Different kinds of birth control - even different pills - have had very different effects on me. Mostly a tradeoff between psych effects and effectiveness at reducing cramps and flow.
I'd expect from my experience that some birth control pills have dramatic effects on some people (although the adverse effect I really couldn't live with was increased anger and tendency to violence, my baseline for PMS was already suicidal depression and basically any pill made this less pronounced) but most people then shop around and find a birth control that has effects they can live with, which will be less than the worst case effects.
Two-ish of the "conventional" views on birth control were true for me. I didn't know it until I got off it, because I'd been on the pill from age 16-26, and I was barely comfortable with my sexuality before getting on it.
On the pill, I did have a sex drive, but not the huge fluctuations I have with my cycle now -- which I love.
My husband has both masculine and feminine qualities, and on the pill I was very attracted to feeling I could talk to him like a female friend. After, I was more focused on his body and stereotypically masculine qualities. Though obviously I liked the talking too, I appreciated our differences even more, in ways I rarely paid attention to on the pill.
Depression - I was already depressed before, and was still depressed after. I do think the quality of the experience differed though, and off the pill I have greater access to my emotions, which has allowed me to work through my issues much more deeply.
Compared to how I feel now (off for 10ish years), the pill felt like it made me rigid and emotionally congested in certain ways, like I couldn't access certain parts of myself. I also had huge hormonal issues for years after, and only recently have I discovered that when I have a good amount of progesterone in my system (supplemental plus through herbs), I feel like woman in ways I never did before. Its hard to describe the quality, its a fluid feeling that relates to my embodiment and emotions, that I never felt on the pill and feels organically like "me."
This seems to align with what a lot of research says - Sarah Hill's book was quite popular for reasons, I believe. I'd be curious the cause of your different conclusions.
Regarding "horny in the last 24 hours," that measurement is super relative to one's interpretation of their level of arousal. When I was on the pill, there was a blunting to arousal - I couldn't get nearly as horny as I do now, but I didn't know that. So a level 10 then might be a 7 now.
I also question whether asking about preference for masculine vs feminine in attraction would capture the difference - I only noticed a difference in my attraction to my husband retroactively, after several years, reflecting on changes over time. I don't know that I would have answered any differently on vs. off the pill, personally. Realistically, I probably would have said I'm attracted to masculine men and feminine women, which is still true, though I prefer MORE masculine men now and ALSO masculine women. As another commenter pointed out, raw attraction ratings of images are usually used in these studies, so that is less of a conscious decision in the moment than answering a cognitive question like this.
As Metaboli said also, age makes a big difference - young people are hornier in general. If people in their 30s and 40s were included, I'd wonder what differences you'd see.
Did you ask if they had sex in the last 24 hours? I suspect some of the horniness and anxiety may be related to wanting and not having vs wanting and getting.
Did you only ask people about their situation at the point of taking the survey? In that case many people who experienced depression from hormonal birth control will have switched their birth control method and thus will not show up in your data.
I was on a birth control pill for 4 years, experiencing zero problems until at some point my family doctor told me I should switch to a higher dose. Since I had already been taking birth control pills, I wasn't expecting any problems. But 5 days in I started feeling worse and worse, turning from a happy and emotionally stable person into a complete mess. I spent an entire weekend crying in bed and feeling miserable for no particular reason.
The doctor flatly told me the effect would "probably" "decrease over time" and I "just had to stick with it" for "a few months". This triggered another crying session, after which I decided to quit. Within a few days I was completely back to my normal happy self, having zero depressive episodes in the years after that.
From an outside view you could argue that I was expecting the higher hormone dose to have an effect on me on some subconscious level, making my depressive episode psychosomatic. But this sounds like a stretch to me. You could use the same argument to dismiss any side effect from any medication. You'll also have a hard time explaining my experience through any correlation with life experiences. The simplest explanation is that my depressive episode was directly caused by the pill.
With respect, biologically speaking 'no'. Years of exposure to a potentially harmful chemical can definitely have an effect size that is significant. Ex. I might create a study showing only people who have worked with asbestos for one year and see a 3% increase in lung cancer and say 'its within the margin of error'; asbestos is safe. However, if my study included and stratified by years of exposure, so I included individuals with between 5-10 years of working with asbestos and there's a 50% increase in lung cancer or 10-20 years and a 500% increase in lung cancer, we can now clearly see a correlation between amount/length of exposure to the increase of risk, with seeming exponential growth, that is statistically significant. Where limiting it to just one year, it may not have shown and indicated marginal increase in risk.
At age 18, a woman might have been on birth control for just a year or two. At 30, she's been potentially on for 13 to 14 additional years. Ingesting a chemical daily for 14-15 straight years versus 1-2 years, common sense would tell us could have a greater impact. Like being a daily-smoker for 15 years versus 0-2 years. If I study the effects of smokers on someone whose only been smoking for 3 months and say 'hows your horniness in the last 24 hours' or 'cancer rates' and ask just teenagers to mid 20s, I might conclude there's nothing wrong with their sex drive but it wouldn't provide much evidence of how smoking might affect your sex drive after an additional 20 years in your 40s. It wouldn't disprove smoking causing cancer in your 40s or possibly lowering sex drives with repeated, on-going, long-term exposure.
