By Jordan Boyd<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Depo-Provera fallout proves women should be privy to more information about birth control side effects, not less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Corporate media often smear birth control skeptics for believing \u201cmisinformation\u201d<\/a> about the harms synthetic hormones can have on women\u2019s bodies and minds<\/a>. A flurry of nearly 300 lawsuits<\/a> from females alleging that the popular \u201csafe and effective\u201d birth control shot Depo-Provera played a role in their development of brain and spine tumors, however, suggests women should question the effects of any drug sold to them \u2014 especially those designed to prevent pregnancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Upjohn Company, one of Pfizer\u2019s acquisitions, debuted the birth control shot in the 1950s. Upon injection, the synthetic progestoerone cocktail is supposed to suppress ovulation and prevent pregnancy in women for up to three months at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The U.S. Food and Drug Administration initially approved the drug for limited contraceptive use in 1974. Widespread concern about cancer risks, however, forced the FDA to deny it a \u201cgeneral marketing licence\u201d<\/a> just four years later in 1978.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By 1992, however, the FDA had rubber-stamped Depo-Provera, which was increasingly prescribed to women off-label as birth control under the condition that its manufacturer would conduct \u201cpost-market studies of the risk of osteoporosis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t until years after that Depo-Provera\u2019s official label<\/a> would disclose a warning about \u201closs of bone mineral density\u201d and recommend less than two years\u2019 use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is also evidence that Depo-Provera may cause side effects such as weight gain, bleeding, bloating, headaches, and depression<\/a>; appears to cause varying and increasing likelihood of breast cancer<\/a>; and \u201csometimes has an abortifacient effect,\u201d according<\/a> to pro-life activists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet the shot was marketed for decades<\/a> to women as an affordable, low-maintenance, \u201csafe and convenient\u201d<\/a> way to keep their pregnancy chances low without sacrificing their sex lives. The injection\u2019s makers particularly focused on selling<\/a> the drug to low-income women across the globe<\/a>. From 2015 to 2019, approximately 24.5 percent of sexually active women between 15 and 49 years old<\/a> received at least one Depo-Provera injection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t until a landmark study published in the British Medical Journal in March 2024<\/a> found that women who took Depo-Provera had a 500 percent<\/a> higher risk of developing a meningioma (a tumor that specifically forms and develops in the membranes around the brain and spinal cord) than women who did not get the shot that women across the world realized the connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A February 2025 study<\/a> purported to confirm that the chemical compound that makes up Depo-Provera increases the risk of meningioma in women who take it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe believe the results of this study further warrants the need to alert women about this serious, albeit rare adverse event,\u201d the study\u2019s authors concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The studies sparked hundreds of lawsuits from women who had suffered seemingly random cranial complications that they later discovered may have been caused by their birth control injections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pfizer lists brain and spine tumors as a potential side effect to its Depo-Provera customers in Europe, and it has done so in Canada since at least 2015<\/a>. Their contraception consumers in the United States, however, were not made aware of the meningioma risk associated with the injection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the reported meningiomas were benign, but their proximity to sensitive organs such as the brain and spinal cord proved to be problematic for some women who experienced <\/a>headaches, weakness, fatigue, vision loss<\/a> and hearing loss<\/a>, aphasia<\/a>, seizures, and more.<\/a> The lawsuits suggest some women required various drugs or radiation<\/a> to shrink the tumors, craniotomies to remove them, or both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The increasing number of women seeking legal recourse for Pfizer\u2019s alleged failure to warn about complications of Depo-Provera eventually forced a consolidation into a multidistrict litigation (MDL) in the Northern District of Florida in February<\/a>, which is ongoing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lawyers involved in the MDL have publicly expressed<\/a> confidence<\/a> that their plaintiffs will secure accountability and potentially even compensation for the Depo-Provera fallout. The damage for many of those women, however, was done the moment they were told taking a synthetic hormone was safe, effective, and potentially even beneficial<\/a> for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women are increasingly ditching hormonal birth control for natural alternatives such as tracking their cycles or abstaining from sex altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019ve seen over the last 60 or so years how the pills sold to them (often at a young age<\/a>) as a miracle pregnancy prevention tool or wonder fix for period pains, stubborn acne, mood swings, and classic puberty symptoms have the potential to cause cancer<\/a> and other bodily harms that sometimes last a lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not to mention the long list of birth control side effects that have the potential to plague women daily, including bleeding, headaches, weight gain, nausea, increased blood pressure, breast tenderness, low libido, acne, mood swings, heightened stroke and heart attack risk, blood clots, liver disorders,<\/a> depression, ovarian cysts, pelvic pain, and more<\/a>, along with increased risk of suicide<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"brain](\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Untitled-design-3.jpg\")
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nUntold Tumor Risk<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Fine Print<\/h2>\n\n\n\n