Nine months ago, nearly everything in my life was as good as could be. I was a newly married to my favorite person on the planet. Finances were in order. I lived in proximity to family and had a robust church community and loving friend group. I felt fulfilled in my work, among countless other big and small blessings.

So why was I an emotional wreck?

I’d never felt less like myself in my life — anxious, ragey, and sad almost all the time. What was wrong, my husband and girlfriends wanted to know. I couldn’t tell them. The answer was honestly and truly nothing.

Nothing except for one teensy thing: a tiny round pill I ingested every morning at the same time for years.

My doctor had prescribed me the oral hormonal contraceptive several years prior as a Band-Aid for stubborn acne. At the time, I was exasperated, desperate to try anything that would work to clear my adult skin — when I learned about the silver bullet of birth control.

To my doctor’s credit, before writing the prescription, she ran extra blood panels due to my family's heart history and the known risk of blood clotting from The Pill. But when my tests came back clear, I eagerly filled that prescription, blissfully unaware of the possibility of other mental and physical side effects. 

Over time, they took their miserable toll — and in more ways than one. Beyond the extra emotional turmoil, I once bled inexplicably for three weeks straight.

I’m not alone. I know many other women who’ve experienced similar turmoil, in addition to the mountains of reported anecdotes and scientific research backing up the pitfalls of The Pill and other hormonal contraceptives. Those admitted risks include suicidality, unnatural stress responses, weight gain, and infertility, plus inflammation and all its associated side effects such as heart disease, cancer, autoimmune issues, and mental health problems. A pelvic floor physical therapist told me hormonal birth control can even alter genital tissue, contributing to female sexual dysfunction such as vaginismus. 

My own mother is walking, talking fine print on a birth control box. She experienced multiple heart attacks beginning at age 40 that went unexplained for years, survived breast cancer, and required an endometrial ablation after uncontrollable bleeding that left her dangerously iron deficient. 

So it’s beyond frustrating to watch the corporate media’s coordinated effort to convince women there’s nothing wrong with hormonal contraceptives. Faced with long-overdue efforts to protect preborn human life from the horrors of abortion, women from the serious dangers of abortion pills, and human embryos from unethical artificial reproduction technology, Democrats and the accomplice press are clinging desperately to birth control.

“Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion,” announced The Washington Post this week, with the Daily Beast quick on its heels to warn about “rampant online disinformation.” The Post went so far as to harass TikTok until the tech giant removed the fertility “misinformation” — which is nothing more than a euphemism for information the media don't like.

(If we want to talk about actual “misinformation,” Washington Post propaganda is a good place to start. It claims, “Medical experts say there is no evidence birth control impacts fertility long term.” Fact check: false. As The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh pointed out, one of the Post's approved sources says an injectable birth control recommended by Planned Parenthood can affect fertility long after women quit receiving the shots. Ovulation can take 10 months or longer to resume, and it could take a year and a half before periods return.)

Even more pernicious than the media's blatant censorship crusade, however, is their gaslighting of well-informed women with the myth of expertise. They treat women much like they treated mask and vaccine skeptics (who were right, by the way) during the Covid panic — as if you cannot possibly read primary sources and understand your body's natural functions if you don't have a string of letters behind your name.

For example, The Washington Post goes after popular holistic health coach Nicole Bendayan (one of the victims of its censorship rampage). After detailing her path to becoming a nutritionist, the Post is sure to note, “The 29-year-old is not a licensed medical specialist.”

Oh, well then. Are the Washington Post reporters licensed medical specialists? No. They have English and journalism degrees.

But it's not brain surgery. Every woman's cycle is different to some degree, which is why it's up to each of us to attune to the signals of our bodies. When women experience fertility-related symptoms, we do research and hypothesize what might be the issue. We change certain variables from cycle to cycle, observe the changes, and test the most effective ones repeatedly. Then we draw conclusions based on all the best evidence and testing. It's science by definition. When it comes to my menstrual cycle, yes, I'm becoming the best expert.

The feminist left hates it. They're all “pro-choice” until women choose to tell about their adverse experiences with birth control and detoxify their bodies of hormone disruptors. Invoking The Handmaid's Tale is always in vogue, but Democrats' ugly little secret is that birth control isn't just the best way to control reproduction; it's the best way to control women. The longer women remain single and childless, the longer they tend to be dependents of the state and therefore Democrat voters. The fewer times they go on maternity leave, the more soulless hours they can clock for their corporate bosses.

But look around. Are efforts to make women more like men making us happier? The “explosion” of females flushing their birth control offers a resounding no. Women bought the feminist lie for a while, but it only bankrupted them. It turns out that having your health concerns dismissed is not “empowering.” Masking symptoms isn't “liberating.”

Despite the media's hand-wringing about “effectiveness,” women — and men —have way better birth control options available, such as cycle syncing and natural family planning. So you've been told you have to ingest synthetic hormones every day… but did you know you're only fertile about one week out of every month? Now, knowledge like that is empowering.

And here's the deal: I know it's not “cool” to suggest abstaining from sex. But sex makes babies. (Do I need to say it again louder for the Post's Philip Bump?) You shouldn't be having it if you aren't prepared to deal with its consequences. But if you're really interested in the research, it shows married parents are nearly twice as happy as single Americans without kids.

So no, I don't need to take my cues from the media-consulted reproductive “experts,” and neither do you. I've been off birth control for nine months, and now I feel more like myself than I ever have. And when my husband and I do have babies, I'll be doubly happy compared to the miserable scolds gaslighting from their WaPo newsroom.

How's that for a side effect?