I would suggest, if you have the capacity to, run the same script with just the age variable adjusted for 25-30, 30-35, 35-40.... If it was simply and SQL query of limit n>18 and n<25, it shouldn't be too hard to change 18 to 25 and 25 to 30....who knows what you might discover or not-discover and further confirm your findings.
I didn't use the correct technical stats term, but what I'm pointing out is there are probably biological differences between the other age groups that has led to those observations and your data only focusing on 18-25yo is not enough to rule them out. To further add to what Wesley said, there is also just higher tolerance to things like this with young people than there is for older people. One classic is being able to sleep after drinking a coffee when you are 22, but not being able to when you are 32 because your liver function & more is stronger.
Did you ask about other medication? Anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication reduces sex drive (might depend on which med it is). Venlafaxine certainly reduces it, maybe others also.
Maybe people who say higher number on something are just more likely to say higher number on everything else? Maybe e.g. their “normal” is calibrated at 6 vs 5. Also: 50% of women are depressed? wtf?
I’ve noticed some interesting patterns. For example, women on birth control often seem less moody during PMS compared to those off it.
There are also many misconceptions around reproductive health, particularly abortion. A common claim is that abortion is “safer” than giving birth. But when you account for post-pregnancy related deaths—including suicide—the numbers tell a different story.
Vaginal birth: About 15.42 deaths per 100,000 (0.01542%) occur within one year, including complications and suicide.
Abortion: About 35.48 deaths per 100,000 (0.03548%) occur within one year, including suicide. U.S. suicide data isn’t collected in the same way as pregnancy-related data, so these estimates are often based on Finnish studies. Still, it makes sense that both seeking and undergoing abortion correlate with higher levels of depression.
Part of the confusion comes from how statistics are reported. All live births are lumped together, even though C-sections carry much higher risks than vaginal deliveries—about 82.56 deaths per 100,000 procedures, largely due to post-surgical complications like infection or blood clots.
What surprised me most after running the numbers (and cross-checking with multiple sources) was how rare maternal deaths actually are. The rates are much lower than many people assume when we talk about a per procedure basis.
Conclusion: If the goal is to save the most lives, the focus shouldn’t be on making abortion either illegal or universally available. Instead, we should prioritize the mental health of pregnant women. Women with lower rates of depression are less likely to seek abortions and less likely to die by suicide after pregnancy or abortion.
In the long run, advancing technology will inevitably make abortion obsolete—but until then, supporting women’s mental health is the most direct way to reduce preventable deaths.
Let’s dispel common misconceptions and debate topics logically and scientifically.
Did you know that in the abortion debate Pro-choice advocates usually don’t argue anymore as they did in the past that the fetus is literally part of the woman’s body?
The slogan “My body, my choice” emerged in the 1960s–70s during the women’s liberation and reproductive rights movements. At that time, part of the public debate really did frame the fetus as “part of the woman’s body.”
Today they use the same slogan (not confusing at all) but they focus on bodily autonomy: that even if the fetus is a distinct entity, no one can force someone to use their body to sustain another life.
Pro-life advocates emphasize the distinct human identity of the fetus and argue that this distinctness gives it moral or legal rights.
Let’s dispel common misconceptions and advance the debates logically!
When comparing risks, it helps to look at each as a procedure and calculate deaths per procedure. In reviewing the data, I noticed reporting often frames pregnancy as more dangerous while presenting abortion as relatively safer. Statistically, abortion is safer than vaginal birth, though the overall risks of either—much like comparing COVID to the flu at age 35—are still very small.
Better contraception is key. Many women who seek abortions report already using some form of birth control. For example, condoms fail about 13% of the time with typical use, compared to only 2% with perfect use. That’s a significant gap.
In the future, technology may even allow pregnancies outside the human body, making abortion unnecessary. Until then, we need improved contraceptive options and stronger education.
If you want to see my train of thought and how I came up with these numbers I can share the entire ChatGPT chat with you to see the evolution of the numbers as I peeled back the layers of data to see the complete picture.
I don't really find it surprising that suicide among mothers would be lower (though you are talking about absolutely tiny numbers in each case.... .01 versus .03 is...not much. Committing suicide when you are responsible for another person, especially a small helpless dependent, is considered by most to be much, much less ethically acceptable than suicide when you are only responsible for yourself. In the former case you are not just taking your own life but abandoning a serious responsibility and permanently impacting/ruining someone else's.
You must be referring to personhood. The reason you say that suicide after giving birth affects another person but suicide after an abortion only affects the individual is because you’re implicitly assigning moral status to the born baby, but not to the fetus. It’s not the act of suicide itself that changes—it’s who counts as a “person.”
This same logic shows up in other ethical debates. For example, PETA opposes fetal pig dissection because they recognize the fetus as a sentient being deserving moral consideration. If you believe in EVOLUTION and see humans as part of the animal continuum—like in Slaughterhouse-Five, where the aliens see humans as animals—it becomes clear that questions of personhood, rights, and moral consideration naturally extend to animals. That’s why the abortion debate and animal rights debates will inevitably collide…
Well I mean if someone had an abortion than the fetus is already dead. You're assuming the person wanted to kill themselves while pregnant. I'm saying at any given time a person who was pregnant a year ago (or who made someone pregnant a year ago) wants to kill themselves, it is far ethically weightier to do so with a person dependent on them than someone who doesn't have that. I wasn't talking about the ethica of having an abortion in the first place, just that I would always expect parents to be less likely to kill themselves, regardless of how much they wanted to or not. IMO you essentially have no "right" to kill yourself once you're a parent, at least of while the child is still dependent on you.
