Birth Control Misinformation Reshaping How Young Women Approach Contraception

Cancer. Infertility. Unintended abortion. These fears increasingly dominate conversations between young patients and Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell, a family physician in Reno, Nevada. For many of her younger patients, she notes, “Taking the pill has almost become a bad thing, where you won’t fit in if you’re taking it.”

Curry-Winchell, medical director for Saint Mary’s Urgent Care Group, has observed this growing resistance to hormonal birth control primarily among patients between 14 and 32 years old. A recent KFF poll found this is precisely the age group most likely to get health information from social media.

When discussing contraception options, Curry-Winchell frequently hears concerns about supposed long-term dangers of hormonal birth control—concerns that often mirror language used by conservative influencers with no medical training.

Healthcare providers emphasize that what’s at stake isn’t whether patients choose the pill or an IUD, but whether they can make evidence-based decisions about preventing pregnancy in a country with some of the highest maternal mortality rates among wealthy nations.

Misinformation Disrupting Patient Care

Physicians interviewed for this report stress they have no issue with patients who choose non-hormonal birth control methods. Their concern focuses on influencers who are undermining young women’s ability to make informed reproductive health choices.

Dr. Mariko Rajamand, a Reno OB-GYN and founder of FEM Women’s Wellness, now encounters about three to five patients daily, typically in their early 20s, who completely reject hormonal birth control options. During a recent day, she saw six patients under 25; two had IUDs while four refused to consider any hormonal contraceptive method.

“I now spend around 15 minutes in many new-patient appointments just dispelling misinformation,” Rajamand explains. “I tell them that my goal is not to hurt you, it’s to help you. I am going to partner with you. I will never push you to do something that you’re not comfortable with.”

She notes that after two or three visits, patients who absolutely want to avoid pregnancy but initially opposed hormones often decide they’re less fearful of hormonal birth control than they first believed.

Curry-Winchell approaches these conversations by establishing trust. “I’ll just be curious and ask, ‘What do you know? Because I don’t know what you know,'” she says. “We just make it a conversation, and I can address that misinformation in a more targeted way once I understand where a patient’s hesitancy comes from.”

This problem extends far beyond individual clinics. On social media, contraception misinformation has become so prevalent that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a nationwide fact sheet on contraception misinformation in October. A National Library of Medicine study published in 2025 found it has become “increasingly difficult to distinguish accurate content from misleading information” about contraceptives on TikTok and urged providers to prepare to counter online myths during appointments.

High-Profile Influencers Amplify Questionable Claims

Social media algorithms reward emotional, sensational content—exactly the type that contraception fearmongering produces. Influencers with massive followings capitalize on this dynamic.

Podcaster Candace Owens, with millions of followers across platforms, describes herself as a “full-time wife and mother” who opposes birth control. Katie Miller, wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, has told her followers that the pill is “poison for your body and mind.”

Conservative “health and wellness” podcaster Alex Clark testified in the Senate and later told her hundreds of thousands of followers that women were “tricked” by pediatricians into using the pill as teenagers. She has claimed women who stop taking the pill discover they’re no longer attracted to their husbands.

Elon Musk, father of 14 children who frequently warns about “declining birth rates” as “the biggest danger to civilization,” told Tucker Carlson that hormonal birth control changes women’s personalities and partner preferences. That interview clip has generated hundreds of thousands of likes and more than 100,000 shares on TikTok.

Historical Context Fuels Distrust

Dr. Sharon Thompson, an OB-GYN in Phoenix, suggests influencers have gained traction partly because of medicine’s historical treatment of women.

“Medicine has a bad habit of attributing many things that women complain of to hormones,” Thompson explains. “Always in history people just told women what to do—and now this is the pushback.”

Michigan-based OB-GYN physician assistant Nikki Vinckier emphasizes the importance of acknowledging patients’ concerns “without gaslighting their experiences.” While studies confirm hormonal birth control is safe for most patients, she notes some women “don’t fit the mold,” and it’s condescending to dismiss their experiences.

