[Impact of media alerts on contraceptive pills medication]

The end of 2012 was marked by some media alerts regarding combined hormonal contraceptives (CHC) and lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies selling these birth control pills. In this study, we analyzed whether these information had an impact on the number of abortion.

Prospective study determining the number of women asking for abortion and who spontaneously declare that the contraception defect was due to an abandon of their oral contraception as they were scared of some information they received from media about the medication.

Eleven centers out of 16 did participate to the study, allowing the study of 2300 abortion during this time frame. Ninety-eight of these pregnancies (4.2%) were due to an interruption of the contraceptive treatment as a consequence of media alerts. Average age was 26 years old. Within these pregnancies, 4 (6%) started in December 2012, 3 months after the beginning of the alerts, 11 (16%) in January, 24 (36%) in February and 18 (27%) in March 2013 (4-6 months later). In 7 cases (10%) CHC stopped by fear of information reported by media were of 2nd generation, in 17 cases (25%) of 3rd generation, in 32 cases (48%) of 4th generation and microprogestative in 2 cases (3%).

Women who declared that they stopped their birth control medication by fear of information reported in media, represented 4% of the number of abortions performed between 2013 February 18th and 2013 April 30th.