Yes, I see your point. It still has personhood implications, though, by suggesting that a baby who has already been born and requires care is more important than an unborn one who was aborted or “killed.” PETA, for example, would argue that it still meets the definition of “killing.”
This is part of the reason why both sides of the debate struggle to reconcile their views: one side sees the fetus as less important, while the other does not. To say that “killing” one is less morally wrong than leaving another alive but without a parent highlights the disconnect between pro-life and pro-choice perspectives.
We are talking about medical procedures on pregnant women. Vaginal birth is one, C-section is another, and abortion is another. What happens to women during these procedures and in the year after? How many die during, or up to a year after, from causes related to the pregnancy—not from unrelated causes like a car accident?
The data suggests there may be a correlation between pregnancy, abortion, and suicide. But to move from “correlation” to “causation,” we would have to dig deeper. We cannot simply assume that pregnancy or abortion directly causes suicide.
Postpartum depression is real, and it may be a causal factor for women who give birth.
As for women who have an abortion, it seems fair to assume they are often dealing with depression, stress, or unhappiness in their situation. In such cases, depression—whether it occurs before, during, or after the abortion—could be the cause, or a combination of all three.
The liberal left has been conditioned to view the fetus as less important, and thus, consciously or subconsciously, places less moral weight on the death of the fetus than on the abandonment—but likely continued life—of a child who has already been born.
My point is to ask why we view the fetus as less important, when for most of human history it was the opposite. Looking ahead, abortion will almost certainly become obsolete and regarded as “barbaric” once babies can be made viable from the point of conception and transferred to artificial wombs.
So, if abortion is destined to become obsolete for the next hundred thousand years of human existence, why would we perform it now?
Why in the past did we perform other medical procedures that today would be considered “barbaric” and that have already become obsolete? Maybe they helped or maybe they helped us learn a better method.
I’m not trying to pass moral judgment, but rather to prompt reflection: Why do we care more about a baby who has been breathing outside the womb for five seconds than about one who is still inside, or even one who is not yet fully formed?
These are metaphysical questions, and I’m slow to pass judgment on the responses to them as long as they feel “logical” in advancing the debate.
Animal rights abortion and cloning are all intersecting in a way that we HAVE TO answer these questions.
But we have time. And I’m not ready to say that they’ve already been answered either.
Here is a quick list of barbaric procedures in case you were wondering. My guess is that within the next 50-100 years abortion will be the newest addition and will remain that way until we go extinct as a species…
Here’s a quick list:
• Trepanation – drilling holes in the skull to release evil spirits or pressure.
• Lobotomy – severing brain connections to treat mental illness.
• Bloodletting – draining blood to balance bodily “humors.”
• Leech therapy (excessive use) – using leeches for almost every ailment.
• Tooth extraction without anesthesia – pulling teeth with no pain relief.
• Amputation without anesthesia – removing limbs with saws while patient was awake.
• Mercury treatments – giving mercury for syphilis, often causing poisoning.
• Radium therapy – using radioactive radium as a cure-all.
• Insulin coma therapy – inducing comas to treat schizophrenia.
• Electroconvulsive therapy (early use) – delivering uncontrolled shocks without anesthesia or muscle relaxants.
Now if the debate was just about suicide itself and we were debating the morality or ethics of a childless woman (whether or not they had an abortion) vs a woman with a child then I can see why a woman with a child committing suicide would be more morally/ethically wrong then the childless woman, but that was not the point I was trying to make and is a completely separate debate although correlated since we are talking about “killing” and when it is morally wrong or morally acceptable.
Just to clarify in case you thought I missed your slightly off topic debating point
Here’s a question. Would it be moral or ethical to “abort” a fetus if humans laid eggs like Emperor penguins in Antarctica? You’ve seen the men guarding the eggs through the coldest winter in complete darkness?
Imagine the Dragons (Seraphim) come back and put us all in zoos… or worse Molach (Dinasaur who convinced us he was a “God”) asks for human sacrifices again.
😉
You don’t believe that hocus pocus though do you?
But it still begs the question, why would it be morally wrong for an advanced carnivore space species to eat us but not ethically wrong for us to eat less “evolved” animals here on earth? Ones who are in their “stone” age for example.
I can’t answer that because it touches on the meaning of life and the knowledge of good and evil itself
But these are the type of debates I like to have
And here is some Rick and Morty to add a little comic relief to this polarizing debate:
Imagine some of us humans venture deep into space to start a new colony on a distant planet
You don’t think any of us would degenerate into doing morally or ethically wrong things if we were in charge of the planet and could rule over it with our technology like “gods” would you?
You don’t think we would bioengineer inferior slave classes of humans… anyway we’re getting into sci fi now and the Book of Enoch!
Regarding the third question, is that useful to ask people? If birth control is influencing what facial features or behaviors you find attractive, would you even be aware of it? How likely would that come out in a self reported survey?
I have seen some studies on this and they usually have the participants rate pictures of men's faces or something similar.
I don't know about monogamous cis het women, but I am definitely aware that my new crushes and new partners this year were more masc than last year. On the other hand monogamous people have a lower sample size if they're in a relationship, and cis people are just generally bad at gender, so they might be oblivious to things like this.
