“Did my pill cause cancer?” Women describe how the pill changed their lives

About 150 million women around the world take the pill, mostly for birth control but also to regulate periods or reduce acne.

The combined (estrogen and progesterone) pill and progesterone-only pill are more than 90 percent effective as birth control, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Millions of women take the tablets without any issues, but some experience serious physical and mental side-effects. Newsweek contacted pill users in North America, Europe and Australia to find out more.

One woman in the U.S., who did not want to be named, told Newsweek her personality changed so drastically that she had to be assessed for borderline personality disorder.

Another woman, who also did not want to be named, said the two weeks she spent on the pill were among the worst of her life. “I was depressed and I wanted to beat my husband up,” she said. “I was so depressed and angry. It really messed up my hormones.”

Side-effects and risks

The Government Office on Women’s Health states that the combined pill, first approved in 1960, can have side-effects including headaches, upset stomachs, sore breasts, period changes, mood changes, weight gain and high blood pressure. “Less common but serious risks include blood clots, stroke and heart attack; the risk is higher in smokers and women older than 35,” it adds.

The progesterone-only tablet, or mini-pill, can have side-effects including irregular, weight gain, sore breasts, headaches and nausea, according to the office, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Below, Newsweek talks to four women about how their years on the pill affected them—and to doctors about how common their experiences are.

Struggling To Get Pregnant After Coming Off Pill

Jane Jones (not her real name) was 15 when her doctor prescribed the pill. “I was experiencing painful ovarian cysts. My doctor had told me that going on the pill would reduce them,” she told Newsweek.

Jones, now 45 and boss of a PR consulting firm in Washington, was on the pill until she was 29, despite “frequent mood swings and terrible headaches before my cycle each month.”

She stopped taking it, but her periods stopped too. Many women find it can take a few months for their cycles to “reset.” For Jones, this lasted a few years, a condition known as post-pill amenorrhea.

“This lack of cycle went on for a while before I realized anything was wrong,” she said. “At first, I was relieved not to have the headaches often or at all, which is why I didn’t talk to my doctor right away.”

By her early thirties, she wanted to start a family. Her obstetrician-gynecologist said she should consult an endocrinologist to find out why she wasn’t ovulating.

Post-pill amenorrhea can be related to problems with the thyroid, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), primary ovarian insufficiency, stress and even over-exercise.

Jones said: “My doctor told me it was likely as a result of my cycle not regulating on its own after being on birth control. Ironically, the first thing they did was put me back on birth control to restart my cycle. It worked to reset everything.”

After this, she “spent about eight years in and out of fertility treatment.” The headaches returned even worse than before, as she was having extra hormone injections.

“I recall feeling overwhelmed and unsure,” she said. Fertility treatment “was very hard on me and those around me.”

The treatment worked and Jones is now a mom of two. She argues that although the pill helps regulate menstrual cycles, the side-effects are “not fun. If I had the choice in taking the pill or not taking it again, I would not.”

Newsweek asked Dr. Semiya Aziz, a general practitioner in London, about the pill and fertility. She said: “Contrary to many women’s beliefs, using hormonal birth control does not affect the woman’s ability to have a baby in the future.”

Aziz, who also gives health advice on the British TV show This Morning, pointed out that the pill could actually disguise problems that do affect fertility, such as irregular periods, PCOS and endometriosis.

‘I Asked the Doctor, Did the Pill Cause the Cancer?’

Sarah Graham, who lives in Liverpool, U.K., was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2021 when she was just 26, after she found a lump while checking her breasts in the shower.

She had a lumpectomy, plus 16 rounds of chemotherapy and 21 rounds of radiotherapy. Now 28 and cancer free, Graham believes her illness was down to being on the pill for 10 years.

“I had no family history of cancer at all. I had multiple genetic screenings which all came back negative, showing no new mutations. It was basically potluck,” she told Newsweek.

“They say that your chance of getting cancer is also defined by environmental factors, but my sister has never had it and we grew up together.”

She added: “When I was diagnosed, the first thing I was told was that I need to stop taking the pill because it contains hormones that will continue to feed the cancer. If I gave my body any more, it would just eat it up and make the cancer spread.”

