Breaking Up with Birth Control: Why Women Are Staging a Reproductive Rebellion

By Clare Murphy and Rosie McNee

An essential resource for women navigating their own reproductive healthcare and making decisions as active participants with fully informed consent

Women are staging a reproductive rebellion. For decades, public health has organised reproduction around a simple premise: women should prevent pregnancy with effective contraception unless deemed "fit" for motherhood - and treat abortion as exceptional failure. That settlement is now unravelling. Pill use is declining sharply; abortion rates are at record highs. TikTok misinformation, inadequate sex-ed and overstretched contraceptive services are widely blamed.

This book argues that diagnosis is wrong.

As sexual norms and relationships shift and technology transforms reproductive timelines - allowing pregnancy to be detected days before a missed period and ended safely at home - women's tolerance for the Pill's side effects, and for being the default managers of sexual risk is diminishing. This book explores why the revolt began - and what a revolution might look like

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1447379314
• ISBN13: 9781447379317
• Release Date: January 2027
• Publisher: Policy Press
• Length: 256 Pages