Can’t determine anything about whether birth control increases sex drive or decreases from this data. The more likely reason for these results is that people who are hornier, have more sex, and are thus more likely to go on birth control
Horny ppl use birth control.
You need a before/after control within subjects not between
I'm actually rather surprised by this data, I thought all of the birth control myths were true from what I have experienced and read. Do you think your data collection from a more sex positive population could have skewed the results? I'm wondering if these effects are smaller in birth control vs no birth control if you are a more sexually adventurous person in the first place.
I don't think so. It's a more sex-positive population but not *significantly*, the people taking it don't know who I am, they're selected for sex positivity just by nature of taking a kink survey. They overlap much more with 'the demographic likely to take personality surveys online' which skews heavily young females.
Lies, damn lies and statistics. Do not discount your personal experience due to statistics that are easily manipulated, often without any ill intent. Remember, Aella limited the data to only ages 18 to 25 or people. An age bracket, who naturally have a very high sex drive and asked 'Where you horny in the last 24 hours' which, with respect, for a younger person is totally normal. Most young people get horny multiple times a day, from my recollection in high school and college. So the statistical value is dubious.
Sex drive generally decreases with age so there might be a significant difference in how fast sex drive decreases in BC women versus non BC women. So there might be a large effect size against BC in the 25 to 30 or 30 to 35 or 35 to 40 age brackets. Many toxic chemicals or cancer-causing chemicals, and endocrine dysrupters, have an effect size that increases with exposure. At 18, its max 1-2 years exposure, probably. At 25? That's 8-9 years exposure. At 30? 13-14 years exposure. 35? 18-19 years of exposure. So on and so-forth.
So sure, maybe there is no effect on a group, where 'being horny' frequently may not be well....typical or average. Find me an 18 year hold who hasn't been horny in the last day. ESPECIALLY in the age of easily-accessible erotica, sexualized avertisemenets and pronography and I'll be shocked if they aren't asexual, anexoric, extremely depressed or have some trauma.
Show an 18 year old male the Baskin Robbins ad of Sydney Sweeney licking her ice cream cone, and I wouldn't be surprised if > 60% now had to respond Yes to the horny in the last 24 hours. I'm sure there must be equally sexualized advertising targeted towards the female gaze and curated for your phone.
oh I would never ever discount my personal experience, I had a terrible time on hormonal birth control and I am completely different on and off it in many aspects of my personality-- was just surprised not to see them showing up as strong as I expected but I think you have described the reasons why that most likely was pretty well, cheers for that
Half truth in the statement. Many women report being more comfortable in their sexuality in their 30s than 20s and so more willing to discuss what they like with partners, make requests give feedback and overall enjoy a higher quality of sex. So if they are desiring sex more, is it biological sex drive or better quality sex producing the desire? Ex if you are eating quality ice cream at night, every night, while watching tv, is it the taste you crave or actual genuine hunger? Would your metabolism or appetite be higher because you're eating ice cream at night? Let's say sex in your 30s because the male partner gets better too is ice cream and in the early 20s is plain sandwich bread and mid 20s is... Something half way inbetween taste wise.
Frequency though of having sex decreases especially among those women in long term monogamous relationships. So if desire is higher, why is sexual encounter frequency lower? Sexless marriages or near Sexless aren't uncommon. The common thought would be to blame children as the reason for sexual encounter quantity to decrease like feeling tired. But if your feeling too tired to have sex, is that really desiring it or not? Sounds like it would be not desiring it. "not tonight, I'm tired" or "not tonight, I have a headache" are tropes in Hollywood writing because it is believable to the audience based on personal experiences or at the very least in their friend group. But if not being in the mood and not having sexual desire are different, how so? What's the difference between common use and academic use of sexual desire? Sex is generally considered to increase in quality despite frequency decreasing with age. Strange if desire is higher and quality is better frequency would decrease so something about the higher desire with she doesn't seem to me to add up....
Many people think if you took the mind or the sexual confidence of an adult woman, and gave it to a teenager sexual desire would be way higher.
Growing up with sisters, I've seen them in their teenage and young twenties absolutely obsess over their celebrity crushes and experience very intense desire for their first flames that pale in comparison to how they act and treat the men they eventually married in their 30s. So I've observed higher sexual desire in their youth. That's just me though. They mostly didn't act on the desire due to shyness, cultural expectations to keep virginity or purity and performance anxiety. Something that decreases in women with age from experience acquired
Did you distinguish oral birth control from localized methods which get by with smaller doses? If a significant chunk of the sample were on something with no/marginal/different impact, that could obscure a larger impact on a more exposed subset.
Response heterogeneity is a possible explanation - if 5% of women experience an effect, but it's a very strong response FOR THEM, then the *average* effect can be small, but it can still be very obvious to the responders.
Did you happen to ask if they were using an IUD? That would be an interesting cohort to restrict comparison to.
Different kinds of birth control - even different pills - have had very different effects on me. Mostly a tradeoff between psych effects and effectiveness at reducing cramps and flow.
I'd expect from my experience that some birth control pills have dramatic effects on some people (although the adverse effect I really couldn't live with was increased anger and tendency to violence, my baseline for PMS was already suicidal depression and basically any pill made this less pronounced) but most people then shop around and find a birth control that has effects they can live with, which will be less than the worst case effects.
This might be a silly question, but would having a higher sex drive make one more likely to *want* to be on birth control in the first place?
