Hundreds sue over contraceptive injections linked to deadly brain tumours

Simon Caldwell• May 30, 2025

Hundreds of women in America and the UK are planning legal action after a contraceptive jab left them at risk of developing potentially lethal brain tumours.

A study in France revealed last year that injections of medroxyprogesterone, marked under the brand name Depo-Provera, made if five times more likely for a woman to suffer from meningioma, a type of non-cancerous growth.

A lawsuit was launched last week in Florida by 400 American victims of the drug, with about 200 women in the UK also considering legal action against manufacturer Pfizer, according to the Daily Mail.

Virginia Buchanan of US law firm Levin Papantonio told the newspaper that the American lawsuit “will bring us closer to achieving justice for women who have never been warned about the increased risk of developing a brain tumour”.

In the UK, about 10,000 women receive an injection of the contraceptive every month, according to NHS data.

Although it is not cancerous, meningioma can cause severe injury or kill if it becomes sufficiently large to compress the brain and nerves.

The danger posed by the drug in October prompted the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the UK watchdog, to warn users of the risks to their health in patient information leaflets.

Simultaneously, Pfizer wrote to doctors to advise them to cease Depo-Provera injections in any patients diagnosed with meningioma.

The French study, conducted by the National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety, examined data on more than 18,000 women who had undergone surgery for meningioma between 2009 and 2018.

They found that the risk of developing the tumour was significantly higher among women who used Depo-Provera.

The discovery came just a year after researchers at the University of Oxford provided evidence to show that every type of hormonal contraception increases a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer.

Scientists have previously linked the combined contraceptive Pill – which is made up of oestrogen and progestogen – to a 20 per cent increase in developing the disease, while similar high rates have been identified in the coil and contraceptive implants.

According to the study, even the new generation of hormonal contraceptives can be just as dangerous.

A team analysed data from more than 9,000 women aged between 20 and 49 who developed invasive breast cancer and compared their lifestyles to 18,000 closely-matched women who did not develop the disease.

They found that women who had used the progestogen-only Pill, the newest generation of oral contraceptives, also increased their risk of developing breast cancer by 20 to 30 per cent.

Once women stopped taking the Pill, the risk of developing the disease progressively declined, according to findings published in the journal Plos Medicine.

In 2020 about 3.2 million women in England were using the combined Pill and a similar number were using the progestogen-only Pill.

Besides the Pill, studies around the world have also shown abortion to be a causal link in the development of breast cancer.

Scientists have said the cancer was caused by high levels of oestradiol, a hormone which stimulates breast growth during pregnancy. The effects of the hormone are minimised in women who take their pregnancy to full term but it remains at dangerous levels in those who abort.

There has been an 80 per cent increase in the rate of breast cancer since 1971, at the same time as the number of abortions rose from an annual 18,000 to well over 200,000 a year.

The Catholic Church has always forbidden the use of contraception, most notably in Humanae Vitae, the 1968 encyclical of Pope St Paul VI “on the regulation of birth”.

St Paul included an appeal to scientists in his encyclical to identify ways to help married couples to regulate their fertility without separating the procreative and unitive aspects of the conjugal act.

Since then, a variety of methods of natural family planning have been developed. None is contraceptive in its action but instead rely on accurately identifying the fertile days of a female reproductive cycle and abstaining from intercourse then to avoid pregnancy.

Such methods include the Billings Ovulation Method, which is free, environmentally-friendly, more effective than any contraceptive when used properly and devoid of all side effects and health risks.

Conversely, couples seeking to conceive a child can use the method to pinpoint the most suitable time to achieve a pregnancy. Click here to learn more.