False birth control claims are proliferating, survey says

Filed 5h ago · Via Stateline · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The U.S. National Archives · No restrictions · via Wikimedia Commons

A KFF survey of 3,538 women of reproductive age found more than half have seen or heard the false claim that contraceptive hormones are harmful, and about 40% have encountered the false claim that hormones limit future fertility. Roughly a third have been exposed to inaccurate claims equating natural family planning with hormonal birth control's effectiveness, and a similar share have seen false claims that emergency contraception causes abortion.

Health providers remain the most trusted source, at 85%. Only 26% of women said they trust HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for reliable health information, and 48% trust federal health agencies generally, both well below AI chatbots at 25%.

Under Kennedy, HHS has shifted family planning grant funding away from expanding contraceptive access and toward promoting childbearing, the article notes, alongside Kennedy's past statements linking prenatal Tylenol and COVID vaccine exposure to autism, both of which contradict medical consensus.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

When the Health secretary polls below the AI chatbot on his own subject, that's not a messaging problem, that's a scoreboard. People aren't confused about who to trust, they've just noticed the guy in charge keeps saying things their doctor has to walk back. Redirecting grant money away from birth control and toward 'reproductive goals' while misinformation spreads is a strange way to run a health department, unless spreading the confusion was the point all along.

Source: Read the original at Stateline → Scored: Five Card Shuffle · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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