A great question. Definitely not silly.
Two-ish of the "conventional" views on birth control were true for me. I didn't know it until I got off it, because I'd been on the pill from age 16-26, and I was barely comfortable with my sexuality before getting on it.
On the pill, I did have a sex drive, but not the huge fluctuations I have with my cycle now -- which I love.
My husband has both masculine and feminine qualities, and on the pill I was very attracted to feeling I could talk to him like a female friend. After, I was more focused on his body and stereotypically masculine qualities. Though obviously I liked the talking too, I appreciated our differences even more, in ways I rarely paid attention to on the pill.
Depression - I was already depressed before, and was still depressed after. I do think the quality of the experience differed though, and off the pill I have greater access to my emotions, which has allowed me to work through my issues much more deeply.
Compared to how I feel now (off for 10ish years), the pill felt like it made me rigid and emotionally congested in certain ways, like I couldn't access certain parts of myself. I also had huge hormonal issues for years after, and only recently have I discovered that when I have a good amount of progesterone in my system (supplemental plus through herbs), I feel like woman in ways I never did before. Its hard to describe the quality, its a fluid feeling that relates to my embodiment and emotions, that I never felt on the pill and feels organically like "me."
This seems to align with what a lot of research says - Sarah Hill's book was quite popular for reasons, I believe. I'd be curious the cause of your different conclusions.
Regarding "horny in the last 24 hours," that measurement is super relative to one's interpretation of their level of arousal. When I was on the pill, there was a blunting to arousal - I couldn't get nearly as horny as I do now, but I didn't know that. So a level 10 then might be a 7 now.
I also question whether asking about preference for masculine vs feminine in attraction would capture the difference - I only noticed a difference in my attraction to my husband retroactively, after several years, reflecting on changes over time. I don't know that I would have answered any differently on vs. off the pill, personally. Realistically, I probably would have said I'm attracted to masculine men and feminine women, which is still true, though I prefer MORE masculine men now and ALSO masculine women. As another commenter pointed out, raw attraction ratings of images are usually used in these studies, so that is less of a conscious decision in the moment than answering a cognitive question like this.
As Metaboli said also, age makes a big difference - young people are hornier in general. If people in their 30s and 40s were included, I'd wonder what differences you'd see.
Did you ask if they had sex in the last 24 hours? I suspect some of the horniness and anxiety may be related to wanting and not having vs wanting and getting.
Did you only ask people about their situation at the point of taking the survey? In that case many people who experienced depression from hormonal birth control will have switched their birth control method and thus will not show up in your data.
I was on a birth control pill for 4 years, experiencing zero problems until at some point my family doctor told me I should switch to a higher dose. Since I had already been taking birth control pills, I wasn't expecting any problems. But 5 days in I started feeling worse and worse, turning from a happy and emotionally stable person into a complete mess. I spent an entire weekend crying in bed and feeling miserable for no particular reason.
The doctor flatly told me the effect would "probably" "decrease over time" and I "just had to stick with it" for "a few months". This triggered another crying session, after which I decided to quit. Within a few days I was completely back to my normal happy self, having zero depressive episodes in the years after that.
From an outside view you could argue that I was expecting the higher hormone dose to have an effect on me on some subconscious level, making my depressive episode psychosomatic. But this sounds like a stretch to me. You could use the same argument to dismiss any side effect from any medication. You'll also have a hard time explaining my experience through any correlation with life experiences. The simplest explanation is that my depressive episode was directly caused by the pill.
A big confounder is the age ranges in your data, 18-25 is very different than late 20s, early 30s, late 30s, etc
limiting the age ranges is not a confounder
With respect, biologically speaking 'no'. Years of exposure to a potentially harmful chemical can definitely have an effect size that is significant. Ex. I might create a study showing only people who have worked with asbestos for one year and see a 3% increase in lung cancer and say 'its within the margin of error'; asbestos is safe. However, if my study included and stratified by years of exposure, so I included individuals with between 5-10 years of working with asbestos and there's a 50% increase in lung cancer or 10-20 years and a 500% increase in lung cancer, we can now clearly see a correlation between amount/length of exposure to the increase of risk, with seeming exponential growth, that is statistically significant. Where limiting it to just one year, it may not have shown and indicated marginal increase in risk.
At age 18, a woman might have been on birth control for just a year or two. At 30, she's been potentially on for 13 to 14 additional years. Ingesting a chemical daily for 14-15 straight years versus 1-2 years, common sense would tell us could have a greater impact. Like being a daily-smoker for 15 years versus 0-2 years. If I study the effects of smokers on someone whose only been smoking for 3 months and say 'hows your horniness in the last 24 hours' or 'cancer rates' and ask just teenagers to mid 20s, I might conclude there's nothing wrong with their sex drive but it wouldn't provide much evidence of how smoking might affect your sex drive after an additional 20 years in your 40s. It wouldn't disprove smoking causing cancer in your 40s or possibly lowering sex drives with repeated, on-going, long-term exposure.
I would suggest, if you have the capacity to, run the same script with just the age variable adjusted for 25-30, 30-35, 35-40.... If it was simply and SQL query of limit n>18 and n<25, it shouldn't be too hard to change 18 to 25 and 25 to 30....who knows what you might discover or not-discover and further confirm your findings.
