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Anti-choicer says birth control pills “don’t work;” newspapers don’t bother to correct her.

Jill

This is what I mean when I say that the media is failing to do its job. An anti-choice activist is quoted in an AP article run in the Denver Post as saying:

“Let’s face it, they’re in the business to kill babies for profit,” she said. “First and foremost, they get young girls hooked on their birth control pills, which don’t work,” Hanks said.

Now, there are clearly issues with the first sentence in that quote, but I won’t get into those. It’s the newspaper’s reaction (or lack thereof) to the second part that gets me. It is a medical fact that birth control pills do work. And they work astoundingly well. If you use them as directed, they’re 99.7 – 99.9 percent effective. Even the typical use rates are pretty good — BC is 92 percent effective even when women don’t use it perfectly. So this isn’t a matter of personal opinion. There simply isn’t data out there backing up the statement that birth control pills “don’t work.”

When reporting a story like this, the news media does have an obligation to present both sides, and so I certainly don’t fault them for including the anti-choice view. But they also have an obligation to inform the public and not promote false information. If someone is quoted as saying, “Yesterday, the President visited Togo,” when in fact yesterday the President was in Russia, the reporter has an obligation to point out the president’s actual location. If someone is quoted as saying, “XYZ medication will kill you if you take it with milk,” and in fact there is no problem with taking XYZ with milk, the reporter has an obligation to disseminate the facts. And if someone is quoted as saying, “Birth control pills don’t work” when in fact birth control pills work quite well, a good reporter will refuse to perpetuate untruths, and will instead allow the quote to stand next to the actual facts.

22 thoughts on Anti-choicer says birth control pills “don’t work;” newspapers don’t bother to correct her.

  1. Honest question from non-journalist. Do they need to correct quoted material from people they interview? Or do those comments stand as the opinion of the speaker? I know they correct untruths from guests at the end of the segment at NPR, but they seem to have a higher standard. It seems like the MSM may be abusing this loophole (if it even exists). Journalists, journalism Professors or students – what gives?

  2. If I may interject, the speaker in this case was not stating her opinion; she was lying. If she’d said, “I think birth control is evil,” that’s one thing. Because it’s clear that it’s just her opinion. But what she said was stated as though it’s a fact, and the journalist made no attempt to “fact check.” (which isn’t even necessary in this ridiculous case)

  3. We KNOW she was lying. What we need to find out is whether this behavior (not correcting untruths) is in any way actionable. If, for instance, there is a codified journalistic standard which forbids the practice of not fact checking statements from guests, there might be a way to complain to a governing body.

  5. Let’s do some back of an envelope calculations about what your statistic means. It’s a per annum effectiveness rate, which you don’t mention. So imagine you start using birth control at 16, what’s your chance of getting pregnant by 20? That’s easy, 1-(0.92^4) or almost 3 in 10. Let’s say you don’t want to get pregnant before 24, that computes as 1-(0.92^8) – you’re almost as likely to get pregnant as not. Finally, imagine you want to defer pregnancy until 30, thats 1-(0.92^14), or a greater than 2 in 3 chance of failing.

    How can you say birth control pills work quite well? The failure rate is very high in actual use for any reasonable period of time – i.e. greater than a year – for which a woman would wish to defer pregnancy. Just pick a life goal and plug the number in. If a woman wants to finish high school, or get through college, or establish herself in a career while avoiding pregnancy there’s a reasonable chance she won’t succeed.

    Sex education advocates do a terrible job of educating people about the effectiveness of contraception. Your post is a pretty good example of the standard presentation. It just presents numbers completely out of context, which gives a false impression and misleads people. No-one sat down with me in sex education and showed me what these abstract figures mean in reality, and that’s the case with virtually everyone.

    I don’t agree with her wacked out consipracy theory. But it is a fact that sex education advocates are very good at getting people to use contraceptives, that these ‘don’t work’ – in the sense that they won’t accomplish the aims for which they are being used – a good proportion of the time, and people are very seldom made aware of this.

