Why the Depo-Provera Lawsuit Is a Wake-Up Call for Women’s Health Research

If you’ve ever felt like women’s health is treated as an afterthought in medicine, you’re not imagining it. From the lack of research into endometriosis to the fact that women are still underrepresented in clinical trials, the gender health gap is alive and well. And now, an ongoing lawsuit against Pfizer over the injectable birth control Depo-Provera is reminding us (once again) how much we still don’t know about women’s bodies.

What the Depo-Provera brain tumor lawsuit says

In case you missed it, over a thousand women have filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. alleging that Depo-Provera, a birth control shot, caused them to develop a type of brain tumor called an intracranial meningioma. They argue that Pfizer (who make the Depo-Provera shot) failed to adequately warn consumers about the link between Depo-Provera and brain tumors.

Plaintiffs (numbering over 1,300 at the time of writing) say they used Depo-Provera for years, sometimes more than a decade, before developing these tumors, which often required surgery or caused neurological symptoms like vision loss or seizures. They argue that Pfizer knew or should've known about the risk, pointing to earlier studies and the fact that regulators in Europe and Canada added warnings years ago, while U.S. labels didn't.

Pfizer denies wrongdoing, maintaining that Depo-Provera is safe and effective when used as directed. The company says the evidence for a causal link is inconclusive and that it couldn’t legally update its U.S. label without FDA approval — an approval the agency reportedly declined in 2023 because it found the data insufficient. The legal debate now hinges on whether Pfizer can be held liable for not warning patients in the absence of an FDA-mandated label change, a question that could define how future drug-safety lawsuits unfold.

These claims come on the heels of growing evidence suggesting an association between long-term use of the injectable form of medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA) and an increased risk of intracranial meningiomas.

The first alarm bells rang in France, where national data showed a possible link between injected medroxyprogesterone acetate and brain tumors. More recently, a large 2024 U.S. study of over a million people found that women taking Depo-Provera had a 53% higher likelihood of developing meningiomas, with the risk rising the longer they were on the contraceptive injection. Interestingly, no such association was found for oral forms of medroxyprogesterone acetate. Researchers in Indonesia, where the Depo-Provera birth control is used widely, have also seen a dose-dependent relationship: the longer someone uses it, the greater their risk of developing meningiomas appears to be.

But behind all the legal language is a story we've heard many times, and usually falls on deaf ears: women who say they were never told this could happen, or were dismissed when they raised concerns about side effects. Many describe feeling betrayed by a system that told them the shot was “safe” but didn’t mention possible long-term risks. It’s another painful example of how women’s health has historically been under-researched and under-communicated, something the Depo-Provera case is now forcing into the public spotlight.

A lack of research in women's health

While all of this is definitely scary, it doesn’t mean taking Depo-Provera “causes” brain tumors. Meningioma tumors are relatively rare and usually benign, and the evidence we have so far is correlational, not causal. However, the lawsuit highlights something much bigger than one medication or one company: it underscores how poorly understood female hormones remain, and how easily women’s concerns are sidelined when it comes to their own health.

For decades, hormonal contraceptives have been prescribed as one-size-fits-all solutions. It’s undeniable that birth control has empowered women worldwide to make choices about their lives, bodies, and futures, but it’s also come with side effects that too often weren’t studied, explained, or even taken seriously. 

Depo-Provera, in particular, has long been controversial. Beyond the current brain tumor debate, it’s been linked to health complications such as bone loss, weight gain, mood changes, and menstrual irregularities. Yet, when many women reported issues, they were told it was “normal” or simply encouraged to stay on it a little longer.

That pattern — women being dismissed, told to “wait it out,” or reassured that it’s “just hormones” — is exactly what perpetuates both the gender health gap and misinformation and fearmongering about hormonal birth control. It’s not that these drugs were inherently “bad.” It’s that they were rolled out without the kind of long-term, women-centered research that could have given us better answers sooner. More importantly, the women who were offered these shots weren’t appropriately warned about the potential health risks.

It’s also worth noting that for many people, Depo-Provera has been a convenient and effective form of birth control. It doesn’t require remembering a daily pill, and for some, it’s the only method that works. This isn’t about demonizing hormonal contraception; it’s about transparency and choice. Women deserve to know what’s known, what’s still unknown, and to make decisions based on real data (not assumptions).

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, either. In the early 2000s, the pharmaceutical company Sanofi faced a lawsuit concerning its widely used sleep aid, Ambien. It was discovered that women were being prescribed the same dosage as men, even though the drug hadn't been adequately studied in women’s bodies. Women were waking up groggy, getting into car accidents, and being told it was their fault, until regulators finally admitted the problem and cut the recommended dose for women in half. It’s another example of how “standard” medical research often forgets that women aren’t just smaller men, and how those oversights can have real, lasting consequences.

Closing the gender health gap

This Depo-Provera lawsuit also couldn’t have come at a worse time. There’s already growing skepticism (if not outright hostility) around hormonal birth control, often amplified by right-wing groups eager to sow distrust in women’s healthcare. And in an era when the U.S. government is rolling back reproductive rights, limiting access to accurate information, and cutting federal funding for research, headlines like these can easily be manipulated. But this shouldn’t be a reason to turn away from science or distance ourselves from hormonal contraception — it should be a wake-up call to invest more in understanding it. The answer to decades of neglect isn’t less research; it’s better, deeper, and more inclusive research.

The fact that it’s taken decades to start piecing together the full picture of the Depo-Provera’s risks speaks volumes about where we’ve prioritized research dollars. Historically, the medical system has invested far less in understanding the female body. The result? Gaps in knowledge, delayed warnings, and generations of women made to feel like their side effects were a personal problem, not a scientific one.

It’s clear that this gap won’t close on its own. That’s why Evvy launched Equal Research Day, to draw attention to how far we still have to go when it comes to understanding women’s health. Stories like this one are reminders that progress depends on more inclusive, long-term research and on listening when women say something doesn’t feel right.