The Contraception Conspiracy

Conservatives and useful idiots are using social media to spread fear and lies about birth control.

Photo by Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition on Unsplash

If you’re a young woman on certain social media platforms, most notably TikTok, you may have heard some concerning things about contraception: That birth control routinely causes hormonal imbalances, infertility, low libido, vitamin deficiency, abortion, and susceptibility to STIs.

These claims are overwhelmingly untrue: Contraception does not make you more susceptible to STIs, does not make you infertile, does not cause abortion, does not permanently screw up your hormones, and on and on. Contraception does have some side effects, and some individuals tolerate hormonal contraception better than others, but these drugs are among the safest and most common on the market.

So why the wildfire of social media anti-contraception conspiracy theories, misinformation, and outright lies? A concerted effort by conservative anti-abortion groups to sow distrust in the very medications that prevent abortions — and keep women free and independent.

The conservative “pro-life” opposition to contraception isn’t new — who do you think made contraception so hard to get for so long? who went all the way up to the Supreme Court to fight the Obamacare contraception mandate? — but the degree of empowerment that conservative abortion opponents feel post-Dobbs is. Also new: The number of people who may not consider themselves right-wing who are doing the right’s bidding in spreading anti-contraception conspiracy theories and lies on social media.

The anti-abortion movement (a term that is itself inadequate, given that this movement is also anti-contraception and anti-IVF) is using the legislatures and the courts to try to ban or limit access to some of the most highly-effective contraceptives. They’re using social media to foster distrust of birth control among young women. The goal isn’t better birth control or doctors who actually listen to patient concerns. The goal is women who simply cannot control their fertility — and are more dependent on men as a result. And they’re doing this in states where abortion is banned, knowing that this strategy will result in many more unintended pregnancies.

Republicans overwhelmingly fail to support contraception access, and are often quite cagey when it comes to whether they support the basic legality of contraception (we see the same dynamic with IVF). When congressional Republicans had the chance to vote on a bill that would have protected contraception access nationwide after the Dobbs decision ended the national right to abortion, nearly all members the House GOP voted against it. Conservatives and Republicans are at work reviving the 1873 Comstock Act to prevent the mailing of abortion pills, a law that would also — did also — prevent the mailing of contraception or even information about contraception. And with Roe overturned, there is really nothing to protect the right to contraception should that right be challenged in the courts. The same legal theory that legalized contraception nationwide — a right to privacy — was the legal theory behind Roe. And the Supreme Court no longer considers it legitimate.

Just as troubling, though, are the attempts to shift the cultural conversation around contraception. Various influencers who are not health experts but play them on TikTok are sowing disinformation and fear about contraception, something “pro-life” activists are happy to push. The anti-contraception conservative argument shifts depending on the context, but the one they seem to use most on Gen Zers is that contraception has all kinds of horrible side effects and that it’s “unnatural.”

Never mind that TikTok is pretty unnatural, or that women have spent millennia trying to control our fertility, suggesting that a desire for contraception is about as natural as it gets. Every medication on the market is “unnatural.” Our current historically low rates of maternal and infant death? Highly unnatural, brought about by medical interventions, medications, and other human-made technologies.

Why is the concern about medications or innovations being “unnatural” only raised when those medications and innovations help women to live freer, healthier, more pleasurable and longer lives?