Inside the latest plot to turn a generation against birth control

It may surprise many people that there is a a concerted effort going on quite literally under their noses—on the screens of their smartphones, tablets, and laptops—to sow distrust, uncertainty, and fear of ordinary birth control among this country’s young people and particularly, young women. 

In most instances the folks responsible for fostering this distrust are the same people vehemently opposed to abortion. Their failure to see any dissonance in advocating such contradictory positions might be perplexing—if you didn’t take their motivation into account. It’s the natural fulfillment of what they would consider an ideal society: one where men are in control, and women know their place.

This wouldn’t be a big problem if they and their ilk kept that vision to themselves. But that is not how the right wing operates in the era of social media. They love to assume the role of righteous crusaders for a moral imperative that allows them to feel in control in a confusing world that discomfits them with its varieties of human experience. Many of the purveyors of the disinformation blitz currently underway on social media about the supposed dangers of routine birth control are men, but not all of them. Some of them are simply opportunistic, looking for clicks and attention. Some of them have a political ax to grind.

But some of them appear to be acting out of sheer malice. Emboldened by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, they’ve now trained their focus on hormonal birth control, hysterically amplifying its alleged “hazards” to create a narrative of uncertainty ripe for what they see as the conservative-dominated highest court’s next logical step.