IN her new, trailblazing documentary, Davina McCall was not just concerned with the health of women but also their right to have sex for fun.
For the presenter, it’s at the heart of the one-off documentary, Pill Revolution, which sees her look at the difficult topic of pregnancy and contraception.
Davina, 55, believes the simple idea that women should enjoy carefree, safe sex if they want to is now under threat . . . and she is not about to take it lying down.
She said: “Enjoyment of sex for women is ridiculously taboo. That’s super-depressing and we have to be very, very careful that we don’t go down the American route where we are more and more marginalised as sexual beings.
“Denying us access to contraception is a really huge part of that.
“I mean, the idea that it’s now harder to access contraception than it was ten or 20 years ago is obscene.”
She adds: “Why should we compromise our quality of life to prevent pregnancy?”
The discussion is very personal for Davina. In the documentary, which airs tomorrow night on Channel 4, she says: “I went on the Pill when I was 15. I was madly in love with my first love.
“I said to my dad, ‘I’d quite like to go on the Pill’, and he said, ‘Well, wait until you’re 16’.
“And I thought, ‘I know what’s going to happen, I’m not going to wait until I’m 16’.
“I thought it was quite a grown-up attitude to take. So I took myself off to a sexual health clinic and they were very nice and very kind, and they suggested a Pill and I took it.
“But my life was quite chaotic and emotional at the time — as it is for many teenagers — and it’s very hard to say how much of a part the Pill played in that. I’ve got no idea.”
Fast forward a few decades and Davina is now a mother of three, to Holly, 21, Tilly, 19, and 16-year-old son Chester. But the same concerns have come to the fore.
Davina said: “Both my daughters took the Pill and one of them got on absolutely fine with it, but the younger one had a terrible time in sixth form with her mental health and she’s often wondered whether the Pill contributed to that.
“Mood changes are widely recognised as a potential side-effect of hormonal contraception, but when it comes to depression or anxiety the research is limited.”
The show looks at how contraception can cause a vast array of side-effects, ranging from depression and pain to blood clots and even an increased risk of cancers for some people.
Research in the area is lacking and centres administering contraception are closing.
Meanwhile, many of the drugs and devices are still being handed out without making users fully aware of the known risks.
Though the overriding message of the show is that taking contraception is usually better than risking an unwanted pregnancy, that can have an array of implications.
It is just a question of which contraception is best for the individual.
In the making of the show, Davina looked at some of the lies being spread on TikTok, which is where a quarter of young adults get their news from.
Some people were seen saying that contraception destroyed the brain, that it made users less attractive and could even see them give birth to children with conditions such as ADHD.
Davina said: “It is terrifying, these messages. We all know that we get served a load of old tosh on social media sometimes.
“As a woman in her mid-life, I do feel like I know how to get online and research something.
“If I see a fact and think, ‘I’m not sure that’s true’ I can go online and search for an hour and find the information I need.
“But someone who is 15 or 16 and possibly thinking about contraception, I’m not sure they would know how to do that.”
There are 40 different types of contraceptive Pill on the market, but Davina discovered that doctors were often still prescribing the same type they handed out four decades ago when she was teenager.
Use of the Pill is dropping and abortions, particularly among older women, are rising.
As part of the documentary, Channel 4 carried out a survey of 4,000 women and found that 77 per cent of contraceptive Pill users said they experienced side-effects while taking it, while 33 per cent of those no longer taking the Pill said they stopped taking it due to the side-effects.
Only 16 per cent said they experienced no side-effects on the Pill.
There are also ten different devices women can use as alternatives to the Pill, one of which — the Mirena implant — Davina discovered she preferred.
She is even seen in the documentary having one fitted.
But the programme revealed how a lack of funding and staff was a huge problem, and women were getting pregnant in the time they were waiting to have coils fitted.
Figures show that 45 per cent of UK pregnancies are unplanned and a quarter of those end in abortions.
So the scale of the problem is huge.
Davina did discover reasons to be hopeful, however.
The Government is investing more in women’s health and there are now new research projects analysing the effectiveness of contraceptives.
Plus there are organisations including The Lowdown — an online service where women can discuss and gain advice on contraception — that are exploding many of the myths and fears.
Overall, Davina hopes the documentary will cement in women’s minds the idea that, when it comes to contraceptives, they have options.
It was even an education for her.
She said: “What I saw on this documentary that gave me so much hope is how many women there are out there who have had enough and are trying to forge forward with advancements in women’s health.
“I was under the belief that there weren’t that many options, and I didn’t understand how it all worked, and I didn’t know where to find out how it worked.
“But you can educate yourself to make an informed decision about your body.”
