A 2023 study published in Frontiers in Endocrinology found that women using combined oral contraceptives exhibited reduced cortical thickness in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in fear processing and emotional regulation, compared to men and non-users. The study used MRI imaging and suggested potential deficits in emotion regulation during use, though effects appeared reversible after discontinuation.
Altering Risk Assessment
This finding has sparked discussion about how hormonal contraception might subtly alter risk-assessment. In Western societies, many women — particularly those influenced by progressive ideals — display reduced historical wariness toward outsiders, prominently signaled by “Refugees Welcome” signs all over the West. This ahistorical xenophilia contrasts with traditional patterns in which communities, especially women, exhibited caution toward foreigners due to potential threats. Critics argue that modern conditioning, including widespread birth-control use (affecting more than 150 million women globally), may contribute by dampening innate fear responses.
Extreme cases reinforce the hypothesis. Tragic outcomes have befallen young Western women embarking on backpacking trips through high-risk Third World areas. Examples include Scandinavian women (such as Louisa Vesterager Jespersen and Maren Ueland) raped and decapitated in Morocco, and Brenda Blainey in the U.K., who invited an Iranian migrant to come live with her in her home. He brutally murdered her. Consider also the case of Elisabeth Ross, who went to Greece to help migrants illegally cross into Europe. There she met an Afghan man, who murdered her and stuffed her in a suitcase. In Spain, left-wing activist Estibaliz Kortazar Errecatxo got off easier. After inviting an African asylum seeker to move in with her, he merely harassed her, changed the locks, and forced her out of her own property.
Shifting Behavior
This behavioral shift away from wisdom and environmental awareness invites comparison to biological manipulation by parasites. Toxoplasma gondii, which infects roughly one-third of humans, famously alters rodent behavior: Infected mice lose their instinctive fear of cats, becoming more exploratory and reckless, increasing predation risk to complete the parasite’s life cycle. The effect extends beyond cat-specific fear to general-anxiety reduction and risk-taking in some studies. Similarly, certain flatworms and tapeworms infect fish, impairing normal predator avoidance and causing them to swim into open water and behave more boldly, culminating in their deaths.
Birth control’s synthetic hormones mimic aspects of pregnancy (a state of relative immunosuppression and behavioral change), potentially producing analogous “fear-blunting” without the protective context of actual reproduction. Unlike acute parasite manipulation, any pill-related effects are subtler, multifactorial, and reversible, per current evidence.
These observations raise questions about unintended social consequences of mass hormonal intervention. The overlap between altered neurobiology, ideological xenophilia, and elevated personal risks merits rigorous, unbiased study. Evolutionary psychology suggests that fear of out-groups increases survival; overriding it artificially or culturally carries risks.
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