I didn't use the correct technical stats term, but what I'm pointing out is there are probably biological differences between the other age groups that has led to those observations and your data only focusing on 18-25yo is not enough to rule them out. To further add to what Wesley said, there is also just higher tolerance to things like this with young people than there is for older people. One classic is being able to sleep after drinking a coffee when you are 22, but not being able to when you are 32 because your liver function & more is stronger.
Did you ask about other medication? Anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medication reduces sex drive (might depend on which med it is). Venlafaxine certainly reduces it, maybe others also.
Maybe people who say higher number on something are just more likely to say higher number on everything else? Maybe e.g. their “normal” is calibrated at 6 vs 5. Also: 50% of women are depressed? wtf?
I’ve noticed some interesting patterns. For example, women on birth control often seem less moody during PMS compared to those off it.
There are also many misconceptions around reproductive health, particularly abortion. A common claim is that abortion is “safer” than giving birth. But when you account for post-pregnancy related deaths—including suicide—the numbers tell a different story.
Vaginal birth: About 15.42 deaths per 100,000 (0.01542%) occur within one year, including complications and suicide.
Abortion: About 35.48 deaths per 100,000 (0.03548%) occur within one year, including suicide. U.S. suicide data isn’t collected in the same way as pregnancy-related data, so these estimates are often based on Finnish studies. Still, it makes sense that both seeking and undergoing abortion correlate with higher levels of depression.
Part of the confusion comes from how statistics are reported. All live births are lumped together, even though C-sections carry much higher risks than vaginal deliveries—about 82.56 deaths per 100,000 procedures, largely due to post-surgical complications like infection or blood clots.
What surprised me most after running the numbers (and cross-checking with multiple sources) was how rare maternal deaths actually are. The rates are much lower than many people assume when we talk about a per procedure basis.
Conclusion: If the goal is to save the most lives, the focus shouldn’t be on making abortion either illegal or universally available. Instead, we should prioritize the mental health of pregnant women. Women with lower rates of depression are less likely to seek abortions and less likely to die by suicide after pregnancy or abortion.
In the long run, advancing technology will inevitably make abortion obsolete—but until then, supporting women’s mental health is the most direct way to reduce preventable deaths.
Let’s dispel common misconceptions and debate topics logically and scientifically.
Did you know that in the abortion debate Pro-choice advocates usually don’t argue anymore as they did in the past that the fetus is literally part of the woman’s body?
The slogan “My body, my choice” emerged in the 1960s–70s during the women’s liberation and reproductive rights movements. At that time, part of the public debate really did frame the fetus as “part of the woman’s body.”
Today they use the same slogan (not confusing at all) but they focus on bodily autonomy: that even if the fetus is a distinct entity, no one can force someone to use their body to sustain another life.
Pro-life advocates emphasize the distinct human identity of the fetus and argue that this distinctness gives it moral or legal rights.
Let’s dispel common misconceptions and advance the debates logically!
When comparing risks, it helps to look at each as a procedure and calculate deaths per procedure. In reviewing the data, I noticed reporting often frames pregnancy as more dangerous while presenting abortion as relatively safer. Statistically, abortion is safer than vaginal birth, though the overall risks of either—much like comparing COVID to the flu at age 35—are still very small.
Better contraception is key. Many women who seek abortions report already using some form of birth control. For example, condoms fail about 13% of the time with typical use, compared to only 2% with perfect use. That’s a significant gap.
In the future, technology may even allow pregnancies outside the human body, making abortion unnecessary. Until then, we need improved contraceptive options and stronger education.
If you want to see my train of thought and how I came up with these numbers I can share the entire ChatGPT chat with you to see the evolution of the numbers as I peeled back the layers of data to see the complete picture.
I don't really find it surprising that suicide among mothers would be lower (though you are talking about absolutely tiny numbers in each case.... .01 versus .03 is...not much. Committing suicide when you are responsible for another person, especially a small helpless dependent, is considered by most to be much, much less ethically acceptable than suicide when you are only responsible for yourself. In the former case you are not just taking your own life but abandoning a serious responsibility and permanently impacting/ruining someone else's.
You must be referring to personhood. The reason you say that suicide after giving birth affects another person but suicide after an abortion only affects the individual is because you’re implicitly assigning moral status to the born baby, but not to the fetus. It’s not the act of suicide itself that changes—it’s who counts as a “person.”
This same logic shows up in other ethical debates. For example, PETA opposes fetal pig dissection because they recognize the fetus as a sentient being deserving moral consideration. If you believe in EVOLUTION and see humans as part of the animal continuum—like in Slaughterhouse-Five, where the aliens see humans as animals—it becomes clear that questions of personhood, rights, and moral consideration naturally extend to animals. That’s why the abortion debate and animal rights debates will inevitably collide…
Tell me they haven’t already.
https://youtu.be/NL-tvd8jeBc?si=BmMzlp6VNeJ_TQHN
Well I mean if someone had an abortion than the fetus is already dead. You're assuming the person wanted to kill themselves while pregnant. I'm saying at any given time a person who was pregnant a year ago (or who made someone pregnant a year ago) wants to kill themselves, it is far ethically weightier to do so with a person dependent on them than someone who doesn't have that. I wasn't talking about the ethica of having an abortion in the first place, just that I would always expect parents to be less likely to kill themselves, regardless of how much they wanted to or not. IMO you essentially have no "right" to kill yourself once you're a parent, at least of while the child is still dependent on you.
