I was talking recently to a friend who is very skeptical of hormonal contraceptives even though her doctor has suggested she go on the pill.

Then I remembered this article I had seen on The Guardian last year and the ongoing debate about whether doctors have dismissed or not paid enough attention to birth control side effects, especially depression:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/03/pill-linked-depression-doctors-hormonal-contraceptives

I have never had any negative side effects from the pill myself, so I've always had a lot of trust of the pill and not thought too seriously about side effects. But I know a lot of women have had quite negative experiences with doctors ignoring their side effects or not taking their experience of the pill seriously.

The author in The Guardian article above argues in particular that doctors have systematically ignored women's negative side effects on the pill and this is one result of the medical establishment's reluctance to listen to women. The author argues that if these side effects were primarily affecting men, doctors would take them a lot more seriously.

I'm receptive to this argument but I also wonder if some people might take this argument to the extreme or ignore scientific evidence in favor of the pill's effectiveness and usefulness for a lot of women.

What do you all think?