Is Birth Control the New Carcinogen?
- Dominika Romanik
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Lake Orion, Michigan
The Horrifying News
It’s official: the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Agency for Research and Cancer (IARC) have labeled birth control as “carcinogenic” (meaning that they may cause cancer). But this isn’t “new” news. In fact, the IARC has labeled certain contraceptive pills as “carcinogenic to humans” since 2005; they even grouped birth control in Class 1 (a classification which signifies “high hazard” carcinogen like tobacco, alcohol, and asbestos). So why is TikTok saying that WHO “just” labeled the pill carcinogenic when the classification was made a decade ago?
How was birth control labeled as a carcinogen in the first place?
Many TikTok videos published in recent weeks have claimed that birth control is as carcinogenic as asbestos, alcohol, and tobacco due its classification as a Class 1 pill. However, IARC does not classify or group together substances according to their level of carcinogenicity; rather, they group them according to the strength of scientific evidence to support its link to an increased risk of cancer. According to ChemRadar by CIRS Group, there are four categories of carcinogens: Class 1 (carcinogenic to humans); Class 2A (very likely to cause cancer in humans); Class 2B (possibly carcinogenic to humans); and Class 3 (carcinogenicity to humans not yet classified) (1). Substances in class 1 are the most likely ones to give you cancer, but this class includes more than just asbestos, birth control, alcohol, and tobacco. In fact, Class 1 includes processed meats, sunlight radiation, Hepatitis B and C, wood dust, salted fish (Chinese-style), furniture and cabinet making, and so much more. It is true that more than 80% of these items are bad for you, but there are certain items (e.g. sunlight) that we wouldn’t even think would be grouped as Class 1 by the IARC.
So, what evidence is there to label birth control as carcinogenic? Nearly all the research which links oral contraceptives and cancer comes from observational studies. An observational study is a type of study in which individuals are observed or certain outcomes are measured, and no attempt is made to affect the outcome (e.g. giving treatment). Observational studies don’t provide definitive answers, which means that exposure to oral contraceptives (e.g. birth control) cannot definitively be linked to preventing or causing cancer as stated by the National Cancer Institute. This is because women who take oral contraceptives may differ from women who don’t take them in other ways than their use of birth control. Thus, it’s possible that these differences, which can be on a genetic or epigenetic level, may be the reason why they’re more susceptible to cancer. Nevertheless, there is data from these observational studies which have provided consistent evidence that women who use birth control exhibit higher chances of breast and cervical cancer while inhibiting chances of endometrial, ovarian, and colorectal cancers. This has been concluded from 54 epidemiologic studies which analyzed data from more than 150,000 women; overall, women who had ever used birth control were 7% more likely to develop cancer over their birth control-free counterparts.
So how could birth control even influence cancer risk at a molecular level? Estrogen and progesterone are the answer. In an organism’s body, estrogen and progesterone are steroid hormones. They’re the chemical messengers in your body that travel through your blood stream to regulate physiology and cellular function at distant sites. While they are not growth factors, they can indirectly promote tissue growth by regulating the production of growth factors and influencing cell proliferation. Because birth control pills contain synthetic versions of these hormones, they can potentially increase cancer risk in a woman’s body by enabling higher production of cell tissue. Thus, making birth control carcinogenic.
What does this mean for the thousands of women which take birth control yearly?
According to the 2017 to 2019 survey by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 65% of women aged 15-49 use birth control. This is the most recent statistic in the CDC database, and if it still holds up to this day, approximately 42 million American women are affected by these carcinogenic side effects. While researchers have proposed multiple solutions to lower cancer risks (e.g. making birth control suppress the endometrial cell proliferation (the process which cells of the inner lining of the uterus divide and multiply) instead of using estrogen and progesterone), unfortunately there isn’t enough funding for this research to be scaled properly into modern society. Thus, women must consider the benefits—such as pregnancy prevention and easing endometriosis pain—against the risks—like increased chances of breast or cervical cancer, mood swings, and higher likelihood of developing blood clots–of birth control.
Nevertheless, the story of birth control and cancer risk isn’t just about biology — it’s also about priorities in medical research. Women’s health has often been treated as secondary, and this issue goes beyond birth control. An example of this is car accidents. As stated by Maria Weston Kuhn in the Columbia Magazine, “women are 73 percent more likely to be injured and 17 percent more likely to be killed in frontal collisions than men” all because the US Department of Transportation’s New Car Assessment Program is still stuck in the 1970s and doesn’t use dummies which represent women properly. Furthermore, when there is a solution to a problem but it involves side effects for men… the solution is no longer deemed plausible. Look at birth control for men, for example. It is clear that the male counterpart of birth control has received much more accommodation towards their health and orgasms than women ever had. According to the BBC, there was a safe, effective male pill created which would prevent millions of unwanted pregnancies if put on the market. However, many men rejected the idea because it caused an “invisible orgasm,” which they considered emasculating. That perception alone was enough to pull the project’s funding. Later, when other male contraceptives were developed, they were also dismissed — not because they didn’t work, but because of “undesirable side effects.” Ironically, these are the very same side effects women have endured for decades on birth control. And some of those side effects (like cervical cancer, blood clots, and breast cancer) are even more deadly to women than “the headaches” men get from their pill.
The classification of birth control as “carcinogenic” and the multitudes of side effects that it has on women is not just a health issue. It’s a reflection of a deeper problem: women’s bodies are often treated as acceptable risks in medicine, while safer alternatives remain underfunded or dismissed because birth control doesn’t affect men.
Is there anything women can do?
Organize. Even if you’re a man, you should protest for your sister, mother, and grandmother. Researchers and public health advocates emphasize that community organization can play an important role in advancing women’s health. This includes supporting initiatives such as protests, lobbying efforts, and fundraisers that aim to address gaps in research and access to care. While scientific progress is being made to improve birth control and other health interventions, broader priorities in research funding and representation remain challenges that advocacy groups continue to highlight. When you speak out against injustices like these, you don’t just speak for yourself; you speak for those who are too afraid to, and that takes real courage.
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