Heard on Morning Edition – Conservative podcast host Alex Clark urges her listeners to reconsider hormonal birth control, which she says is overprescribed, and calls it a band-aid that can mask more serious underlying issues, like endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome, which can affect fertility long term.
“I feel like women haven’t been given true informed consent when it comes to the hormonal birth control pill,” Clark said.
“I don’t think that they’re being told that hormonal birth control isn’t going to actually cure or solve any hormonal issues or women’s health issues. It helps suppress symptoms, but that doesn’t mean that it’s actually curing anything.”
Clark took the pill for nearly 10 years before stopping. Now she steers her listeners toward non-hormonal options like condoms and cycle tracking, which tend to have higher failure rates.
“I think if women were told the truth about hormonal birth control in general, that they would choose other options,” Clark said.
“I think just the more educated women become on it that they’re just going to say, ‘Yeah, nah, I’m good.’ I think they’re just going to choose something else.”
Dr. Jennifer Lincoln believes her colleagues should do more to explain the facts around birth control.
She said social media is filling a vacuum that gets created when doctors rush their patients through appointments or brush off concerns about symptoms.
“The medical field owns so much of why people are going to these forums and Reddit and Tik-Tok for information and are really buying it because…we have failed them,” Lincoln said.
“We have either brushed off their concerns – I mean, you could spend all day just talking about how so many women’s issues do not get adequately funded or addressed – but we know that oftentimes they might be met with, ‘that’s not a real side effect.’ We have a huge role in this” …
