“I'm on a mission to get young women off this pill,” Turning Point USA’s Alex Clark tells her audience of young women. “And if it is the only thing that I talk about from now on, so be it.”
Clark is an online influencer and host of TPUSA’s POPlitics YouTube show and The Spillover podcast, where she discusses celebrity gossip and pop culture — and pushes misinformation and fearmongering about hormonal birth control pills. Across YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, POPlitics and Clark have around 350,700 followers.
Since the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the Republican Party has capitalized on the removal of bodily autonomy for women, and some members of the GOP have gone as far as to oppose bills protecting the right to contraception. In line with the party, right-wing media have repeatedly denied the possibility of bans and attacked contraception.
In her rants, Clark only briefly mentions that some people use contraception to prevent needing medical treatment for non-contraceptive purposes, including acne, endometriosis, and reducing menstrual pain. Her rampant misinformation against the pill echoes Turning Point’s anti-abortion stance and encouragement of women to get married and have children at a young age. (Clark also regularly shares articles on her Instagram account railing against birth control from the anti-trans outlet Evie Magazine.)
Clark and Turning Point even sell stickers that read: “Birth Control, We’re Done.”
During her shows and on her Twitter and Instagram pages, Clark greatly over-exaggerates the risks of birth control, claiming it leads to myriad health problems and describing it as “poison.”
In reality, hormonal birth control pills are a safe and effective option for people seeking contraception in consultation with their doctors — not right-wing social media personalities.
There is nuance surrounding how hormonal birth control affects different people’s bodies. Clark weaponizes the complex mechanics and potential side effects of birth control, along with anecdotal evidence, to make widespread generalizations about the pill.
In one episode of POPlitics dubbed “GIRL TALK: Why Women (And I!) Are Ditching Birth Control,” Clark went on a diatribe of misinformation that quickly delved into a conspiracy theories.
“The truth is the medical field has an agenda,” Clark said. “Look at how it's weaponized a pandemic to infringe on our bodily rights. Why would the birth control agenda be any different? The pharmaceutical industry is a business that makes bank off your body. Hormonal birth control is no exception.”
Later in the show, Clark fearmongered about birth control causing cancer. Research indicates that hormonal birth control may increase the relative risk of some cancers while decreasing the risk of others, and most importantly, more research is needed in order to make sweeping generalizations.
Additionally, Clark claimed that birth control is a class of drug that “induces an abortion” and will cause “issues with fertility” later in life. Neither of these are true; birth control does not induce abortion and medical experts agree it will likely not cause later fertility issues.
In one very bizarre instance, Clark suggested that birth control “can falsely make women feel bisexual.” Birth control cannot change your sexual orientation and this rhetoric reinforces anti-LGBTQ tropes.
During a recent episode of The Spillover, Clark falsely claimed that birth control “accelerates aging” and claimed that it “can affect how attracted we feel to our partners.”
Research indicates taking the pill may actually help users look younger, and there is not a general consensus on how it affects libido.
While discussing birth control with fellow TPUSA host and white nationalist collaborator Jack Posobiec, Clark described the contraception method as “poison for women” and baselessly suggested that taking birth control is the cause of “all these fertility issues.”