  6. But no one needs to correct medical or medical-sounding stuff when it comes to girly products. “Estee Lauder’s New Bee Pollen Creme Reverse The Aging Process.”

    Birth control to save lives, lipstick, hey what’s the diff, eh? All girly crap, right?

  7. In case yall didn’t know, St John’s Wort can sometimes (not always) suppress oral contraceptives. Be advised, my loves! 🙂

    (Did anyone think to ask her if she was taking any? Any herbal teas? The MSM ain’t worth the powder to blow it up with, as my grandmother would say.)

  8. You’ve certainly covered the first part of that sentence but…

    “get young girls hooked on their birth control pills”?!?

    Yeah, cuz birth control is clearly a drug; the more I take birth conrol pills the more I want them, one pill a day no longer satisfies my promiscuous cravings!!! Sorry if I seem crabby, depressed and suicidal, I just need to get in touch with my dealer… wait, my doctor…..

  9. While they’re at it, somebody could perhaps inform her that adding “let’s face it” to a false accusation does not make it true?

    (LOL. “Let’s face it,” as though she’s dutifully accepting an unpleasant truth, when it’s actually exactly what she wants to be true.)

  10. this is a good post. i find it remarkable that journalists still let themselves be tools for extreme groups.

    (i think bean discussed this exact article in similar terms in the post just before this one.)

  11. Something similar happened in a newspaper where I live. My state in Australia is debating fully decriminalising abortion (it’s freely available but only if the mental or physical health of the mother is endangered, wink wink). The states’ Catholic bishops issued a statement claiming that Victoria (my state) has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. This “fact” was not challenged in any article. A couple of minutes research showed that the rate is lower than for the rest of the country and Australia as a whole is somewhere around 36th/37th in the world. Flat out lies go unchallenged.

  13. Let’s do some back of an envelope calculations about what your statistic means. It’s a per annum effectiveness rate, which you don’t mention. So imagine you start using birth control at 16, what’s your chance of getting pregnant by 20? That’s easy, 1-(0.92^4) or almost 3 in 10. Let’s say you don’t want to get pregnant before 24, that computes as 1-(0.92^8) – you’re almost as likely to get pregnant as not. Finally, imagine you want to defer pregnancy until 30, thats 1-(0.92^14), or a greater than 2 in 3 chance of failing.

    Uh, no. Jesus James, where did you learn math?

    The fact that it’s a per annum effectiveness rate doesn’t mean that the narrow chance of pregnancy compounds itself with every given year, as you suggest. If your per annum chance of getting pregnant in a year is, say, 3 out of 1,000, that doesn’t mean that the next year it’s 9 out of 1,000 and the next year it’s 81 out of 1,000. It means that each year three out of 1,000 women who use BC will get pregnant. So no, your chances of getting pregnant before 30 are not two out of three. Your math is seriously fucked up.

    I just drank half a bottle of wine and it’s almost 100 degrees out, so I’m not particularly coherent right now, but I’m sure some other people on this thread can further explain why you are totally and utterly wrong.

  14. if it helps, there were a couple of letters to the editor complaining of this in yesterday’s paper and our local progressive talk show host covered it and featured the local head of PP on his show yesterday as well.

  15. James, I started taking bc when I was 18. I’m 26 now. I’m not pregnant. None of my friends have gotten pregnant while taking bc. As Jill said, if the pill has a 92% typical effectiveness rate in a year, that means every year you have an 8% chance of getting pregnant, not one year it’s 8% and then it’s 15% and then it’s 75% and up. In fact, most people are less likely to get pregnant after being on the pill awhile because they’ve gotten used to taking a pill everyday and they have learned things like antibiotics reduce it’s effectiveness and use condoms or abstain while they’re sick. So a 16 year old on bc will likely be able to avoid pregnancy as long as she wants, unless some nutcase like you convinces her it doesn’t work and she stops.