Yes, I see your point. It still has personhood implications, though, by suggesting that a baby who has already been born and requires care is more important than an unborn one who was aborted or “killed.” PETA, for example, would argue that it still meets the definition of “killing.”
This is part of the reason why both sides of the debate struggle to reconcile their views: one side sees the fetus as less important, while the other does not. To say that “killing” one is less morally wrong than leaving another alive but without a parent highlights the disconnect between pro-life and pro-choice perspectives.
We are talking about medical procedures on pregnant women. Vaginal birth is one, C-section is another, and abortion is another. What happens to women during these procedures and in the year after? How many die during, or up to a year after, from causes related to the pregnancy—not from unrelated causes like a car accident?
The data suggests there may be a correlation between pregnancy, abortion, and suicide. But to move from “correlation” to “causation,” we would have to dig deeper. We cannot simply assume that pregnancy or abortion directly causes suicide.
Postpartum depression is real, and it may be a causal factor for women who give birth.
As for women who have an abortion, it seems fair to assume they are often dealing with depression, stress, or unhappiness in their situation. In such cases, depression—whether it occurs before, during, or after the abortion—could be the cause, or a combination of all three.
The liberal left has been conditioned to view the fetus as less important, and thus, consciously or subconsciously, places less moral weight on the death of the fetus than on the abandonment—but likely continued life—of a child who has already been born.
My point is to ask why we view the fetus as less important, when for most of human history it was the opposite. Looking ahead, abortion will almost certainly become obsolete and regarded as “barbaric” once babies can be made viable from the point of conception and transferred to artificial wombs.
So, if abortion is destined to become obsolete for the next hundred thousand years of human existence, why would we perform it now?
Why in the past did we perform other medical procedures that today would be considered “barbaric” and that have already become obsolete? Maybe they helped or maybe they helped us learn a better method.
I’m not trying to pass moral judgment, but rather to prompt reflection: Why do we care more about a baby who has been breathing outside the womb for five seconds than about one who is still inside, or even one who is not yet fully formed?
These are metaphysical questions, and I’m slow to pass judgment on the responses to them as long as they feel “logical” in advancing the debate.
Animal rights abortion and cloning are all intersecting in a way that we HAVE TO answer these questions.
But we have time. And I’m not ready to say that they’ve already been answered either.
Let’s keep the debate going.
Here is a quick list of barbaric procedures in case you were wondering. My guess is that within the next 50-100 years abortion will be the newest addition and will remain that way until we go extinct as a species…
Here’s a quick list:
• Trepanation – drilling holes in the skull to release evil spirits or pressure.
• Lobotomy – severing brain connections to treat mental illness.
• Bloodletting – draining blood to balance bodily “humors.”
• Leech therapy (excessive use) – using leeches for almost every ailment.
• Tooth extraction without anesthesia – pulling teeth with no pain relief.
• Amputation without anesthesia – removing limbs with saws while patient was awake.
• Mercury treatments – giving mercury for syphilis, often causing poisoning.
• Radium therapy – using radioactive radium as a cure-all.
• Insulin coma therapy – inducing comas to treat schizophrenia.
• Electroconvulsive therapy (early use) – delivering uncontrolled shocks without anesthesia or muscle relaxants.
Now if the debate was just about suicide itself and we were debating the morality or ethics of a childless woman (whether or not they had an abortion) vs a woman with a child then I can see why a woman with a child committing suicide would be more morally/ethically wrong then the childless woman, but that was not the point I was trying to make and is a completely separate debate although correlated since we are talking about “killing” and when it is morally wrong or morally acceptable.
Just to clarify in case you thought I missed your slightly off topic debating point
Here’s a question. Would it be moral or ethical to “abort” a fetus if humans laid eggs like Emperor penguins in Antarctica? You’ve seen the men guarding the eggs through the coldest winter in complete darkness?
https://youtu.be/6uYzC7tq9RM?si=n5SBBrl1SYi3XAzx
Imagine the Dragons (Seraphim) come back and put us all in zoos… or worse Molach (Dinasaur who convinced us he was a “God”) asks for human sacrifices again.
😉
You don’t believe that hocus pocus though do you?
But it still begs the question, why would it be morally wrong for an advanced carnivore space species to eat us but not ethically wrong for us to eat less “evolved” animals here on earth? Ones who are in their “stone” age for example.
I can’t answer that because it touches on the meaning of life and the knowledge of good and evil itself
But these are the type of debates I like to have
And here is some Rick and Morty to add a little comic relief to this polarizing debate:
https://youtu.be/2KzRVP0pkRo?si=Mo8Lwg-yAtIYNRlU
Imagine some of us humans venture deep into space to start a new colony on a distant planet
You don’t think any of us would degenerate into doing morally or ethically wrong things if we were in charge of the planet and could rule over it with our technology like “gods” would you?
You don’t think we would bioengineer inferior slave classes of humans… anyway we’re getting into sci fi now and the Book of Enoch!
As the apex predator of the earth we punish any animal that attacks us with death in most cases
Imagine what the apex predator of the galaxy would do to us if we attacked them?
Regarding the third question, is that useful to ask people? If birth control is influencing what facial features or behaviors you find attractive, would you even be aware of it? How likely would that come out in a self reported survey?
I have seen some studies on this and they usually have the participants rate pictures of men's faces or something similar.
