A review by celichoc
This Is Your Brain on Birth Control: The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences by Sarah Hill

5.0

In the 1960s birth control pills came onto the scene, allowing women to take control of their fertility and, by extension, their lives. The unintended effects of dumping untargeted hormones into our bodies haven’t been shared in a way widely accessible to the public, until now! In This is Your Brain on the Pill evolutionary psychologists Sarah Hill dives deep into the biological, psychological, and sociological effects of birth control pills*. Her goal isn’t to idolize or demonize the pill, just to inform the reader on all of its potential effects. Hill doesn’t hold back, describing effects from a handicapped stress response to changes in mate preference to changes in women’s career trajectories. Most importantly, she emphasizes how much we do not know. Researchers still haven’t pinpointed how women’s bodies work and while birth control pills have been subjected to rigorous clinical trials (Hill repeats throughout the book that they ARE safe to use), research on their long-term effects is still in progress. Complicating studies is the fact that every woman’s body chemistry is different. No two women respond to the same pill in the same way. The potential risks of one treatment don’t apply to everyone. As Hill insists “it’s time for all of us to join together and to ask science for some new choices and for more information about what happens to us with the choices we have” (p. 249).

This book is a great starting point to educate yourself on this issue. At only 250 pages (including several charts and graphs) it’s a quick read and worth the time of any girl or woman in or near entering the fertile stage of their life.

*The focus of the book is the PILL, not other hormonal birth control options like IUDs, NuvaRing, etc., so if you’re curious about those, look elsewhere