"Effectively, it is wrong to assume a value-neutral background when researching attitudes to contraception, a medical technology that is only available to us now through historical injustices enacted upon women, especially women of colour. During the development of the pill, researchers coercively tested it on women in Puerto Rico, who were not informed of the experimental nature of the medicine."
"Despite many of them reporting serious side-effects, the researchers declared the pill 100% effective, and dismissed the patients' symptoms as psychosomatic, due to the emotional super-activity of Puerto Rican women. This rhetoric has unfortunately endured across the decades, with women's reporting of real side-effects routinely blamed on hysteria or emotional suggestibility. Birth control users today are harnessing social media to raise awareness about these issues, just like women's health activists of previous generations;"
A long history of medical misogyny produced coercive testing and non-consensual experimentation on women, notably in Puerto Rico during early pill development. Researchers often dismissed reported side-effects as psychosomatic, attributing them to emotional instability, which entrenched distrust. That legacy of gaslighting, trauma and violence persists in women's medicine and shapes contemporary attitudes toward hormonal contraception. Users now use social media to raise awareness and mobilize, mirroring earlier activists, but such grassroots communication can also circulate misinformation. Responsibility lies with medical practitioners and researchers to acknowledge past harms, validate patients' reports, and develop safer, more acceptable birth-control options rather than dismissing concerns.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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