“It’s important not to negate the experience of any patient,” Vinckier says. “I want to educate them and empower them to make their own choice.”

“Natural” Methods Present Higher Pregnancy Risks

Many young patients now request “natural” birth control methods instead of hormonal options. However, doctors note these methods are far less reliable than many realize.

Natural fertility awareness methods require women to take their temperature daily at precisely the same time, check cervical mucus, chart cycles, and abstain from sex for at least 11 days monthly during potentially fertile periods.

In reality, natural family planning fails 22-25 percent of the time in preventing pregnancy within a year, according to the National Library of Medicine.

“Young women patients often feel that ‘I should be doing it all natural’ or ‘You’re doing birth control the wrong way,’ or ‘You’re not in tune with your body if you do a medication,'” Curry-Winchell says. “They think that if it’s natural, it’s the safest and most in tune with their bodies.”

She notes the “beautiful packaging” of natural fertility awareness kits makes the method look simple, but it “takes a lot of consistency” and ignores individual hormonal variations.

This concern is especially acute in states with strict abortion bans. Dr. Carley Zeal, a Wisconsin OB-GYN and complex family planning specialist, works with patients to find appropriate contraceptive methods while acknowledging their concerns about hormones.

Medical Facts Versus Social Media Claims

While hormonal birth control can have side effects, including altered stress responses and reduced libido, doctors note these effects are often exaggerated on social media to generate fear.

Dr. Thompson addresses one common misconception: “When you are using a hormonal method of birth control, if you were to average your hormones out over the month, they are actually less than your ovaries make naturally. That’s why we can use hormonal birth control to treat some conditions.”

Curry-Winchell adds that the hormones in birth control—estrogen and progesterone—are ones “you naturally have… If anything, the pill is just replicating what your body would do naturally to prevent a pregnancy. They’re not ‘pouring’ extra hormones into you.”

A Political Dimension to Contraception Stigma

The campaign against hormonal birth control isn’t merely about health concerns. Major conservative institutions like the Heritage Foundation, which produced the influential Project 2025 blueprint being implemented by the Trump administration, have published articles questioning contraception safety.

This effort aligns with broader “pronatalist” or “trad wife” politics that view women’s reproductive autonomy as contributing to declining marriage and birth rates. Vice President JD Vance has openly called for “more babies” in the US and derided childless women as “cat ladies,” reinforcing the narrative that preventing pregnancy is socially problematic.

Physicians find themselves countering not only social media misinformation but also messaging from powerful political voices suggesting women who use birth control are doing something wrong.

The Bottom Line: Pregnancy Carries Greater Risks

Dr. Alhambra Frarey, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania, emphasizes the fundamental medical reality: “Being pregnant is far more dangerous to a woman’s health than any contraceptive.”

The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate among high-income countries—22 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared to 8.4 in Canada and 5.5 in Great Britain.

By contrast, hormonal contraceptives are extremely effective when used correctly. IUDs are more than 99 percent effective and can last up to 10 years. The pill is about 99 percent effective with perfect use, implants are around 99 percent effective, and the Depo-Provera injection is about 95 percent effective.

Thompson says her approach begins with understanding patients’ goals: “What will make your life enjoyable and fulfilling? And if one of your goals is to finish graduate school, to advance your career, or even to build your relationship with the person that you are with, then it may be in your interest to put off childbearing. Birth control pills can help you do that, if that’s the right method for you.”

Both Thompson and Curry-Winchell express frustration that as physicians bound by medical ethics, they adhere to evidence-based information while influencers face no such requirements.

“I cannot lie to women. I must give them information that is evidence-based,” Thompson says. “We have to have scientific validity behind what we tell people, which social media influencers do not.”

To help patients find providers who will listen and offer quality counseling, Curry-Winchell has created the national directory Clinicians Who Care, listing medical providers who “take the time to listen to and believe in their patients.”

For Rajamand, the stakes couldn’t be clearer: “The greatest liberating thing for women in our history of human culture has been birth control. Thankfully society today says that we’re worth more than just as baby producers. That we have more value.”