The Washington Post Has It All Wrong. Women Should Rethink Birth Control.
There’s a recent trend on TikTok that has women unfolding the massive sheets of warning labels that come with boxes of prescription birth control. The text, finely printed and covering both sides of a piece of paper the size of a small blanket, warns patients that they could experience severe side effects from taking the pills, including blood clots, depression, stroke, and even death.
For the journalists over at the Washington Post, this trend is concerning because it is indicative of a growing sense of skepticism among young women surrounding hormonal birth control. Social media influencers, the Post claims, are using medical misinformation to wage a war that could have dangerous consequences in post-Roe America.
Disappearing TikTok Clips
Last week, the Washington Post published an article claiming that social media influencers like popular TikTok and Instagram star Nicole Bendayan and Daily Wire host Brett Cooper are “misleading” women about the dangers of hormonal birth control treatments.
@brileeenour
Bendayan, who has openly shared her experience with birth control and the health care industry on her platforms and who advocates for naturally regulating women’s hormones, told the Post that she went off birth control after experiencing “a lot of really bad symptoms” that doctors dismissed. “Even when I asked if it had anything to do with birth control, they all said no,” she said.
As Bendayan explained to the Post, it’s not that she believes no woman should ever take birth control pills or undergo some hormonal treatments; she just doesn’t “think we’re given informed consent.” (WATCH: The Spectator P.M. Podcast Ep. 34: IVF at 50 Is Not Pro-Life. It’s Anti-Family.)
Bendayan has since responded to the Post’s article on her Instagram page, calling it “one of the most disingenuous experiences that I’ve ever had” and expressing her disappointment that the Post had decided to use her as a “pawn” in its “political agenda.” “What I do is not a right or a left issue. It’s a women’s health issue,” she added.
Unlike Bendayan, Cooper didn’t respond to the Post’s request for comment. In a video she posted Tuesday in response to the article, she said the Post had asked why a viral TikTok video in which Cooper argued that birth control can affect women’s sexual attraction had been removed. “It was news to me,” she said.
It turned out the clip was removed after the Post asked TikTok what the company was doing to prevent the spread of misinformation. “A TikTok spokeswoman said the videos violated company policies prohibiting ‘inaccurate, misleading or false content that may cause significant harm to individuals or society,’” the Post article says.
Don’t Question Birth Control
As Cooper pointed out, the real problem is that media companies and medical professionals aren’t listening to the same women they’re claiming to protect. The Washington Post even admits that the profession has a “long-standing lack of transparency about some of the serious but rare side effects.”
At least anecdotally, young women are becoming less and less trusting of a medical establishment that tells them they should be taking pills or undergoing treatments that unnecessarily alter their bodies’ natural rhythms — and with good reason.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case about the FDA’s rapid expansion of access to mifepristone. Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents a group of pro-life doctors for the case, argues that the FDA’s decision in 2021 to relax requirements for women seeking a medical abortion was based on studies it later conceded “were ‘not adequate.’” (READ MORE: Can the Pro-Life Movement Rally Behind the Alabama Supreme Court’s IVF Ruling?)
“[T]he FDA attempts to argue that these drugs are safe … even as safe as Advil. That is false. The FDA’s own label states that roughly one in 25 women who take these drugs will end up in the emergency room. One in 25 women who take Advil do not end up in the emergency room,” ADF senior counsel Erin Hawley said in a press statement on Tuesday.
While it seems possible that the Supreme Court could dismiss the case on procedural grounds, the case has made it obvious that the FDA is willing to jeopardize women’s health for a political agenda — something that should matter to young women and teenagers who’ve been told they should ignore the sheet of possible side effects and aren’t allowed to question why.
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