I highly encourage anyone that doesn’t want to ever have kids, to go get tied or snipped so that you won’t ever have to worry about it.

Just want to drop this here.

Birth control is great.

Some methods of birth control are bad for you specifically. Not all birth control is equal. You are a complex piece of equipment. Birth control alters the way that equipment works. There are side effects, no matter what, and they are listed because the were well documented in clinical trials.

That does not mean you should not use birth control. It means you should work with your doctor to find the one that works best for you.

My wife tried a birth control medication that had an interaction with another medication and made her very drousy. My sister took one that made her feel suicidal. They shopped around and found something that worked.

Look into open-source apps. You're on freakin' Lemmy.

The states that imposed these Draconian laws have terrible maternal mortality rates now and they're trying to hide the data so they don't have to acknowledge the harm they did. Same way it was during COVID where some state governments like Florida were attacking independent investigators for having accurate numbers when the state changed theirs to try and look better.

Sure, the general "birth control is bad for you" message is not optimal. But the root of this misinformation are insights about the side effects coming up more or less recently. iirc one third to half of all women on hormonal birth control experience major side effects like headaches, nausea or mood changes. I can see how these significant findings combined with patriarchy awareness and associated anger led to exaggerated messages.

Nonetheless, I think people thinking more critically about birth control is a good thing as one should always consider both benefits and risks.

Edit: Or did I misread this post? If so, I'm very sorry...

There’s an open source period tracker called drip that doesn’t collect your data. Everything is kept local. My wife used it for a while and learned some things about her cycle. It was also cool being able to know almost exactly when she’d be on her period 2 months ahead of time.

I practice natural family planning

It's called being ugly

There certainly are some side effects to taking birth control pills and depending on the person they may react differently or not react at all.

In my case I got some heart issues which made sense because it was in my family history so I just switched to the mini pill which I have taken ever since. Fucking love it. I never bleed and I don't get pms symptoms. Just get to live a normal life without all the gross stuff.

But with all that said, I too believe that the anti birth control wave online was propaganda. It just came about a little too conveniently after the US made abortion illegal. It is just a tad bit too coincidental.

I followed it a bit when it began getting traction some years ago and I felt very confused and disturbed by the narrative being passed around about birth control. It felt like fear mongering and I just felt confused by the symptoms women were reporting online. I have literally never in my life heard of any woman talk about how birth control made her depressed and I have after all been in the game for awhile and known many women who have been in it too. That was the first thing that made me lift an eyebrow.

Then I watched a video where some expert was talking about how birth control pills make women less attracted to manly men and more attracted to feminine men. I forget the name of the expert but I do remember that she was associated with conservatives and had their interests in mind. I thought it was very funny that she was essentially blaming birth control for women being attracted to unacceptable men.

And honestly, I have a question I would like to ask that expert, because when I was a teen girl, before I got on birth control, I was VERY attracted to scrawny men with long hair and eyeliner. Manly men did nothing for me.

I got on birthcontrol at 19 and wanna know what happened to my taste in men over the years? It evolved to being more focused on men with more masculine traits. Instead of scrawny I began finding men who were filled out, more attractive. I began thinking that beards were hot when I had always found them kinda gross. I thought that men who looked a bit gruff went from being gross and boring to being cute and attractive.

I'm pushing 40 now and my spouse is the exact opposite of what I was attracted to as a teen. There is nothing feminine about him.

But I think I know what that expert meant. She's blaming women choosing partners who treats them as their equals on birth control. Because here is the thing about my man: he may not look feminine nor does he particularly act feminine, but he's also not a brute who thinks he's the head of the household and I am his servant. He doesn't act like he is better than me nor does he feel entitled to me at all. He cooks and cleans. He is very good with emotional talks and being attentive and empathetic. He is very encouraging and has basically no control issues besides claiming the kitchen as his domain. That's mostly I might be one of the worst cooks in the world.

Women want men who are emotionally intelligent, who are their equals and who are good partners. They don't want a slave master. And I think that is why American conservatives are trying to blame birth control. If you can convince women that they are taking a pill that mind controls them into wanting something unnatural and wrong, then they may be more compliant than of you flat out blame them for having higher standards for their men than their mothers and grandmothers had.

There are definitely side effects to taking birth control but there are also side effects to taking pain killers.

I have no doubt the anti birth control wave is orcastrated by the very people who are trying to take away women's autonomy in the US and beyond. I see the anti abortion movement starting to take root in Europe too and I fucking hate it.

The whole point of everything they're doing is to create an uneducated population of easily manipulated fodder. Of course people are forgetting. This effort has been running for 20-30 years (or longer) at this point, and it's working.

Gotta grow new soldiers for the next war

I knew a woman who stopped taking birth control because of occasional headaches, and she and her husband both ended up with one that didn’t move out until 23 years later.

It’s being pushed by the TERF/radfems on tumblr (covert alt right movement) as well. Birth control messes up your goddess energy or something.

humanity is awesome at kicking its own ass

When they're willing to ignore the family's wishes to pull the plug in life support of a dead woman because the corpse has a fetus growing inside of it, I don't think anyone should be finishing inside of anyone else without multiple forms of birth control.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/06/17/georgia-woman-life-support-abortion-law-baby/84240583007/

Do not respond to any of this; just wait around for 2026 and try voting fascism out again.

Edit: the fact that liberals spew this shit so much every single day- "do nothing , wait it out, hope!"- that you didnt spot this as sarcasm says a lot about the position you're in.

Low birth rates are only problematic to carcinogenic ideologies.

I'm gonna get hammered here because this is Lemmy and anything even loosely associated with Natural Family Planning is going to get down voted.

There are very specific and narrow methods that work well (not perfectly, obviously). I won't quote and statistics here.

To start up top, if you want to use any method of birth control, do it. It's up to you entirely, I don't judge anyone at all.

Also, anything related to the calendar method, day counting, or any such nonsense fuckin sucks. Some like to rope that into natural family planning because they are super simple... But super simple doesn't work.

If anyone is interested in learning about one that actually has scientific backing, it would be the Billings Ovulation Method. But it's not day tracking or anything... You need to do some work. You need to learn about it, learn your own body, and be diligent. And most importantly, use alternative methods when you aren't sure.

Again, I'm willing to bring on the downvotes, but I hope people research before assuming it's all bullshit.

And just to be clear: If you want something easy, use birth control.

As an edit: I want to fully acknowledge the gap between typical use and perfect use. My wife and I are certainly in the perfect use category... Her dad is a doctor and we are well aware of all the science behind it. If you aren't going to put in the work, the method is NOT for you. At all.