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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC, good morning and happy Friday, everybody. Tuesday of this week was a landmark day in the history of the accessibility of birth control, at least in New York State. Governor Hochul signed a bill into law that allows over-the-counter sales of three types of birth control, the pill, the patch, and the ring, and she said this.

Governor Hochul: It's a new day, you now have access, easy access to the contraception that you choose to fit your own personal health care needs because it is your body and it is your choice.

Brian Lehrer: As it happens, this landmark moment of progress comes amid a growing wave of disinformation about at least some forms of birth control on social media discouraging women from using them. This is happening on TikTok, which so many girls and young women see and elsewhere. Behind at least some of it, there is what the Washington Post calls an underlying conservative push. Let's discuss with Lauren Weber, a Washington Post accountability reporter focused on the forces promoting scientific and medical disinformation. Her new article is called Women Are Getting Off Birth Control Amid Misinformation Explosion. Lauren, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Lauren Weber: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: First to introduce you, that's some job title you've got there, accountability reporter focused on the forces promoting scientific and medical disinformation. There's enough of that going around that it's worthy of its own beat at the Washington Post now?

Lauren Weber: Oh, let me tell you, I'm a busy gal these days. I'm sure as you've seen, and I know as you've talked about on the show, we've seen quite a lot of misinformation and disinformation really get accelerated in the social media age. I think in part, too, with the COVID pandemic, the trust in medical institutions really took a nosedive. We're seeing a lot more of this these days.

Brian Lehrer: I see you've been reporting recently on the Florida surgeon general spreading misinformation amid a measles outbreak. Also at one of your articles calls The Lucrative World of COVID Misinformation. Just for some context for our listeners but let's talk about birth control. This is about a category called hormonal contraception. Would you describe that and what kinds of birth control it includes?

Lauren Weber: Absolutely. Hormonal contraception, most contraception people are familiar with. It's the birth control pill, which often can include estrogen or progesterone. It includes IUDs, which often have hormones besides the copper IUD. It includes birth control implants and shots. Essentially, hormonal contraception is what most of us think about when we think about birth control.

Brian Lehrer: We should say right off the bat before we dive into the misinformation campaign, we should acknowledge, as you do in your piece, that there are real side effects that many women experience from those forms of birth control and for a few, some more serious risks. Right?

Lauren Weber: Absolutely. I think it's very important to acknowledge that any medication that you take or anything that you take like this can have side effects, which can range anywhere from inconvenient or annoying side effects like bleeding between periods or nausea or headaches to severe but rare side effects. Some forms of birth control can increase the risk of stroke and some IUDs can perforate the uterine wall. These are actual side effects that do happen, but they are rare.

Brian Lehrer: Now, you report that doctors are seeing an explosion of birth control misinformation that their patients are increasingly coming to them believing. What are some prime examples?

Lauren Weber: Brian, what you and I don't see, because we're not 15 to 25-year-olds on TikTok, is that what happens is a lot of these folks get shown videos of women saying birth control caused their depression, birth control caused them to gain a bunch of weight, conservative influencers saying birth control can cause infertility, all of which is misinformation. What will happen is once you see that on your TikTok or on your Instagram, the algorithm will note that you engaged with it. It'll show you more of it. You end up in this kind of endless stream of videos that repeat over and over and over again that can really skew your understanding of the risks and the contextual science behind stuff like birth control.

Brian Lehrer: These women, 15 to 25, are seeing these things, believing them increasingly, coming to their doctors saying they're getting off birth control or not going on it for those reasons and so you report the doctors are seeing more abortion requests as a result. Make that connection?

Lauren Weber: Yes, absolutely. One of the physicians, we spoke to many physicians, but one that we feature in the piece, Michael Belmonte, said that over the last few years, with this kind of explosion of misinfo on social media, he's seen a wave of patients coming to him seeking abortions because they got off of birth control because they were pitched this idea by influencers that they should be on more natural birth control or that they shouldn't be on birth control because it would cause all these things but these influencers failed to reveal that natural family planning can have an up to 23% failure rate.

He'll see these women come through that they didn't realize they could get pregnant by being off of this or had been told by a friend that this was the better way for them. There's a lot of concern among many of the physicians that my colleague Sabrina Molley and I talked to for this piece that this is only going to continue to get worse and that they're really seeing the tip of the iceberg of folks in this generation that are being bombarded by some of this messaging.

