Woman Gets Off Birth Control Because Influencers Told Her To, Immediately Gets Pregnant by Mistake

Young influencers on TikTok and Instagram urge women to stop hormonal birth control, claiming broad physical and mental benefits. Stopping hormonal contraception greatly raises the risk of unintended pregnancy without alternative protection. A Texas woman, Ashley Hamrick, decided to stop the pill after encountering anti-pill influencers, despite having used it for over a decade. Her doctor advised staying on it because she reported no negative side effects, but she felt dismissed and discussed the choice with her partner. The couple chose not to adopt another contraceptive method, and four months later she became pregnant during early 2024 amid intensified Texas restrictions on reproductive care.

On TikTok and Instagram, a chorus of young influencers are advising women in their age bracket to ditch their hormonal birth control pills, saying they cause a cavalcade of problems for physical and mental health. The only problem? Unless you also ditch men entirely, going off birth control means it's statistically way likelier that you're going to get pregnant. Look no further than a Texas-based young woman named Ashley Hamrick,

Hamrick, aged 26 when she stopped taking the pill, began to wonder whether birth control pills were right for her while watching these beatific young women talking about how much clearer their minds felt following their decision to stop using prescription contraceptives. "Who am I without birth control?" she recalled pondering to the NYT. "Will I feel some sort of difference coming off it?"

Perturbed, the young woman's doctor told her that if she wasn't having any negative side effects - which, as Hamrick told the NYT, she wasn't - there was no reason to go off the pill. Instead of heeding that advice, she felt dismissed by the doctor, and decided to sit down with her partner, Ken Contreras, who she'd been with less than a year at the time, to discuss. Though neither felt ready to be parents, Contreras ultimately decided that his partner's choice was the most important thing to consider.

Read at Futurism