There have been studies of this conducted on different days of a woman’s cycle with, I believe,
significant results.
I don't know about monogamous cis het women, but I am definitely aware that my new crushes and new partners this year were more masc than last year. On the other hand monogamous people have a lower sample size if they're in a relationship, and cis people are just generally bad at gender, so they might be oblivious to things like this.
consider that the women who may have had negative experiences with hormonal birth control probably no longer take hormonal birth control
( as one of those women)
Can’t determine anything about whether birth control increases sex drive or decreases from this data. The more likely reason for these results is that people who are hornier, have more sex, and are thus more likely to go on birth control
Horny ppl use birth control.
You need a before/after control within subjects not between
I'm actually rather surprised by this data, I thought all of the birth control myths were true from what I have experienced and read. Do you think your data collection from a more sex positive population could have skewed the results? I'm wondering if these effects are smaller in birth control vs no birth control if you are a more sexually adventurous person in the first place.
I don't think so. It's a more sex-positive population but not *significantly*, the people taking it don't know who I am, they're selected for sex positivity just by nature of taking a kink survey. They overlap much more with 'the demographic likely to take personality surveys online' which skews heavily young females.
Plus the difference is *within* population slice.
Lies, damn lies and statistics. Do not discount your personal experience due to statistics that are easily manipulated, often without any ill intent. Remember, Aella limited the data to only ages 18 to 25 or people. An age bracket, who naturally have a very high sex drive and asked 'Where you horny in the last 24 hours' which, with respect, for a younger person is totally normal. Most young people get horny multiple times a day, from my recollection in high school and college. So the statistical value is dubious.
Sex drive generally decreases with age so there might be a significant difference in how fast sex drive decreases in BC women versus non BC women. So there might be a large effect size against BC in the 25 to 30 or 30 to 35 or 35 to 40 age brackets. Many toxic chemicals or cancer-causing chemicals, and endocrine dysrupters, have an effect size that increases with exposure. At 18, its max 1-2 years exposure, probably. At 25? That's 8-9 years exposure. At 30? 13-14 years exposure. 35? 18-19 years of exposure. So on and so-forth.
So sure, maybe there is no effect on a group, where 'being horny' frequently may not be well....typical or average. Find me an 18 year hold who hasn't been horny in the last day. ESPECIALLY in the age of easily-accessible erotica, sexualized avertisemenets and pronography and I'll be shocked if they aren't asexual, anexoric, extremely depressed or have some trauma.
Show an 18 year old male the Baskin Robbins ad of Sydney Sweeney licking her ice cream cone, and I wouldn't be surprised if > 60% now had to respond Yes to the horny in the last 24 hours. I'm sure there must be equally sexualized advertising targeted towards the female gaze and curated for your phone.
oh I would never ever discount my personal experience, I had a terrible time on hormonal birth control and I am completely different on and off it in many aspects of my personality-- was just surprised not to see them showing up as strong as I expected but I think you have described the reasons why that most likely was pretty well, cheers for that
> Sex drive generally decreases with age
This... is not true for women? I thought it was generally accepted that women's sex drive peaks in early 30s
Half truth in the statement. Many women report being more comfortable in their sexuality in their 30s than 20s and so more willing to discuss what they like with partners, make requests give feedback and overall enjoy a higher quality of sex. So if they are desiring sex more, is it biological sex drive or better quality sex producing the desire? Ex if you are eating quality ice cream at night, every night, while watching tv, is it the taste you crave or actual genuine hunger? Would your metabolism or appetite be higher because you're eating ice cream at night? Let's say sex in your 30s because the male partner gets better too is ice cream and in the early 20s is plain sandwich bread and mid 20s is... Something half way inbetween taste wise.
Frequency though of having sex decreases especially among those women in long term monogamous relationships. So if desire is higher, why is sexual encounter frequency lower? Sexless marriages or near Sexless aren't uncommon. The common thought would be to blame children as the reason for sexual encounter quantity to decrease like feeling tired. But if your feeling too tired to have sex, is that really desiring it or not? Sounds like it would be not desiring it. "not tonight, I'm tired" or "not tonight, I have a headache" are tropes in Hollywood writing because it is believable to the audience based on personal experiences or at the very least in their friend group. But if not being in the mood and not having sexual desire are different, how so? What's the difference between common use and academic use of sexual desire? Sex is generally considered to increase in quality despite frequency decreasing with age. Strange if desire is higher and quality is better frequency would decrease so something about the higher desire with she doesn't seem to me to add up....
Many people think if you took the mind or the sexual confidence of an adult woman, and gave it to a teenager sexual desire would be way higher.
Growing up with sisters, I've seen them in their teenage and young twenties absolutely obsess over their celebrity crushes and experience very intense desire for their first flames that pale in comparison to how they act and treat the men they eventually married in their 30s. So I've observed higher sexual desire in their youth. That's just me though. They mostly didn't act on the desire due to shyness, cultural expectations to keep virginity or purity and performance anxiety. Something that decreases in women with age from experience acquired
Did you distinguish oral birth control from localized methods which get by with smaller doses? If a significant chunk of the sample were on something with no/marginal/different impact, that could obscure a larger impact on a more exposed subset.
Response heterogeneity is a possible explanation - if 5% of women experience an effect, but it's a very strong response FOR THEM, then the *average* effect can be small, but it can still be very obvious to the responders.