Brian Lehrer: Women, we're opening up the phones for you. Are you on any kind of birth control? Have you gotten off any kind of birth control because of something you saw on TikTok or has your daughter or your niece or anyone you know or any comment or question about this topic? For Lauren Weber from The Washington Post, who covers science accountability when it comes to misinformation, 212-433-WNYC, or to be more accurate in that wording, a reporter focused on the forces promoting scientific and medical disinformation, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Call or text, tell us your story or that of someone you know, or ask Lauren a question. Lauren, on the underlying conservative push, you write, for example, "that far-right conservatives argue that widespread acceptance of birth control has altered traditional gender roles and weakened the family." This seems so 1950s, 1960s. This is still going on?

Lauren Weber: Lila Rose, who's a prominent right-wing activist against abortion, told us on the record "to be anti-fertility is to be anti-woman. The proliferation of hormonal birth control is just another way of trying to force women to be more like men with significant consequences for our emotional and physical health," she told us. Yes, I mean, we are seeing this movement, which some of the academics we spoke to say mimics the movement against abortion. They feel like the stigmatization that they're seeing around birth control is the first step in restricting more of it.

Brian Lehrer: Then this is quite a toxic one-two step, if we put those two things together, discourage women from using birth control and then ban abortion in your state. We know where that winds up.

Lauren Weber: Absolutely it leads to quite, quite large consequences. I spoke to a 20-year-old in Wisconsin where abortion is banned after 22 weeks who said she had originally been really afraid to get on birth control because of the string of misinformation she had seen on her own social media platforms but after she took a sex ed human biology class at her college, she realized that she had been misled. She said it's really frightening to her that in today's day and age what she said to me exactly was, "It's terrifying to think about our options being taken away in misinformation about the things that we still have access to. That's a combination for disaster," she said.

Brian Lehrer: Right. With what you said about those who push the idea that being anti-fertility is being anti-woman and then discouraging people from using birth control and then banning them from getting abortions if they want abortions when they get pregnant, sometimes to their surprise, it's like this organized, multi-layered, social conservative push to get women more full time back in the home.

Lauren Weber: It's quite a multi-layered push. I got to be honest, it preys upon what is a very complicated, complex issue. At the end of the day, women's health is underfunded and under-researched. A lot of women feel like their physicians don't listen to them about side effects or about their concerns or they don't trust their physician and so they turn to social media platforms.

They're looking for more folks who can understand what they're going through or what they're seeing and they're finding these conservative commentators or you're also finding influencers with skin in the game who are pushing supplement regimes or hormonal balancing programs that are not based in scientific evidence, but that they may make money off of.

Brian Lehrer: One thing that you covered and wrote about, and I went and watched the video of this Ben Shapiro Show, Ben Shapiro, the conservative host, the assertion that women on hormonal birth control start to prefer men who are not traditionally male. What is not traditionally male even mean?

Lauren Weber: That's a great question we'd have to ask. I believe it is his guest on a show that said but the study that that is based on which you will see a lot of conservative commentators point to, is a pretty small study. When we talked to other researchers about it, they said more research would need to be done to say that concretely. This gets at some of the problems with short-form content like TikTok and so on, is a lot of influencers aren't saying, "Well, there was this study," and giving all the caveats.

They're saying, "Oh, this is a definitive fact." It becomes a lot harder to debunk or to speak about these concepts in all of the contexts and all the information you need around them when it's only in a 10-second TikTok clip.

Brian Lehrer: Just as a side note, conservatives see this is a bad thing that is maybe not traditional male comes with less patriarchal tendencies and things like that.

Lauren Weber: I can't speak for Ben Shapiro, but yes, I think that was some of what he was getting at on that show. I think what's interesting and what they all say when asked or look, we're looking out for women's health and I spoke to the folks behind Evie Magazine, which is described as the right-wing version of Cosmo. They published a lot of articles that are very antibirth control, but they argue they're looking out for women's health but that is the kind of social media that some women are now seeing

Brian Lehrer: Your report on a disparate impact and extra vulnerability of women of color. How so?

