Michelle Duggar suffered a miscarriage in 1998, a time when she was using a birth control pill, and the couple has refused to use it ever since. However, her husband seems to be an expert on birth control and has shared how it causes miscarriages, because he's all scientific and stuff.
During an interview, Jim Bob said, "She went on the pill after Josh and then got pregnant, and then the pill actually caused a miscarriage, and so that was really when we started examining this. We started looking at the fine print of the contraception, and it said this could happen, and then we talked to a Christian doctor, and he explained this to us."
Look, I'm fine with the Duggars' choice to not use birth control. I don't want to get into family-size shaming or how they've chosen to exploit their family for fame and money. But they have so many followers, so many people who love the Duggars because they feel they're a good, religious family with upstanding morals. And being in that position, the misinformation Jim Bob (Jim Bob, of all people!) is dispensing about birth control is dangerous.
Jim Bob claims that when they spoke to a doctor, it was confirmed that the pill had indeed caused her established pregnancy to end. However, that's just not how it works. For a birth control pill to affect the possibility of a pregnancy, it must be taken in specific, higher doses before you've even conceived, as in the case of the morning-after pill (they work by preventing ovulation). Once your egg has been joined by sperm and the blastocyst has implanted in your uterus several days later, regular birth control usage won't cause you to spontaneously abort.
I'm not just saying that — studies have confirmed that birth control pills don't end pregnancies.
Don't use birth control pills if you desire a pregnancy, or if you're not wild about the potential side effects, or if you prefer another form of birth control. But don't shy away from birth control pills because Jim Bob told you they cause miscarriages, either if you accidentally become pregnant while taking them or if you hope to become pregnant in the future.
The bottom line? Birth control pills prevent pregnancy. They don't cause miscarriages. Maybe Jim Bob Duggar shouldn't attempt to discuss women's health issues, because he's not very good at it, and in fact, he sounds pretty ignorant trying to. Give it a rest, Jim Bob.
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