"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex•"The world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone." — Hans Rosling, Factfulness•"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body." — Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race•"The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world." — Paul Farmer•"I'm not an optimist. I'm a very serious possibilist." — Hans Rosling•"If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?" — Paul Farmer•"To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man." — Simone de Beauvoir• "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex•"The world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone." — Hans Rosling, Factfulness•"No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body." — Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race•"The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world." — Paul Farmer•"I'm not an optimist. I'm a very serious possibilist." — Hans Rosling•"If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?" — Paul Farmer•"To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man." — Simone de Beauvoir•
Issue 05 · February 2026 Biweekly · Health Intelligence
The Switch Stack
Where the numbers flip the narrative
Contraception & Resistance Special 4 Articles · AMR, Contraception & Abortion
#01 #02 #03 #04 #05 #06 #07
The Investigation

The Inconvenient Correlation: Birth Control, Antibiotics, and the Deaths We Don’t Count

14 min read

Antimicrobial resistance kills 1.27 million people every year. Unsafe abortion kills 39,000. Pharma abandoned antibiotics because Ozempic is more profitable. The countries with the best contraception access have the lowest AMR rates AND the lowest abortion rates. The countries that restrict contraception have more of both.

Read the full story →
Also in this issue
The Briefing

The Pill vs The Superbug

8 min read

AMR kills 1.27 million/year. Projected: 39 million by 2050. Pharma exited antibiotic R&D—Ozempic earns in 8 hours what a new antibiotic earns in a year. The same governance failures that restrict contraception drive antibiotic misuse. Netherlands vs. Romania: the data tells you everything.
The Data

Contraception, Resistance, Abortion: The Data Nobody Compares

5 min read

Side-by-side: countries with the best contraception access vs. those that restrict it. Abortion rates, AMR rates, maternal mortality, antibiotic consumption. The numbers don’t align with any political narrative. They tell their own story.
The Editorial

Decree 770

11 min read

In 1966, Romania banned abortion and contraception. Birth rates doubled. Then women started dying—10,000 from illegal abortions. 100,000 children warehoused in orphanages. Today Romania has Europe’s highest antibiotic consumption. The decree’s legacy is measured in superbugs.

About This Issue

All articles share the same fact-checked dataset. Key figures: AMR kills 1.27 million directly per year (2019), projected 39 million cumulative by 2050. 73 million abortions per year globally; rates are similar regardless of legality. 259 million women lack access to modern contraception. Countries with the best contraception access consistently show the lowest AMR rates—but the mechanism is institutional, not biological. See analysis.md for full verification.

Data Sources

Murray et al., Lancet (Jan 2022). GBD 2021 AMR Collaborators, Lancet (Sept 2024). WHO AMR Fact Sheet 2024. Guttmacher Institute. WHO Abortion Fact Sheet 2024. UNFPA. ECDC/EARS-Net. Kligman, “The Politics of Duplicity” (1998). O’Neill Review on AMR (2016).