FDA approves first over-the-counter oral contraceptive despite risks: Depression, cancer, poor intimacy, weaker offspring
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Thursday approved the country’s first hormonal birth control pill for over-the-counter sale despite its significant health risks to women.
Opill, a life-prevention pill manufactured by French drugmaker HRA Pharma, is a progestin-only daily contraceptive that will now be available for sale without a prescription. It is expected to be available in stores for over-the-counter purchase beginning early next year.
Progestin is a synthetic form of progesterone, a hormone secreted during pregnancy. Progestin fools the female body into thinking it is already pregnant and thereby prevents conception.
“Today’s approval marks the first time a nonprescription daily oral contraceptive will be an available option for millions of people in the United States,” the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni said in a statement.
“When used as directed, daily oral contraception is safe and is expected to be more effective than currently available nonprescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy,” Cavazzoni said. The FDA expressed hope that its approval will reduce unwanted pregnancies, estimated at three million a year.
Media and feminist operatives are cheering the news while dismissing the pill’s significant health risks as “conservative influencer talking points”.
“Major conservative influencers have coalesced in recent months around talking points that connect birth control with a variety of negative health outcomes, which experts say instill fear in women who could otherwise benefit from using birth control,” MSNBC tweeted this month.
Those “negative health outcomes” include a 20%–30% increased risk of breast cancer among women who take hormonal contraceptives. Furthermore, according to a Danish study of over one million women, those who took progestin-only hormonal contraceptives were 34% more likely to be diagnosed with depression or be prescribed antidepressants. The number shot up to 80% among teenage girls.
But hormonal birth control also poses other serious health risks, both to women and humanity as a whole.
Studies have found that sexual attraction is in part determined by a block of genetic code referred to as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). As they approach ovulation, healthy women are attracted to men with masculine features and who are MHC-dissimilar, meaning they carry a distinctly different genetic code. This genetic disparity leads to more robust immune systems in offspring and has allowed humans to develop strong defenses against various pathogens and diseases.
