Turns Out the Morning After Pill Probs Won’t Make You Infertile
Babies: nobody wants ’em, until they actually do.
That’s why Plan B and all other forms of birth control are so great — they let you choose exactly the right time to blow your life up with a child. And as we learned from two v reputable sources this week, one of the most unfortunate rumors surrounding Plan B is totally false: taking it “too often” actually doesn’t affect your ability to have kids in the future.
This is something that I’ve heard since the morning after pill came out. Word on the street was that if you took it more than three times, your ability to have kids decreased. Some friends of mine would even swear their doctors had told them that.
Well, as it turns out, whether this originated with doctors trying to dissuade girls from having unprotected sex or not, it’s a lie.
I learned this from the Guys We Fucked podcast, which last week hosted Dr. Linda Prine, a gynecologist and abortion rights activist. On the show, Linda tells hosts Corinne Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson that no, there’s no risk to taking the morning after pill frequently.
There are downsides, though: Plan B is $50 a pop and for some people, it causes pretty gnarly side effects. In a story from Broadly that also came out this week, Polina Bachlakova notes that even though Plan B won’t make you barren, it can cause some people — like her — months of bloating, irritability, and exhaustion.
“The morning-after pill definitely won’t affect your chances of getting pregnant later on in life,” Dr. Charlotte Wilken-Jensen, Head of the Gynecology and Obstetrics Department at Hvidovre Hospital in Denmark, told Broadly. “However, the side effects from the hormone – nausea, dizziness, and feeling unwell – will change your quality of life anyway simply because you’re not feeling good. Depression is another big issue with it. It’s not nice in any way.”
She also added that while some say you should only take the pill once a cycle, even that’s not a hard and fast rule — you truly can take it as often as you want, if you don’t mind the side effects and the price tag.
Plan B has also been correlated with stroke, blood clots, and heart disease, so those are just a few more reasons why it probably shouldn’t be your primary form of birth control. But at least we can now sleep easy knowing that if you do need to take it slightly more often than you’d like, at least it won’t make you infertile.
This is the best news we’ve heard since finding out pulling out wasn’t actually the devil’s handiwork!
SEE ALSO:
4 Things That Happened When I Quit Birth Control
What’s Changed About Sex Ed Since You Were in High School
The Scary Birth Control Side Effect Most Doctors Won’t Warn You About
Relying On the Pull-Out Method Might Not Be as Dumb as You Thought