Lauren Weber: Well, I think, unfortunately, Brian, what a lot of people have forgotten is that government programs resulted in forced sterilizations of women of color as early as not that long ago, decades ago here in the United States. We have a learned history. Women have a learned history, women of color in particular, of mistrust for the government and mistrust around birth control due to these four sterilizations.

Brian Lehrer: Is there a kind of crunchy to right-wing pipeline here, like progressive people who suspect big pharma in general and for many good reasons and prefer natural methods of things for very good reasons, somehow intersecting with a right-wing agenda to get women back into the home in a more full-time way?

Lauren Weber: I think I see a lot of parallels between this and the anti-vaccine movement which frankly attracts a lot of the similar overlap. I call it the horseshoe of you've got far left and far right folks uniting on this issue of birth control. I would argue also anti-vaccine things as well. I do think you are seeing some overlap between those communities, but it is important to think about like I had mentioned previously that some of these influencers have skin in the game and some of these conservative commentators also have political influence in the game.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call from Ryan in the Bronx. Ryan, you're on WNYC. Thank you very much for calling in.

Ryan: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I've been finding this conversation so interesting because I am, one, extremely liberal and progressive flaming hair feminist and always a supporter of women's reproductive rights. I myself am a woman who stopped taking hormonal birth control, well, over a decade ago for many of the reasons that your panelists mentioned are appearing on TikTok. They are perhaps not experiences that are reflected by the majority of women who take hormonal birth control but they are valid experiences and one is that, for me, when I suffered from them, well, over a decade ago, I didn't have TikTok or Instagram to inform me about.

I'm curious where we draw the line or where we make the distinction between misinformation and disinformation and perhaps minority experiences that are valid and important to be received by young women, and if TikTok and Instagram are the place where they're receiving it, important to be appearing on those platforms.

Brian Lehrer: Do you want to talk about what your experience was? You obviously don't have to, but what your medical experience was, and what your interaction may have been with your doctors around that?

Ryan: Sure. I was prescribed several different hormone-based birth controls in my early 20s when I was in college still or late teens and early 20s. I found that while taking those, I suddenly started feeling extreme depressive symptoms so much so that at one point, I was experiencing severe suicidal ideation. It wasn't until I figured out that there was perhaps a link between the hormone-based birth control that I was taking and those symptoms that I was able to make some progress with my actual healthcare. It required me to completely get off of that and take a now non-hormone-based birth control that I've been on happily for, like I said, well over a decade.

I did not have the resources of being able to look at TikTok a decade ago to find other young women who are experiencing similar symptoms to mine. While I am very much concerned about how these platforms are being used to perhaps stear at right-wing talking points, drive women into traps where they don't have options, I'm equally concerned about these platforms not being able to be used by young women who are experiencing things like I did. I consider myself lucky to be alive because I figured it out on my own.

Brian Lehrer: Ryan, thank you very much for your call. Lauren Weber from the Washington Post, I think you'll acknowledge, you do in your article, that this can be tricky because of course, we can't validate Ryan's experience. She's just a caller unknown to us, but she certainly sounds sincere and hormones can have emotional effects. How do we put all this together?

Lauren Weber: Ryan, I 'm glad you called in because I think this is the sticky part of all of this is how do you differentiate between women sharing their lived experiences, especially if you are someone just on your phone scrolling who is genuinely trying to educate others that this could be a side effect in their particular instance, in a rare case. Versus, someone who's looking to make money selling an antibirth control agenda through hormone supplements or other things that they may make money off of and conservative commentators that may have some political bias.

I think it's a very good question that I don't necessarily have an answer to, but I think the confluence of all of these together can swirl to sometimes create a picture that does not fully give the context of what could be happening medically if that makes sense.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, listeners, our guest is Lauren Weber from The Washington Post who co-wrote an article called Women Are Getting Off Birth Control Amid Misinformation Explosion. Our lines are full with people with stories and questions. I think Adina in Brooklyn is going to describe a different experience from our first caller. Adina, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Adina: Yes, hi. Thanks for taking my call. The hypocrisy of the politics and the religiosity around this issue is maddening, and I want to acknowledge the ugly history of birth control in the US and absolutely validate the experiences of people like Ryan and women who have serious side effects. All that said, I am a nurse midwife who works in sexual reproductive health and I do want to get the message out that there are a lot of benefits of birth control, both physiologic and psychological.

