Ifeoluwa Tugbobo
February 24th, 2019
Deedra Brown
Writing for the Sciences

Contraceptives and fertility management, informally known as birth control, are methods of preventing pregnancy. Effective and safe methods of use have only recently become available to the masses, especially in the United States. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, approximately 9% of women(aged 15-49 years) were estimated to be taking oral contraception while 4% take injectable implants.   Most people in America are aware that it is a preventative measure for pregnancy = but few truly know the intricacies involved in the oral/injectable versions of contraception. Often that level of educational background is a deciding factor in whether contraception is used during sexual activities. It’s important to note the side effects and eventual detriments to long term use of oral/injectable contraception. One study recently noted that one of those detriments could impact women specifically in terms of cancer of the breast, cervix, ovary, and endometrium. Margaret Urban and her collective team of researchers investigated contraceptives and cancer in their scientific article “Injectable and oral contraceptive use and cancers of the breast, cervix, ovary, and endometrium in black South African women: a case-control study,” found in the PlosOne journals on March 6th, 2015.  

The article overall focused on the importance of contraception and how there could be potential implications for cancer following long term use. It seems in the female reproductive system, hormonal medications may be disrupting or influencing the various processes involved in maintaining a woman’s homeostasis. The reasoning that the scientists based their work on is that the cancers depend on the body’s natural sex hormones for further growth and metastasis. This close investigation compared short-term and long-term users of contraception with those who had never taken oral or injectable birth control to determine to what extent of risk was available. The researchers chose to focus on oral and injectable contraception, specifically injectable forms, because research on the connection to cancer was lacking. The choice in the specific population, black South African women, was primarily due to the high usage of injectable forms of birth control versus oral forms amongst their group.