A Reality Check for Reproductive Rights

In 2023, polling by Americans for Contraception found that the right to use birth control was resoundingly popular: 90% of Americans supported it. But most didn’t believe it could ever be taken away.

In fact, it could be. More than a dozen states have proposed legislation threatening access to birth control, often by reclassifying IUDs as “abortifacients.” The Heritage Foundation, heavily involved in staffing the Trump administration, has pushed for “returning the danger to sex” by curtailing access to birth control.

Americans for Contraception needed to make the urgency clear and inspire people to advocate for legislation to protect the right to birth control. They turned to Trilogy to do it.

Fighting Misinformation, Advancing Legislation

We knew TikTok and Instagram would be important avenues for educating people on threats to birth control. But it required solving a serious misinformation problem. 

All over social media, snake-oil salespeople and right-wing "pro-birthers" were spreading lies and trying to manipulate a generation of women into abandoning birth control. So we got to work on an innovative social search strategy, collaborating with creators on TikTok and Instagram to produce content with a lofty goal: outcompeting right-wing efforts to "own" certain keywords and phrases. 

We partnered with content creators who had spent years building trust with millennial and Gen Z audiences. Apolitical lifestyle creators like @blairwalnuts and Atiana De La Hoya helped validate the safety and effectiveness of birth control — not just for preventing pregnancy but also for managing health conditions like endometriosis and perimenopause. We brought men into the conversation, too, through creators like Tyson Wong and Brent Pella, and reached religious Americans through pastors, moms, and other trusted messengers.

While our creators helped take back the narrative about birth control on social media, Trilogy ran highly targeted texting campaigns in state legislative districts to protect the right to birth control in law. In Nevada, we drove thousands of constituents to send letters to their representatives in support of the Right to Contraception Act. Both Republican lawmakers we targeted joined Democrats in voting yes, sending the bipartisan bill to Governor Lombardo’s desk. We executed a similar strategy to build support for Virginia’s Right to Contraception Act. In both Nevada and Virginia, when the Republican governors vetoed these bipartisan bills, they were met with public outrage.

By early 2024, others in the reproductive rights space were seeing the effectiveness of our messaging. We organized coalitions and online joint actions to advocate for the national Right to Contraception Act, a bill to enshrine the right to birth control in federal law. Supporters sent more than 25,000 letters to congressional representatives through our joint action. Republican lawmakers defeated the bill, but we forced them to go on the record, revealing how out of step they were with the 90% of Americans who support birth control rights.

From #DitchThePill to “Pass This Bill”

Before Trilogy stepped in, misinformation about IUDs and the pill dominated conversations about birth control online. If a young woman searched for information about birth control on TikTok, most of the results included the hashtag #DitchThePill. 

Our social media program captured search traffic from keywords like “contraception,” “PCOS,” and “fibroids,” racking up more than 396,000 impressions across 32 posts in three months. Within six months, our content earned more than 2 million views, and the numbers continued to rise. Eventually, when our target demographics searched for "birth control," "contraception," “fertility,” “IVF,” and similar terms on TikTok and Instagram, our fact-based content dominated the results.

Our work put a spotlight on birth control rights as a political issue, too. In 2022, when 195 House Republicans voted against the Right to Contraception Act, virtually no one talked about it. By 2024, our creator campaigns, paid ads, joint actions, and texting campaigns had raised awareness that birth control really was under threat. It became a major issue in 2024 political campaigns, especially after Republicans blocked the Right to Contraception Act in the Senate. 

In 2025, the Public Affairs Council recognized Trilogy’s social search optimization work with an Innovation Award. And while birth control rights are still not protected in federal law, awareness of the issue has never been higher. If elected officials keep attacking our right to basic birth control, Americans are ready to hold them accountable.