{"id":22506,"date":"2025-09-19T16:42:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T16:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=22506"},"modified":"2025-09-19T16:42:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T16:42:16","slug":"the-pill-puerto-rico-and-the-patriarchal-medical-system-contraception-and-family-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=22506","title":{"rendered":"The pill, Puerto Rico and the patriarchal medical system | Contraception and family planning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Your article on contraception misinformation does not consider the long history of medical misogyny (Online misinformation putting women off contraceptive pill, study finds, 13 September). I am a PhD researcher studying the cultural discourse on contraception. I\u2019m also a young woman within the age range and online culture that you talk about, and within my work I explore this space critically.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Effectively, it is wrong to assume a value-neutral background when researching attitudes to contraception, a medical technology that is only available to\u00a0us now through historical injustices enacted upon women, especially women of colour.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">During the development of the pill, researchers coercively tested it on women in Puerto Rico, who were not informed of the experimental nature of the medicine. Despite many of them reporting serious side-effects, the researchers declared the pill 100% effective, and dismissed the patients\u2019 symptoms as psychosomatic, due to the \u201cemotional super-activity of Puerto Rican women\u201d. This rhetoric has unfortunately endured across the decades, with women\u2019s reporting of real side-effects routinely blamed on \u201chysteria\u201d or\u00a0emotional suggestibility.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Birth control users today are harnessing social media to raise awareness about these issues, just like women\u2019s health activists of previous generations; and as in previous generations, this has a tendency to include some misinformation, since it operates outside of rigorous research.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">However, the onus is on medical practitioners to develop better birth control methods, rather than trying to quash concerns about the pill. A legacy of medical gaslighting, trauma and violence runs through\u00a0women\u2019s medicine.<br \/><strong>Rebecca Siddall<\/strong><br \/><em>Cambridge<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\"><strong><em><span data-dcr-style=\"bullet\"\/> Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong><strong><em>email<\/em><\/strong><strong><em> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong><strong><em>letters<\/em><\/strong><strong><em> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your article on contraception misinformation does not consider the long history of medical misogyny (Online misinformation putting women off contraceptive pill, study finds, 13 September). I am a PhD researcher studying the cultural discourse on contraception. I\u2019m also a young woman within the age range and online culture that you talk about, and within my<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[13799,2906,3140,13798,934,3330,8262,8263,392],"class_list":{"0":"post-22506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-contraception","9":"tag-family","10":"tag-medical","11":"tag-patriarchal","12":"tag-pill","13":"tag-planning","14":"tag-puerto","15":"tag-rico","16":"tag-system"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}