Graham had taken the combined pill for seven years and the mini-pill for three, without any breaks. She had switched to the mini-pill because the combined tablet was giving her migraines.

After her diagnosis, she asked her doctor whether the pill had played a role, but the physician evaded her question and Graham was left feeling that the topic was “taboo.”

“I asked the doctor, did the pill cause the cancer? She just said that we can’t say yes, but I’ve got no family history of cancer, I’m so young and the only thing that I’d taken was this contraception,” she said.

Graham now talks about her experiences on social media to alert other women. “I feel like doctors offer us the pill so flippantly, because it helps with acne and heavy periods as well as protecting against pregnancy, but you should be told about the breast cancer risk.

“You should be given an informed talk, and you should be told to start checking for lumps. I probably wouldn’t be here, or I’d be in a worse state, if I didn’t check.”

Scientific research has found the combined pill can increase the risk of breast and cervical cancer and, in March this year, University of Oxford scientists reported a similar “slight increase in breast cancer risk” linked to the mini-pill.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) states that “an analysis of data from more than 150,000 women” who had participated in 54 studies showed that women who had used oral contraceptives had a 7 percent increased risk of breast cancer while women who were currently using oral contraceptives had a 24 percent higher risk.

This risk declines once the user has stopped taking the pill. “No risk increase was evident by 10 years after use had stopped,” according to the institute.

The NCI also points out that studies have found “the risks of endometrial, ovarian and colorectal cancers are reduced” in woman taking the pill.

Aziz pointed out that the reduced risk of ovarian cancer was particularly apparent in women who carry the harmful mutation BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.

She added that most of the studies on cancer risk are observational and “unable to definitively establish the fact that exposure to the oral contraceptive may cause or prevent cancer.”

This is because women who take the pill may differ from those who don’t in many ways—and those other differences could explain the varying cancer risk.

‘I Could Have Had So Much More Out of Life’

Rylie Lane is a health and mindset coach based in Melbourne, Australia. The 27-year-old was prescribed the combined pill at 18 and stayed on it for almost nine years.

“I experienced cystic acne, mood changes, depression, anxiety, gut health issues and out-of-character reactions,” Lane told Newsweek.

“Within the first few weeks of being off the pill, I felt like a normal person again. I had so much energy and full enjoyment in life. It really felt like my real personality had been repressed for years.”

She added that she’d tried “many different things” to lift and regulate her mood, to no avail.

Looking back, she said, “I know that coming off the pill would have fixed those problems, but back then there was no education about what the pill could do to your body. I could have had so much more out of life over those years.”

She added: “The pill shouldn’t be the default mode of contraception that we’re offered.”

‘I Became Really Sad and Really Argumentative’

Kira Holli, 20, had a similar experience to Lane on the combined pill. The production assistant from Manchester, north-west England, took it for nine months between September 2020 and June 2021, before her partner pointed out how much she had changed.

“I became really sad and really argumentative too. I’m lucky, though. I feel we caught what it was doing to me early,” Holli told Newsweek.

She’s now scared to go back on any type of hormonal contraception, for fear it could have the same effects despite the different brand names.

Dr. Nathan Goodyear, medical director at Brio Medical in Arizona, told Newsweek that hormonal “contraception and mood disruptions” go hand in hand.

Although many women who stop taking the pill do so “due to intolerable side-effects such as changes in mood,” as Aziz put it, the evidence on the link is mixed.

A review of research studies, published in 2016, said it was “difficult to make strong conclusions about which CHC [combined hormonal contraception] users are at risk for adverse mood effects. Until more prospective data is available, clinicians should recognise that such effects are infrequent.”

A study of more than 1 million women in Denmark, published in November 2016, suggested adolescents who were prescribed the pill had a higher risk of developing depression, and a Swedish study this year reported similar results.

Writing about the Danish research on the Harvard Health Blog, Dr. Monique Tello said: “Should we stop prescribing hormonal birth control? No. It’s important to note that while the risk of depression among women using hormonal forms of birth control was clearly increased, the overall number of women affected was small.”

She added: “I plan to discuss this possibility with every patient when I’m counseling them about birth control, just as I would about increased risk of blood clots and, for certain women, breast cancer. In the end, every medication has potential risks and benefits.”