Hormonal contraception makes women less attractive and choose worse partners, says review paper

A few months ago, I said that hormonal contraception (the pill, Depo, etc.) messes up women's choice of mates because of results we knew that women choose differently and asked whether that's responsible for higher divorces in those couples. We still don't know that information, whether divorce is more likely among women who chose their partners using hormonal contraception.

But a review paper has come out solidifying that finding that women choose partners differently on hormonal contraception than off and adding that women are less attractive while they're taking it because it suppresses ovulation (during which women are more attractive to men).

That's another reason to add to the book that just came out saying that women ought to consider other methods besides the pill.

Hormonal contraception is a standard, and evidence probably won't change that, but there are other equally reliable methods of pregnancy prevention such as intrauterine contraception (IUC) that currently have miniscule proportions of women using them. I wonder whether we'll see even a slight shift.

(Conflict of interest disclosure: I have a very nice pen given to me by the company that makes an IUC device that I happen to have used this morning, but really that's not why I wrote that. This is just the first time I've ever had one of those legendary conflicts of interest.)