No, Birth Control Pills Probably Won’t Cause Birth Defects

Of the mothers, 68% used the contraceptive pill but stopped using it more than 3 months before becoming pregnant.

“Women who become pregnant either soon after stopping oral contraceptives, or even while taking them, should know that this exposure is unlikely to cause their fetus to develop a birth defect”, said first author Brittany Charlton, a researcher in the Harvard Chan School Department of Epidemiology and an instructor at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital.

A team of Danish and American researchers poured over the records of live births in Denmark between 1997-2011. Meaning: Birth control didn’t lead to birth defects, even when mothers took it in the early months of pregnancy.

The amount of major birth defects per 1000 births was consistent across each group – 25.1 for never users, 25 for oral contraceptive use more than three months before pregnancy and 24.9 for oral contraceptive less than 3 months before pregnancy.

For latest news on mobile and tablet, download IndiaTV Android app and iOS app. Previous studies – which relied on self-reports from women – have found links between birth control pills and birth defects.

Infants with birth defects with known causes, such as fetal alcohol syndrome, or chromosomal aberrations, were excluded.

Kim Waller, an epidemiologist at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health, was an author of a 2010 study looking at oral contraceptive use and 32 categories of birth defects.

The study is important because so many women take the pill – about 16 percent of women of childbearing age in the U.S. When used perfectly, the failure rate of the pill is less than 1 percent, but that jumps to 9 percent under typical use because of missed pills, drug interactions or illness.

“Our findings were especially reassuring given that we were able to use a different approach”, Charlton added.

From a national registry database, the team was able to pinpoint the last time the mothers were prescribed oral contraceptives.

Big news was just made recently when officials from OR announced that birth control pills will now be available to purchase over the counter in that state. The results of the study showed that there was no connection between the contraceptives and the birth defects.

Hormones in birth control pills appear to be pose little risk to human embryos in the womb. These included education level, household income, previous pregnancies with birth defects, smoking during pregnancy and other prescription drug use.

The researchers also accounted for risk factors that could increase the odds of a birth defect. In the study, there were about 25 birth defects for every 1,000 births that occurred for both groups of women. They then observed if birth defects were present when these mothers gave birth.