The Birth Control Conversation You Haven't Heard Yet
From the editors
The birth control debate is missing something crucial. This podcast explores the real history of contraception, reproductive justice, and true autonomy.
The conversation around hormonal birth control has become increasingly polarized, especially after the fall of Roe v. Wade. This podcast explores the complete history of contraception in America—from the intentional erasure of women's fertility knowledge in the 1800s to the modern pill's development through exploitation, to the reproductive justice framework needed for true bodily autonomy. It examines how certain contraceptive methods have been used as tools of reproductive violence while also acknowledging that access to contraception remains essential for reproductive freedom.
In the last several years, the conversation around hormonal birth control has split into two camps.
On one side: the pill is toxic, hormone-disrupting, a tool of patriarchal control. On the other: birth control skepticism is conservative propaganda that will lead to forced pregnancies in a post-Roe America. If you critique the pill, you're betraying reproductive rights. If you defend it, you're ignoring women's lived experiences of harm.
The binary thinking. The political litmus tests. The way every conversation about your actual body becomes a referendum on your feminism.
And somewhere in all of it, you keep sensing something: What if we're having the wrong conversation entirely?
Here's what nobody's telling you: Women managed their fertility for millennia before the pill existed. That knowledge was suppressed. The pill was tested on women who weren't told the risks. And after Roe fell, women got IUDs they didn't want because forced pregnancy felt worse than depression and pain.
The violence runs deeper than you know.
What the Discourse Is Missing
The question "Is the pill good or bad?" obscures what actually matters. The pill itself is a tool. What matters is the system using it—and that system has never prioritized women's full informed consent.
You've probably heard that the pill was a great liberator for women. The dominant narrative says it gave women control over their reproductive destinies for the first time ever. But is that true?
Women have been managing their fertility for thousands of years. The Ebers papyrus from 1550 BCE documents effective herbal contraceptives. Midwives in Java performed uterine repositioning to prevent pregnancy. Women across Africa and the Americas had extensive knowledge of herbal remedies. Islamic medical texts from the 13th century offer over a dozen prescriptions for vaginal pessaries.
This knowledge didn't disappear because it stopped working. It was intentionally suppressed—through anti-contraception laws, the criminalization of midwifery, the medicalization of childbirth. By the time the pill arrived in 1960, multiple generations of women had been cut off from the fertility management practices their ancestors used.
So when we're told the pill was revolutionary, we need to ask: Revolutionary compared to what? An imagined past where women had no control? Or compared to the actual knowledge that was stolen from us?
The Real History No One Taught You
Here's what the standard narrative leaves out:
The modern medical system was built on colonial violence. Gynecology as a field developed through experiments on enslaved Black women without anesthesia. The pill was tested on Puerto Rican women who weren't fully informed of the risks. The Dalkon Shield IUD injured thousands of women. Depo-Provera and Norplant were pushed on Black, Indigenous, and incarcerated women under conditions that looked a lot like coercion.
State-sanctioned reproductive violence didn't start or end with Roe. It happened before 1973. It happened during the Roe years through policies like the Hyde Amendment, which withdrew federal funding for abortions and effectively barred poor women and women of color from accessing their legal right. And it's happening now in states criminalizing miscarriages, prosecuting self-managed abortions, and forcing women into more invasive birth control methods out of fear.
Birth control criticism has been weaponized by multiple groups with different agendas. Some people critique hormonal methods because they care about reproductive justice and informed consent. Others co-opt that critique to advance regressive politics that would limit all access to contraception. These are not the same thing—but the discourse flattens them into one.
The conversation is polarized. And it's also incomplete.
What This Podcast Actually Covers
Chaos and Control: The Story of Birth Control in America doesn't ask whether the pill is good or bad. It asks: How did we get here? What systems shaped the contraceptive landscape we inherited? And what would reproductive autonomy actually look like?