Other than being the most effective method to prevent pregnancy, the hormonal methods of birth control we use them to treat debilitating menstrual symptoms, mood, or heavy bleeding, or some folks have menstrual migraines that are debilitating. It's even protective against some forms of reproductive system cancers, endometrial and ovarian cancer. Again, just acknowledging the full range of experience and also everybody has freedom to make a choice about what they want to use to prevent pregnancy. There are some real health benefits of hormonal birth control that I feel don't get enough play.

Brian Lehrer: Adina, thank you very much. Lauren, there are things in your article along these lines that cite, for example, some real risks of hormonal birth control, but that the risks of those same things from pregnancy and childbirth are much worse.

Lauren Weber: Yes, that's right. Your stroke risk from birth control is actually a little bit less than if you were to become pregnant. It is an interesting interplay there. I think as your last caller just pointed out, this is a very nuanced topic and I think as I said earlier on the show, there needs to be more funding for women's health. There needs to be more research done on birth control. A lot of the studies that are cited, some of the physicians I talked to said, "We want more. We want more research. We want more understanding of some of the interplay of these things."

That's in part why President Joe Biden signed an executive order just recently on March 18th to invest more money in women's research so that there can be more answers to some of the questions that some of your callers have about this but at the end of the day, in this gray area and in this politicized area around birth control, a lot of this misinformation is starting to spread.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and during Ryan's call, the first caller, somebody texted us, "I had the opposite experience. I stopped having bouts of depression after starting on birth control pills." Another listener writes, "Thank you for covering this incredibly important topic. It is very significant to consider the lack of accurate sexuality education that many states provide mandated by policies and laws. This is a true effort to have our young people uninformed and limited in their ability to protect themselves and their futures."

Another listener writes, "The takeaway message here is that there is not nearly enough research on women's health." I think you just stated something like that. That is one of the conclusions that your article comes to, right?

Lauren Weber: Yes, absolutely. As I noted women's health research is incredibly underfunded. It's something that is a real problem. Some of these more side effects questions, some of the data is not as developed as we would like, and as many of the physicians I talked to said they want more money to look into these things to answer more definitively to help women make the choice of which type of birth control may be best for them. We'll see if more funding for that comes in the future.

Brian Lehrer: You know what, your article, and your conversation right here, right now about it seems to have enlightened somebody in the business. Will take Jonathan in Westport's call for what I think is going to be very interesting. Jonathan, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Jonathan: Hey, Brian. Thank you so much. Longtime fan. I was not aware of the social media context around birth control, but I'm the office manager for a gynecology practice that offers both natural and medicinal birth control. I've noticed an uptick in calls from young women who say pretty much the same thing. I understand that hormonal birth control can be very dangerous and I'm really interested in a natural alternative.

What's interesting is that when we talk about the relative effectiveness that hormonal birth control is high 90% effective, but many of the natural methods are much lower, that there's maybe a 20% or 25% chance that you might become pregnant. The women are astonished. It's like, oh my God, no, I didn't know that. That's an interesting thing to me, that really the whole reason why you're on birth control is because you don't want to become pregnant for some younger women. They're not aware of the difference in the effectiveness. That's what I'm noticing.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe those in your practice might even start asking if they've been seeing things on TikTok.

Jonathan: Yes, I was not aware and I'm going to start pressing that button and saying, "Well, where did you hear that?" [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: Because you're seeing this more than in previous years, is your point, right?

Jonathan: Yes, exactly. There's been a large uptick recently, I would say.

Brian Lehrer: There's your focus group of one Lauren proving your article's thesis.

Lauren Weber: I should have called you before I finished writing this article. I would've been able to quote you. I think you're seeing exactly what many of the physicians I spoke to said, which is that birth control is being vilified on social media. People are in short video clips, really talking about some of the ways that they feel like it's dangerous without the medical context. Oftentimes folks that are not equipped sometimes to give that medical judgment, and then some young women are then taking that as gospel and are not understanding that the effectiveness piece of it is really impacted when you go to natural birth control.

Brian Lehrer: Our guest is Lauren Weber, a Washington Post Accountability reporter focused on the forces promoting scientific and medical disinformation. We're talking about her article called Women Are Getting Off Birth Control Amid Misinformation Explosion. There's a lot more to say about this. Our lines are jammed. People are calling and not being able to get through. Lauren, you're probably not surprised to hear, because all our lines are full. Listeners, you can keep calling, try to get through or keep texting us. There's no limit to the texts we can receive.