  16. Well, James is right but he’s wrong. (Disclaimer: I took probability in college but it’s been a while. Mathematicians are welcome to correct me.)

    What he’s talking about is compounding probabilities over multiple years – if you have an 92% chance every year of becoming pregnant, then how do you calculate the odds of becoming pregnant after four years? The solution is to multiply the chances of becoming pregnant each year – think of flipping a coin. The chance of one coin coming up heads is 1/2, of two in a row is 1/4, of three in a row is 1/8.

    If there’s a 92% chance of not becoming pregnant in year one, then the odds of not becoming pregnant four (sexually active) years running is .92*.92*.92*.92., or .92^4. (The chance of getting pregnant is 1 – the chance of not getting pregnant).

    The trick is to look at the basic assumption – presuming both the 8% failure case and that the pill-user never gets any better at taking the pill (i.e, what Marle said). If we use a 99% chance for all four years, then we’re talking a 96% chance to not get pregnant. If we used 92% for the first year then 99% for the next four, there’s an over 89% chance not to get pregnant (1 in 10, not 3 in 10).

    The Pill does fail, but often because doctors don’t caution their patients about things that can decrease the pill’s effectiveness (like taking antibiotics).

    It’s dishonest to equate “the pill’s failure rate can add up over time if you don’t use it correctly” with “the pill doesn’t work”. When I drive, the odds are very high that I won’t get where I’m going because my car breaks down or I get into an accident. That doesn’t mean that cars “don’t work”.

  17. I was wrote about this (without this specific story) earlier today. People — the media, Democrats, etc. — need to start pointing out this conservative craziness about birth control whenever it occurs …

  18. Let’s do some back of an envelope calculations about what your statistic means. It’s a per annum effectiveness rate, which you don’t mention. So imagine you start using birth control at 16, what’s your chance of getting pregnant by 20? That’s easy, 1-(0.92^4) or almost 3 in 10. Let’s say you don’t want to get pregnant before 24, that computes as 1-(0.92^8) – you’re almost as likely to get pregnant as not. Finally, imagine you want to defer pregnancy until 30, thats 1-(0.92^14), or a greater than 2 in 3 chance of failing.

    I’m not a math whiz, but here goes. Each year, the chance of the pill failing is not 8%. The first year failure rate is 8%, in people who don’t take the pill correctly and consistently (“typical users” a wide variety of people who do not follow directions and/or remember to use their birth control).You may also see the typical user failure rate quoted as a lower value, depending on the source. I’ve seen both 5% and 3% on different charts. The pill is 99.7% effective if taken perfectly (depending on the source of the information). So the actual failure rate is very low for women who take the pill correctly and consistently. For someone that forgets one pill a year (not a “typical user” but an average Jane who is a consistent pill taker), their effectiveness rate is probably slightly lower than the perfect use, but certainly better than “typical use”. Its a good bet to assume that people get better at using their birth control as they get more experience. The first year failure rates are usually higher than subsequent rates. So using the 8% stat compounded over 14 years is incorrect.

    Lets assume that a fictional person (Average Jane) is pretty diligent about taking her pill. She talked to her nurse practitioner about taking the pill at least a month before she became sexually active. She takes the pills in order as directed by the label, she promptly refills her prescriptions, and she knows about and can avoid drug interactions that could reduce the effectiveness of the pill. She did forget a few pills in the first year of use, so the failure rate for that year is estimated to be 8% (because she was more of a “typical user”). She now forgets to take her pill about once a year (she isn’t perfect, but she is very consistent), and so the failure rate we can (very arbitrarily) estimate to be 0.5% (each year), because she uses condoms as a back up for the week following imperfect use.

    Each year she does not get pregnant does not increase the chance of failure. The chance of failure remains the same, or decreases because of experience using the method. It may also decrease due to the fact that fertility declines with age.

