They usually talk about yoga and healthy eating. But some American wellness influencers are now attacking contraceptive pills, accused, without proof, of causing a litany of ailments, with the risk of an increase in unwanted pregnancies, experts warn.
This explosion of disinformation about the pill via TikTok and Instagram comes at a time when the issues of abortion and contraception are at the heart of the presidential campaign pitting Democrat Joe Biden against Republican Donald Trump.
The latter prides himself on having, when he was president, been the architect of numerous restrictions and even bans on the right to abortion across the United States.
Taylor Gossett has almost 200,000 followers on TikTok. Calling the pill “toxic,” she offers a course on “natural” birth control. On the same platform, the very conservative Candace Owens suggests, without providing proof, that this drug is the cause of infertility problems. As for the “coach” Naftali Moses, he tells his 280,000 subscribers that the pill “changes your sexual behavior”.
In a video viewed more than 550,000 times, podcast host Sahara Rose goes so far as to denounce a “divorce pill” which would lead those who take it to set their sights on the wrong partner.
The impact of the pill on women has been the subject of debate for decades, with some complaining in particular of a drop in their libido or weight gain.
While some women experience side effects, health experts believe that these individual experiences do not reflect a true causal link.
They also say there is no evidence of widespread effects of the pill on fertility or sexual behavior.
“Need advice”
But the new disinformation campaign could “dissuade” people from using it, warns Michael Belmonte, a member of ACOG, one of the main associations of American obstetrician-gynecologists.
And “the most worrying thing in the current political landscape of the United States” is that these same women “may not have access to abortion,” he emphasizes to AFP.
The doctor says he himself has seen patients who became pregnant after stopping their method of contraception due to this “harmful misinformation”.
Since the Supreme Court, then largely overhauled by Donald Trump, annulled the federal guarantee of the right to abortion in 2022, around twenty American states have banned or severely restricted it.
Disinformation researcher Jenna Sherman sees “a correlation between this spike in contraceptive misinformation and the restriction of access to abortion.”
“People need more advice to make their decisions about reproductive health and are increasingly afraid of talking to a professional,” she told AFP.
For example, some influencers recommend tracking the menstrual cycle and body temperature to schedule sexual intercourse outside of fertile windows.
But experts say these methods are far less effective than medical contraception, with a failure rate of up to 23%, leading to unwanted pregnancies.
“Shame and stigma”
Others advise abandoning contraception to lose weight, often with the help of dramatic “before and after” videos. Again, without scientific proof.
But this false information can have a psychological impact: “it is likely that it contributes to increasing shame, stigmatization and distortion of body image,” argues Jenna Sherman.
The birth control pill is considered safe and effective by health experts, but like many other medications, it can have side effects: nausea, headaches, bleeding between periods.
In rare cases, they can also lead to blood clots and strokes.
According to the United States Medicines Agency (FDA), the risk of clots can affect three to nine women taking the pill in 10,000.
“People don’t realize that many of these influencers have their own financial motivations for spreading false or misleading information that does not prioritize the health of the people they are targeting,” observes Jenna Sherman.