The facade of “safety” around hormonal birth control continues to crumble: Researchers at Oxford Population Health’s Cancer Epidemiology Unit have recently shown that progestin-only hormonal contraceptives, long billed as the “safest” birth control option because of their lack of estrogen, definitively raises one’s risk of breast cancer, similarly to combined hormonal contraceptives (which contain both synthetic estrogen and progestin).
Furthermore, the Oxford researchers found that breast cancer risk, while it declines after discontinuation of hormonal birth control, still remains elevated for ever-users of hormonal birth control (when compared to never-users). Of course, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still won’t cop to increased risks for breast cancer for ever-users of birth control — just for current users — and they are also currently evaluating whether to make a progestin-only pill the first-ever over-the-counter birth control pill in the United States.
Unsurprisingly, in another instance of “nothing to see here, folks,” headlines abounded with the results of the Oxford study for a few weeks, carefully emphasizing the “slight” or “small” increase in breast cancer risk. And the experts, of course, were quick to chime in with all the benefits of hormonal contraception, insisting women shouldn’t see this as a reason to go flushing their pills.
ABC’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton had this to say, for example:
So listen, I talk to women about this every single day. You have to talk about risk vs benefit. It is clear that hormonal contraception lowers the risk of ovarian and
