Is the far-right fuelling misinformation about contraception and abortion pills?
The latest attack on reproductive freedom could be spread on TikTok.
Let’s talk about the Lorde in the room: contraceptive scepticism is everywhere.
Testimonials about mood swings, acne, weight gain and a whole manner of side effects provoked by hormonal contraception are all across TikTok.
There’s nothing wrong with sharing your own, personal anecdotes and it is true that the pill has been used as a medical balm for all kinds of issues — from painful periods to acne — rather than its initial contraceptive purpose. However, the way that videos about these issues circulate on TikTok can overstate harm.
In late 2024, the BBC suggested that, in Wales, this bad PR could be to blame for a decline in combined pill prescriptions and an uptick in abortions. Every once in a while, there’s even a viral, human-led story suggesting that the pill could change your sexual orientation.
If we succumb to the idea that contraception and abortifacients are fundamentally, physically bad for us, will we fight hard enough to protect our rights? I’m not sure.
Current misinformation
Politically, a general sense of negativity about reproductive healthcare can be advantageous for all the wrong people — and for a rollback of rights.
It’s my feeling that this sense of inflated danger surrounding contraceptives, may be contributing to an anti-contraceptive agenda and could be extrapolated in order to undermine abortion access.
Looking across the Pond, POLITICO has reported on ‘Rolling Thunder’, a new game plan to curb abortion access in the US by pressuring the FDA to restore restrictions on the medication Mifepristone, which is used to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
The plan leverages a report from a conservative think tank called the Ethics & Public Policy Center which claims that one in ten patients who take Mifepristone experience a “serious adverse event”.
The findings are spurious: they analyse insurance claims data (which legal health experts say can be misleading) and are not peer-reviewed. There is also a large body of evidence attesting to the medication’s safety.
I have no doubt that this study will end up being touted across TikTok — please for the love of God, for the love of choice, remember to use critical thinking.
Political meddling
But keep in mind, falsehoods aren’t always an accident.
It is no secret that many right-wing politicians are not fans of reproductive freedom. And it seems that misinformation (it is the post-truth era, after all) has become their latest weapon.
Over in the US, there appears to be a rhetorical push to change how contraceptives are talked about. The morning-after-pill and forms of long-term contraceptives like IUDs are being called ‘abortifacients’: medications used to terminate pregnancies.
As per reporting in The Independent: Montana Representative Matt Rosendale falsely claimed that “drugs like Plan B and Ella [two morning-after pills] are not contraception, they are abortifacients.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene also falsely said: “the Plan B pill kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already pregnant.”
This is inaccurate! Contraception works by delaying ovulation. Abortifacients like Mifepristone and Misoprostol (administered together) cause a breakdown of uterine lining followed by the expulsion of an embryo.
For individuals who, for their own personal reasons, may disagree with abortion but agree with contraception, this linguistic slippage may profoundly affect their reproductive decisions.
With the general soup of misinformation online and a lack of robust sex education (especially in the US and other nations where religion influences education curricula), it can be harder for individuals to make informed decisions about their reproductive choices — opening the door to shame, coercion and inhibited bodily autonomy.
Trans rights are linked to abortion rights
The topic of bodily autonomy is key when we consider a group which right-wing politicians love to spread misinformation about: trans people.
It’s worth noting that writers like Shon Faye have explored the parallels between gender-confirming care and abortion — arguing that medical interventions for trans people and for those carrying an unwanted pregnancy are necessary to the wellbeing of those individuals, despite them not being ‘ill’ in the traditional sense to begin with.
The comparison between safe contraception and abortion and gender-confirming care is particularly salient when you realise that attacks on both forms of healthcare often originate from the same place.
In the US, groups like Alliance Defending Freedom lobby for anti-abortion laws and anti-trans laws. Closer to home, there is a similar synergy between anti-choice and anti-trans movements.
“Attacks on safe contraception and abortion and gender-confirming care often originate from the same place.”
According to research shared by the European Parliament, an “anti-gender movement” — which opposes LGBTQIA+ (including trans) rights, abortion, contraception and sex education, and is bolstered by Russian and US donations — is attempting to infiltrate governments across Europe.
The resounding message? Attacks on trans rights are obviously linked to the curtailment of healthcare and autonomy for all women — be they trans or cis — and when anti-trans activists label themselves as “feminist”, well, that’s a form of misinformation in and of itself.
Jagged little pill
None of this is to downplay the problems of the pill. So many people experience side effects, there are risks.
But you have to make health and reproductive decisions based on research — or, at the very least, anecdotes from actual friends you have met IRL — not unregulated TikTok content.
So, let’s turn to facts. The pill is not perfect. In practical terms, it’s not quite even 100% effective. It is true that it has side effects, a reality which can’t be minimised.
Condoms are great, they can provide a barrier to STIs, they can help prevent pregnancy. But you might forget them in the moment or, absolute fucking nightmare, they might break. And in a longterm relationship, they can, well, feel inconvenient (sorry, I said it!).
The pill is, admittedly, a burden for anyone who has to take it. But those tracking apps don’t work and contraceptive options for cis men (and some people with penises) are still lagging behind.1
It’s an imperfect reality, but what else do we have?
Reckoning with the pill’s painful past
On that note, it’s important to not just be realistic about the current limitations of the pill, but its history, too.
If you’ve read Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis, you’ll know that the birth control movement has its roots in racist, classist and ableist ideology and that the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was a proponent of eugenicist ideas and of the ‘population control’ of racialised communities.
Following Davis, Paul B. Preciado expands on the history of the pill in Testo Junkie, exploring how, in 1956, Enovid (an early form of the contraceptive pill) was tested on non-white women in a housing project in the Rio Piedras suburb of San Juan, Puerto Rico.2
“Campaigning for reproductive freedom should be a gateway drug to campaigning for a fairer, more just, world.”
The birth control trials, he argues, were a continuation of US colonial control and a painful history of forced sterilisation of so-called “unwilling and unwitting people” on the island that began as early as 1907. Further testing of the pill was undertaken with female subjects in additional Puerto Rican sites and in Haiti.
We can’t advocate for reproductive freedom without acknowledging this history. It’s not just about advocating for free and safe abortions and contraception. It’s also about campaigning for women, and other people with wombs3, to be able to exercise their right to have children.
This means campaigning to end inequality — barriers like poverty constrain reproductive choices, preventing individuals from having kids, while endemic racism leads to substandard maternal care and a higher maternal death rate for women of colour.
Campaigning for reproductive freedom should be a gateway drug to campaigning for a fairer, more just, world.
See also: Lara Marks, “Parenting the Pill: Early Testing of the Contraceptive Pill,” in Bodies of Technology, eds. Ann Rudinow Saetnan, Nelly Oudshoorn and Marta Kirejezyk (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, 2000), 157. (Citation as per Testo Junkie notes)
Please do not give up on inclusive language for talking about pregnancy! While certain laws have been repealed, trans and intersex people across the world have been made to undergo forced sterilisation to limit their reproductive choices - we cannot erase the diversity of people who can carry children.