We're watching them go by, 212-433-WNYC to call or text 212-433-9692. We'll hear from some more of you, a lot more to say about this. We'll talk about the social media response. I was actually surprised to see in your article, Lauren, that TikTok is being active in taking some disinformation videos down. We'll talk about that and much more. Listeners, stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with Lauren Weber, Washington Post Accountability reporter focused on the forces promoting scientific and medical disinformation and her new article called Women Are Getting Off Birth Control Amid Misinformation Explosion. Emily in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Emily.

Emily: Hi. Thanks for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Emily: I just wanted to say I was on hormonal birth control for about 18 years. I was born in the late '80s and I think I was part of a cohort of girls who were encouraged to take hormonal birth control pretty early. I started taking birth control when I was about 15 and I'm now 37 and I'm coming to the conclusion that I was put on it too early. I'm still figuring out what has done to my body, which is unfortunate. What I want to say is that there are a lot of non-hormonal options to choose from. I didn't even know about those until I started looking in my late 30s. I think that's important to tell young women, especially in this climate of disinformation.

Brian Lehrer: You told our screener what you are using now. Do you want to say it on the air?

Emily: Sure. I use a copper IUD and it's great. I had all of the typical hormonal symptoms, depression, weight gain, paranoia, all sorts of horrible things. I don't have anything that I can attribute to the copper IUD. It's been great.

Brian Lehrer: Emily. Thank you. When you hear this and I guess you've been listening probably since the beginning of this segment, knowing what your personal experience has been, but knowing that a lot of women don't have that experience with hormonal birth control, do you find yourself rooting for one side or another here?

Emily: No, it's difficult to unpack because while there should be all these options open to young women. I feel like we should be given a comprehensive list of facts and figures, but there isn't one because all of us are different. I don't have a straight answer. No, I wish I did. I don't think that it's as simple and cut and dry as hormonal birth control, bad non-hormonal options, good.

Brian Lehrer: But don't whitewash the risks either.

Emily: Right. Exactly. Yes, I wasn't told about any of them, and when I did tell my doctor who was very well-meaning, he said at the time, "Oh you'll grow out of it." It'll be okay.

Brian Lehrer: Wow, dismissive. Emily, thank you for sharing your experience and some of this, Lauren, I don't know if you get into it in your reporting, does fall on doctors. To be thorough in informing their young women patients about risks as well as benefits of hormonal and other birth control.

Lauren Weber: Well, Emily too, I want to point out if this gives you any solace in talking with some of these physicians, they said there's been a shift in the last 15, 20 years where more of them have been taught to speak about side effects and what the choices are in the birth control that you're offered than historically was the case. Historically, physicians really stressed effectiveness and they brushed aside a lot of women's concerns.

That's what a lot of women has led to a lot of distrust around their experience with the medical profession, but there is this new effort in the last couple years to really make sure that this is more of a patient physician decision to have these conversations to make sure there is more informed consent. Now, I can't say that every physician is doing that, but that is now what newer physicians are being taught. If that helps bring you any solace as you think about that.

Brian Lehrer: Does that give you any pause about what we started with at the top of the hour? The new law signed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul just this week to allow over-the-counter sales of birth control pills, which would mean you wouldn't have to necessarily consult a doctor, the pill, the patch, and the ring, as they say.

Lauren Weber: Oh, you're asking me or--

Brian Lehrer: I'm asking you.

Lauren Weber: I think that when taking any sort of medication, it is smart to speak with a physician if that is available to you. I think today, a lot of women, they don't necessarily have, in today's fractured healthcare system, access to a physician, or they don't have an OB-GYN, or they don't feel comfortable talking to a physician. I think that is a shame, because the concern is, yes, you may be on a form of birth control that your body does not react to as well as a different one.

Many of the physicians I spoke to said that if side effects continue to be a problem, they feel like they need to find a birth control that's right for you. I would encourage folks, it is always a good idea to speak to your physician if you feel like something is a problem.

Brian Lehrer: The last caller mentioned that she's on the copper IUD. You do refer to the copper IUD in your article and that there's even disinformation being spread about that to discourage women from using it. Can you talk about that a little bit and the difference between the different kinds of IUDs?