    If we wish to use the math James used (I’m doubtful that it is valid), only with more reasonable failure rates, we can add the probabilities of failure for each year.
    Year 1 = 0.08, Year 2 = 0.005…….year 14= 0.005

    0.08+0.005 +0.005….=11.5% failure rate at 14 years. Not bad.

  19. “The fact that it’s a per annum effectiveness rate doesn’t mean that the narrow chance of pregnancy compounds itself with every given year, as you suggest.”

    That’s not what I suggest.

    What I suggest is that the long term failure rates are very different from the per annum failure rate, simply because in order to use birth control successfully in the long term you’ve got to not get pregnant every year. Being repeated exposed to small failure rate creates a much bigger failure rate in the long term. That’s basic probability.

    There’s nothing wrong with my maths. And that’s a perfectly reasonable back of an envelope estimate. But since you think I’m wrong, what’s your estimate of the long term effectiveness of something with an 8% failure rate?

  20. Considering that not using any birth control at all has a “failure”, that is, pregnancy, rate of 85%, I’d say birth control pills work pretty darned well.

    I’m also kind of intrigued by james’ wording here — I, myself, am not “deferring” pregnancy, I am *avoiding* it. I do not plan to Fulfill My Womanly Destiny and become a Wife And Mother at any point, so I can’t really defer it, can I? (And given that the effectiveness of my Mirena IUS is 99.9% and I plan to also get my tubes tied, I think we can dispense with the statistical quibbling.)

    All numbers are from this table on Wikipedia.

  21. But since you think I’m wrong, what’s your estimate of the long term effectiveness of something with an 8% failure rate?

    8% is the “typical use” failure rate for the pill. That means that among people who may or may not take it as directed (not taking it at the same time, skipping days, doubling up on pills, taking antibiotics, etc) on average 8 will get pregnant in a year. Now, if a woman takes the pill for more than a year she’ll get used to taking it everyday and her personal failure rate will go down (note that the “typical use” rates are only for the first year), as low as the .3% “perfect use” rate. So she’s not going to have a 8% chance of getting pregnant every year she’s fertile. There’s also many different types of birth control. I’m on NuvaRing, which I only have to switch once every three weeks, so I don’t have to worry about forgetting a day or anything, so my potential failure rate is about .3%, not 8%. Mirena, Depo, and a number of other methods all have a “typical use” failure rate of less than 1%. Also, many young het couples who really do not want children use multiple methods, usually hormonal bc for her and a condom for him, which makes their chance of her getting pregnant nonexistant. It certainly works about a billion times better than not having any bc at all. I guess the only thing that works better at preventing pregnancy is having exclusively lesbian sex. Maybe schools should teach lesbian-only sex education, think that would go over well with the anti-birth control crowd?

  22. Since my earlier comment seems to have been eaten by the moderation thing:

    The 8% failure rate exists only for ‘typical users’ in the first year of use . Typical users forget pills, don’t always follow directions, and may not be informed of drug interactions. I tend to think of a ‘typical user’ as not representative of an average, informed, consistent user. With longer term use and method familiarity, the failure rate is much lower. Consistent and correct use (perfect use) has a 0.3% failure rate. Its not a miracle to expect something close to perfect use. People who use the pill in a manner that is very close to perfect will have a failure rate that is very close to perfect (probably less than 1%). The FDA says that the expected number of pregnancies (failures) will be 1-2 per 100 women per year (for actual users in a clinical trial), or a 1-2% failure rate per year.
    FDA Link

    Yes, the cumulative failure rate is higher than a single year of use. Calculating the cumulative failure rate for several years using the first year rate is not valid, especially where ‘typical use’ varies between groups depending on age, SES and education (and probably on motivation to avoid pregnancy). I have also seen the ‘typical use’ first year stat quoted as 5% or 3%. Furthermore, many people are not typical users, especially after the first year. You may also consider that the few people who continue to have inconsistent/incorrect use similar to the ‘typical use’ rate would get pregnant as you described (more likely than not within a few years) and then would probably switch to more effective and long term birth control methods.

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