This post, authored by Joanna Gray, is republished with permission from The Daily Sceptic
The troubling revelation that one in three conceptions in Britain now end in abortion demands an explanation. Who or what is to blame? The Tories for allowing abortion pills to be delivered by post? The inherent wickedness of women? Feckless and reckless men? An economy so immiserated no-one can afford children? A global conspiracy to reduce the population? Or the more prosaic rise in use of track-your-cycle apps?
Unless you are fully across the TikTok trends favoured by young Gen Z women, it may have escaped your notice that there is now a big movement away from the contraceptive pill. From the Right there are the likes of Mary Harrington who highlight the pill’s role in transhumanism, whereby women wage war against the natural biology of their own bodies in order to compete in an alternative consumerist reality. From the Left, we have those who explore the idea that contraception should not be solely the woman’s burden and that Big Pharma is rapaciously using women’s bodies for profit: #divinefeminity. And, perhaps most persuasively, from age-old vanity: the pill makes you fat, spotty and depressed.
Use of the pill has plummeted in recent years. Of the women visiting Sexual and Reproductive Health Clinics, pill use declined from 47% in 2012-13 to 27% in 2022-23. Explanations for this include the fact that in 2021 the rules changed to allow the delivery of progesterone-only contraceptive pills over the counter. Most contraceptive services are now run through pharmacies where it is easy to pop in, have you blood pressure taken by a technicians and be given a supply of the mini pill. Although specific figures are hard to come by there is an acknowledged declining use in hormonal contraceptives all round. The Pharmaceutical Journal uses the term: hormone hesitancy.
What then are women doing to prevent pregnancy? Older women are said to favour the coil or what are known as LARCs (Long Acting Reversible Contraception) – hormone implants inserted into the forearm. Younger women though have gone old school and ‘track their cycle’ via their iPhone: #fertilitytracker #naturalcyle #naturalbirthcontrol.
In her memoir Speaking for Myself, Cherie Blair famously wrote about the conception of Leo in Balmoral because she had left her ‘contraceptive equipment’ at home. Speculation mounted that she had been using a ‘Vatican approved’ cycle monitor – such as the MIRA fertility tracker that cost then a few hundred pounds. I remember looking at them in between babies and being put off by the testing swabs, tubes and general mechanical nature of the thing.
Today everything is much easier. Your Apple Watch merely records your temperature and tells you whether you’re fertile or not. The top five most popular fertility tracker apps today in Britain are: Natural Cycles, Flo Period, Clue, Fertility Friend and Ovia Fertility. Some promise to be over 90% effective when used correctly, but the reality is likely to be significantly lower. Indeed, the proportion of women who were not using any form of contraception when they became pregnant increased from 56% in 2018 to 70% in 2023 according to the BMJ, with those relying on often unreliable fertility tracking increasing.
Speaking to young people about the issue (massive cringe alert), their anecdotes back up this vibe shift. Boys are cautiously delighted about the lack of need for condoms, trusting that their girlfriends are ‘clean’ so there is no fear of STIs. The girls are happy to be hormone free, enjoying #naturalbirthcontrol #hormonecoach content on Insta and TikTok. What I discovered from only a few conversations (more research definitely needed), goes some way to explaining I think why British women now abort upwards of 250,000 babies a year (the equivalent population of the city of Southampton).
“I’ll just take the pill.”
“My friend just got the pill.”
“I think you just phone up and get a pill.”
Initially when I heard such things I thought these young women were talking about the morning after pill. They weren’t. They were talking about the abortion pills, mifepristone and misoprostol. Mifepristone breaks down the uterus lining and misoprostol evacuates the degraded uterus content. During lockdown, the Tories temporarily approved abortion pills by post for pregnancies under 10 weeks of gestation. Following a free vote in Parliament, this temporary measure was made permanent in 2022. The NHS abortion statistics report:
Since its introduction as a method of abortion during the COVID-19 pandemic, taking both medications at home remained the most common method of abortion, making up 72% of abortions (200,745 abortions) in 2023. This was an increase of 48,340 abortions since 2022.
How this translates into vibes absorbed by young people is: I’ll do natural hormone tracking and if that fails, “I’ll just take a pill”. Strangely it seems to them much more natural to take two abortion pills to stop a pregnancy rather than one contraceptive pill a day for many years. Is it surprising that the abortion rate is highest among those aged 20 to 24, at 39.4 per 1,000 women?
One young person even said to me: “It’s only a pill. It’s not that deep.”
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.
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