Lauren Weber: Yes. The copper IUD does not release any hormones to prevent pregnancy. That's the major difference. Yes, even the copper IUD, Candace Owens, who is a prominent political commentator on the conservative right, had an entire video where she talked about how viewers had told her they had faced fertility problems on the copper IUD, which physicians we spoke to said there is no evidence that there are long-term fertility effects from using a copper IUD or other forms of birth control.

We see, again, these social media short clips that are sometimes presented as absolute facts by folks that are pushing a political agenda or potentially pushing possible supplements or other birth control replacements that they would argue are effective.

Brian Lehrer: On the new New York law as the New York Times coverage of it mentions, under the law, pharmacists can dispense three different types of hormonal birth control to both New York residents and out-of-state visitors, birth control pills, vaginal rings, and contraceptive patches. It adds that they will also offer counseling and information about the medication as well as the risks of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. It sounds like the pharmacists under the new New York law are being empowered, maybe even required to do or at least offer counseling at the point of purchase.

Lauren Weber: Well, that's good to hear. I will say this is in contrast to a court case we saw this month which upheld a Texas law that requires minors to obtain parental permission before accessing birth control. I think you see the difference in birth control access in different parts of the country is quite stark.

Brian Lehrer: Somebody writes, "I have always liked to ask at the gynecologist what all the doctors and nurses and nurse practitioners there use and found it really interesting to hear the answers." There's maybe a piece of advice for women who are going to doctors for reproductive care, turn the question around and find out what your doctors, with all the information and context that they have and nurses and et cetera, have chosen for themselves. What do you think about that?

Lauren Weber: I think that's a great tip of advice. I think in general, I touched on this a little bit earlier, but I think women need to feel empowered when they go to the doctor's office to ask questions. Don't be embarrassed to say you saw something on TikTok, can you explain to me whether or not that's actual. That is something you should ask. If it is something you are concerned about, you should ask your physician. Don't be worried about how that may come across. I think it's great to always ask questions at the doctor's office.

Brian Lehrer: A listener writes, "A good doctor will monitor and follow up with their patient about side effects after prescribing any form of birth control." Zoe in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Zoe.

Zoe: Hi. I just wanted to say that I think a lot of this has to do with how inaccessible going to the doctor can be in America. Even if you do have good health insurance or even if you have health insurance, there's still so much to navigate with finding a doctor that works with your insurance, finding a doctor who has time to see you, especially in New York, that you can end up with.

I know that my first gynecologist just gave me birth control that really didn't work for me. When I found out that it really didn't work for me, I had similar experiences as other callers who hormonal birth control didn't work for them, just said, "Okay, well then, there's many different hormonal birth control pills that you can take. It's not just one generic pill," and just gave me the copper IUD, which also didn't really work for me. Though it does make you infertile, there are definitely side effects with the copper IUD.

It wasn't until I managed through a friend of my parents who's a doctor to get a recommendation for a gynecologist who wasn't taking new patients but could see me and who was like, "Oh, wow, I can't believe these terrible experiences you've had with these pills. Let's try to get you something that works for you." It was because I had that level of access that I could have something that worked for me. I get why girls would turn to TikTok because that's pretty accessible information right there.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, Zoe. What about that, Lauren?

Lauren Weber: I could not agree more with your experience. It's something I heard over and over again from women I spoke to. Even from doctors I spoke to said, "Look, the way the medical system is set up now, our appointments are shorter." They're like, "We used to have longer times with women, but the way we are reimbursed by insurance companies or the way that our practice is set up, some of these appointments that involve the prescription of birth control take place in 15 minutes." Is that enough time to really get into the level of nuance for these choices and so on?

I know not every physician that does that, but a lot do maybe not spend enough time with their patients due to the current makeup of our fractured healthcare system in reimbursement techniques. I think that's absolutely a fair thing to point out of why women may feel more comfortable on their phones than after having to battle for months to get into a physician's office.

Brian Lehrer: Zoe, thank you very much for telling your story. It leads back to one of the fundamental paradoxes about social media. There are so many good reasons to vilify social media these days, but it also creates community for marginalized groups and information flow for people who may not be getting reliable information from institutional sources and that kind of thing, right?