Across eight episodes, you'll learn:
The history you weren't taught. How women managed fertility before modern medicine. Why anti-contraception laws were passed in the 1800s. The dark origins of gynecology. How the pill was developed—and who paid the price for that development.
The violence done in the name of progress. The exploitation of Puerto Rican women in pill trials. The Dalkon Shield disaster. How long-acting contraceptives like Norplant and Depo-Provera were pushed on marginalized women. The eugenic logic embedded in population control efforts.
What's actually happening in your body. Why the pill increases depression risk by up to 80%. How it affects libido, metabolism, and nutrient levels. Why so many women report side effects their doctors dismiss. What ovulation does beyond just fertility—and what it means when we suppress it.
The post-Roe landscape. How the fall of Roe has forced women into birth control decisions they wouldn't otherwise make. Why some women got IUDs out of fear, not choice. How criminalization targets Black, Indigenous, and poor women disproportionately. What contraception free from coercion would actually require.
The frameworks that could change it all. Body literacy as a practice of reading your menstrual cycle. Reproductive justice as a movement that goes beyond "choice" to address systemic barriers. What informed consent really means. How doulas and educators are building alternatives.
It's pro-autonomy. It's the critique the discourse desperately needs—one that names systemic harm while maintaining access, that centers reproductive justice while holding complexity.
Why This Matters Now
After Roe fell, many women rushed to get long-acting birth control. IUD insertions spiked. Women stockpiled Plan B. Some chose surgical sterilization. A TIME survey found that 21% of women changed their birth control method in the month after the Supreme Court decision—not out of desire, but out of fear.
One woman's story captures this tension perfectly. Jana had spent nearly a decade trying different hormonal methods, struggling with depression and disordered eating. When she finally stopped, her therapist helped her realize birth control was making everything worse. For the first time, she felt connected to her body.
Then Roe was overturned. Faced with the possibility of forced pregnancy, she got the Nexplanon implant. "All of the things that I knew would happen if I got back on birth control happened," she told The Guardian. "Depression, anxiety and eating, especially."
This is what happens when reproductive freedom is stripped away: women are forced into medical decisions that decrease their quality of life. They take on all the risk and side effects of hormonal contraception—not because it serves them, but because the alternative is worse.
Is that really reproductive autonomy?
Who's Behind This
This podcast comes from Sabrina Rose, women’s health researcher, educator, and co-founder and Chief Editor of Soulstice. In developing the podcast, she spent years tracing the systems that shaped our current birth control landscape. She interviewed historians like Dr. Ann Hibner Koblitz (author of Sex and Herbs and Birth Control), sociologists like Dr. Krystale Littlejohn (author of Just Get on the Pill), and educators at the forefront of body literacy and doula work.
The approach is academic and accessible. It's researched and cited. And it operates from a clear framework: reproductive justice and body literacy as essential tools for autonomy.
It's the nuanced, historically grounded, justice-oriented analysis the birth control conversation needs.
What You'll Walk Away With
After listening, you'll understand:
How women's fertility knowledge was suppressed and why that matters
The actual history of the pill's development and who it harmed
What side effects and risks aren't being adequately communicated
How post-Roe conditions are coercing women's choices
What reproductive justice means beyond "keeping abortion legal"
Why body literacy is essential for informed decision-making
What contraception free from coercion would require
After listening, you'll finally have language for what you've been sensing. The discourse feels wrong because it is wrong—it's built on the wrong questions and the wrong frameworks.
Listen When You're Ready
The full series is streaming now on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Eight episodes that trace the story from Victorian-era criminalization to post-Roe reality, from the pill's dark origins to the vision of reproductive justice.
This is for anyone who's felt caught between the wellness influencers saying "hormones are poison" and the feminist establishment saying "birth control criticism is conservative propaganda." For anyone who wants actual history instead of ideology. For anyone tired of false binaries and hungry for depth.
The conversation you've been waiting for is here.
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