girls’s reproductive medical doctors instructed NCS that they’ve additionally seen a notable enhance in sufferers expressing considerations about hormonal contraceptives, together with the birth control pill.
Some girls who’ve by no means taken them are extra reluctant to start out, whereas others presently taking a type of hormonal birth control are more and more expressing a want to cease and discover different choices.
Hill, whose books Clark referenced, is a number one voice in educating girls about the important function that intercourse hormones play in shaping their our bodies.
She says she sees the rising suspicion about hormonal birth control as only one piece of a broader, across-the-board apprehension about pharmaceuticals. And whereas Hill is in favor of wholesome skepticism about some of the ingrained, typical practices in drugs — like what she sees as the overprescribing of antibiotics — she stated she finds the rising quantity of sufferers who appear downright afraid of birth control drugs worrisome.
“Just this idea that, unilaterally, it’s bad — I don’t think it’s appropriate, because it’s a lot more nuanced than that,” Hill stated. “So that is something that concerns me.”
Hill’s e book argues that hormonal contraception does way over stop being pregnant and can truly form folks’s moods, emotional processing and even romantic preferences. But though Hill cites research linking hormonal birth control to nervousness and despair, she in the end advocates for extra analysis and decisions.
Dr. Franziska Haydanek, an ob/gyn who practices in western New York, discovered social media fame by correcting false details about girls’s well being on-line.
According to the 2024 KFF survey, 1 in 7 girls ages 18 to 25 stated they made or considered making a change to their contraceptive use after seeing the topic mentioned on social media.
Haydanek — finest often called “Dr. Fran” to her nearly 700,000 TikTok followers — says there’s little doubt in her thoughts that the rising MAHA motion has performed a major function in casting doubts about the security of hormonal birth control.
“I very much welcome people accessing evidence-based information when it comes to (medical decisions),” she stated. “The issue, of course, is when that is not evidence-based. And that’s where I see some influencers from the MAHA movement, which typically has not always been based in evidence, which is frustrating.”
Health professionals stated sufferers who’ve questions or considerations about birth control ought to converse to their medical doctors about dangers, advantages and unwanted side effects, as everybody’s case is totally different.
Although Clark, the conservative podcaster, contends that rejecting hormonal birth control spans the political spectrum, she has a message for the Republican Party.
“Mark my words. MAHA is the most powerful political capital that the GOP has going into the midterms,” she stated. “If these people running do not speak about MAHA and say that they are in support of MAHA, they will hemorrhage votes, and we will hand the midterms to the left.”
Hawkins, the activist, says she is effectively conscious that most of the younger girls who agree along with her on contraception don’t discover a lot different frequent floor with anti-abortion advocates like her. But youthful girls are “willing to have the hard conversations” and are motivated by MAHA, she stated.
“I mean, do you see them carrying their Stanley water bottles because they don’t want plastic water bottles?” she stated. “Of course, they’re anti- putting hormones in their food and the pills that they’re taking.”