Photo: TikTok
Should you be placing your reproductive health in the hands of a man? She might help you answer that question...
By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Mar 30, 2023
A woman named Morgan Roos went on TikTok and recorded a video talking about how the switch from a male OB-GYN to a female one has affected her and her health.
During her appointment with her new, female OB-GYN, she found out that her old doctor had missed out on giving her key details about the birth control method that she had been using for the last 10 years, Depo Provera.
The female doctor said Depo Provera should never be taken for more than 2 years.
“So I just made the switch from a male doctor to a woman doctor, and while we’re in our appointment just now, I was like ‘hey, I need to get a renewal of my birth control, can you put that in for me?’” Roos asked.
She doesn’t mention it, but this is likely the first that Roos and her new doctor are speaking, so she’s trying to figure out everything about Roos and the medicines she’s been taking and your standard intake stuff.
Naturally, her new doctor asks her “yeah no problem, what birth control are you on?” Roos answers that she’s on Depo Provera, a well-known brand name for the contraceptive injection medroxyprogesterone acetate which contains the hormone progestin.
Immediately, Roos’s doctor looks at her, surprised, and asks her, “you’re on depo?” “‘Yeah I’ve been on it for the last 10 years, you know. I don’t get a period, that’s why I like it,’” Roos says in response, “and her jaw drops to the floor.”
“Did you say 10 years?!” her doctor asks, clearly in shock at what she was hearing. “‘Yeah, like a decade. Yes,’ and she’s like ‘holy s--t, no. Morgan, this is like a 2-year MAX birth control. This is not a long-term birth control [method].’”
According to the FDA, the Depo-Provera CI (Contraceptive Injection) “should not be used as a long-term birth control method (i.e., longer than 2 years) unless other birth control methods are considered inadequate.” Some of the long-term effects of continued use are weight gain, a higher risk of osteoporosis, and more.
Roos’s new doctor said that they were going to get her off of the Depo shot immediately, and even suggested that she should stay off of birth control completely just for a little while. “Let’s just get the hormones out of your body,” she told her.
Roos said that’s why she shouldn’t leave her reproductive health in the hands of a man.
“So of course, I go on Google and start googling what the long-term effects of being on Depo are, and I’m f--king, just stressing out,” Roos says. “That’s why I shouldn’t leave my f--king reproductive health in the hands of a negligent man.”
The caption on her video reads “Here come the ‘it’s your fault for not doing your research’ comments,” but many of the comments just showed their concern for her health.
One woman commented, sharing that her male OB-GYN said she could only take it for a year because he didn’t want her to risk osteoporosis. Another woman with a male gynecologist shared that she is now going on four years with the shot.
But others shared that even their female doctors have brushed off their concerns about Depo well after the 2-year mark suggested by the FDA.
According to a study from the American Journal of Medicine, “male doctors in the United States [are] three times more likely than women to have claims for malpractice made against them.”
The anecdotal evidence from the more than 30,000 comments on Roos’s video, however, suggests that doctors of any gender may be negligent or engaged in malpractice.
While we should be relying on healthcare professionals to know and account for these things for us, it never hurts to do your own research and speak up about any concerns you may have.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Keep up with his rants about current events on his Twitter.