A newly released study by the Birth Control Trust in London found an announcement on the risks of certain oral contraception was "unnecessarily alarmist" and caused "a needless panic."

When a study by the United Kingdom's Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM) revealed a slight increase in risk of blood clotting for women using "third generation" brand oral contraceptives in the fall of 1995, the CSM issued an alert saying that the risk for those using these pills had increased "two-fold," without verifying the data. In fact, further research confirmed that the increased risk was "extremely small" and only half of the risk faced by women who are pregnant or post-partum.

While many news reports create alarm among Pill users, a new Oxford University project involving more than 200 scientists and analyzing 54 studies concludes that women taking birth control pills do not face an increased risk of getting breast cancer. Women face no increased risk of breast cancer ten or more years after stopping the Pill. And while women currently on the Pill show a slight increase in breast cancer, this was probably a result of more frequent and thorough exams leading to early diagnosis, according to the project.

Despite the Pill's safety record, scares about the Pill's risk have serious consequences. Because of the CSM alert, unwanted pregnancies and abortions increased. According to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, 60 percent of the women receiving abortions between December 1995 and February 1996 said they had stopped taking their pills. In Germany, approximately seven percent quit taking their oral contraceptives. Pill use in Norway dropped by 8%, and abortions increased 8 percent in January and February 1996. Investigations in Finland show that in the last half of 1995, pill sales fell 14-18 percent.

Long term effects of the scare include widespread misinformation about the risks of oral contraceptives, distrust of the medical profession, legal apprehension on behalf of doctors when prescribing oral contraception, and the resurfacing of questions about oral contraception in general.