Lauren Weber: Absolutely. I think what's difficult to pass when it comes to some of this birth control misinformation is what is someone's lived experience and what is someone who is trying to make a buck off of you or increase their political influence. I think it's just helpful to understand as you are viewing these resources, that there is a variety of characters with different motivations that may be sharing content.

Brian Lehrer: You write in your article that social media companies are struggling to combat many types of disinformation, but you say TikTok, for example, has taken down some videos that are dispensing misinformation about birth control. What's an example or two of that?

Lauren Weber: Actually when we reached out to TikTok for this article, they then informed us they had taken down some of the videos we asked about, one of which was by a conservative commentator, Brett Cooper, who is on The Daily Wire. She was talking about, in very definitive terms without scientific context, that birth control could make you gain weight, could impact your fertility, and so on. That's one of the videos they took down saying it did not abide by their company policies prohibiting inaccurate, misleading, or false content that can cause harm.

Brian Lehrer: Of course whether social media companies should look at content that individuals are posting on those platforms and monitor for disinformation and take down disinformation, this is a big topic in Congress right now, right? Conservatives, in particular, feel picked on for this, even when the disinformation that's taken down is really disinformation like COVID disinformation or election was stolen disinformation. The social media platforms are both wary of political backlash when they do take things down and also overwhelmed because there are so many posts on TikTok or on X or on pick your one that they can't keep up with everything anyway.

Lauren Weber: They're also trying to balance free speech protections. This is something we're seeing being talked about at Supreme Court right now. There's a couple of different cases, including some legislators in Florida have tried to ban the taking down of content like this. They call it censorship, whereas there's also some conversations around what is censorship. What is misinformation, and so on? It's obviously a very complicated field. I think we're going to continue to see this talked about, obviously, in the halls of Congress, but in the courts as well.

Brian Lehrer: Right. One more text. Listener writes, "The biggest concern for me is the lack of care about women's pain, such as during insertion of an IUD." Again, that's real, that can be real, but it's being used against the whole idea of birth control by some of these perpetrators of disinformation and conservative values, if you want to call it values, right?

Lauren Weber: Absolutely. IUD insertion pain is very real, it's underfunded and understudied to very clearly show ways to improve it, but it's something that's not talked about enough. I think what drives women to distrust physicians is when the reality of what that will entail is not adequately discussed. I think that feeds into this gray area, that then some folks choose to spread misinformation in.

Brian Lehrer: As you report, there are ways to manage and minimize that pain.

Lauren Weber: Yes. There are physicians that are working in that area, but that is a newer action by these physicians. I spoke to someone at Duke who had monitored an OB-GYN resident who now has changed the way she practices after seeing a lot of TikTok videos around IUD insertion pain. She offers anxiety medication and some other medication to potentially change that outcome. I think that's an example where social media surfaced real pain, and some physicians are listening to that and attempting to change their practice for patients. That's on every physician. I think that helps play into when women don't trust their physicians because they feel like they're not being listened to.

Brian Lehrer: Can I end on a hypothetical, that maybe there's no answer we can give to it, but I wonder if you thought about it? What if hormonal birth control was being inserted into men's bodies, instead of women's bodies? How different would the political or cultural or religious or medical conversation be?

Lauren Weber: Well, Brian, I can offer an opinion on that, which is that I feel like there'd be a lot more money on medical research to look into that if you asked my opinion, based on what you're seeing when it comes to men and women's health funding research. I think you'd see a lot more understanding around this and a lot more research, a lot more money paid to it, and a lot more attention. Let's put it that way.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I'll offer this up to you for text messages, and if we get anything interesting I'll read some of them on Monday show. The hypothetical, the counterfactual, the alternative universe, what if it was men who had most of the responsibility for taking birth control medications? I know there are condoms, I know there are vasectomies for men who know they don't want to have any kids or any more kids, but what if it was medical birth control on the male instead of the female in our society?

How would this whole conversation be different? Text 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. If we get anything good, we'll read them on Monday show. For now, we thank Lauren Weber, Washington Post accountability reporter, focused on the forces promoting scientific and medical disinformation. Her new article is called Women Are Getting off Birth Control Amid Misinformation Explosion. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

Lauren Weber: Thank you so much for having me on. This has been a great conversation.

 

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