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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It’s only a new human being. It’s not that deep. ……
Yeah and all those old age pensioners… They are only a waste of resources… Why not bump them off too? They will die anyway, it’s not that deep… We’ll do it with care and compassion. #BeKind.
Q: What do you call people who use the ‘rhythm method’?
A: Parents…
Antonin Scalia, the legendary US Supreme Court Justice and staunch defender of the Consitution, had nine children with his wife Maureen. They were devout Catholics. I saw him asked about it in an interview and he described their approach to birth control as “Vatican roulette”.
I think the idea of total abstinence during the fertile days is extremely hard in practice and not many couples are capable of doing it.
Blimey – has everyone on the planet turned into a sex maniac??? Seriously, yes I suppose it might seem like a bind and I guess in practice the consequences of making an error are drastic, hence the various modern methods of birth control. I just quite like the idea of something that avoids you taking pills (of which I am suspicious) or having stuff put into your body. But I am a bloke so it’s not up to me.
Well, no, believe me, you don’t have to be a sex maniac to find the Catholic rules on abstinence difficult. Basically, no sex in any shape or form for over a week is not easy for a frisky young couple.
Like you, my wife didn’t like the idea of taking pills and having stuff in her body and I was totally on board with that. Besides, a lot of women suffer a massive drop in libido when they take the pill.
“ no sex in any shape or form for over a week is not easy for a frisky young couple”
Perhaps I am forgetting those days as I am old 🙂
I’m no spring chicken either but I would not have been able to completely cease all marital activities for over a week when I was younger…
Well, a young friend of my wife (well within my earshot), volunteered that she found that her preferred method of contraception not at all hard to swallow. She claimed that her boyfriend seemed more than happy with the procedure.
There are indeed many possible “solutions” to this “problem”. 🙂
Does this mean that every phone call for pills is recorded as an abortion? Would that really be a good enough reason without confirmation of pregnancy? Am I missing something?
Well I think we can see now where the rise in abortions stems from. This change in behaviour is very concerning, as is the blasé attitude towards one’s reproductive freedom and getting pregnant generally. Actions have consequences and such an apathetic stance is worrisome. Where is the accountability? When it comes to teenage girls, where the hell are the parents in all this? Taking responsibility for one’s reproductive/sexual health does not happen organically and teens need guidance and input from their mothers ( and fathers, for the boys ). You do not outsource this essential job to the schools just because it’s ‘cringe’ for your kid.
For the love of God, do NOT rely on these apps, which used to be referred to as the ‘Natural Family Planning method’. For teenage girls especially, it’s as high risk and unreliable as the ‘pulling out’ method.😬
It was only pills when I was a teenager and I was on it for donkey’s years without incident and it worked like a charm. I’ll be getting my daughter on the LARC ( implant, 99% effective ) when she’s old enough. She’s way too scatterbrained to be trusted to take a pill regularly and there’ll… Read more »
The LARC may be 99% effective but for many women there are unwanted hormonal consequences – weight gain, mood swings etc. If you get side effects when on the pill then they may cease very quickly if you stop the pill. With the implants you’re stuck with them until the efficacy of the implant stops and, as the life span of implants can vary from woman to woman, other contraceptive methods may be needed anyway.
Also, I was told by a gynaecologist that about 1 in 20 women ovulate in response to sex in the so-called ‘safe’ period. I have a child who was conceived on day 7 of my cycle such as it was.
Interesting – thanks for this information. I knew nothing of this. These apps seem like a good idea to me, just need tweaking a bit or the users need to employ extra caution either end – use a condom or skip sex for an extra day or two. As the author points out, it seems a bit contradictory to adopt something that is more natural and then risk undergoing something more traumatic and unnatural.
One of the main issues with the pill is its effect on the woman, it can change behaviour, emotions and considerably more. My wife read an interesting book “Your brain on birth control” which went into detail.
The scariest thing about abortion use though is how the women and girls doing this wouldn’t have the resolve to kill a chick, just out of weakness, but a puppy or a kitten, emotionally they would be neutered.
But out of sight out of mind will kill their own children without a second thought.