Talc Lawsuits and Birth Control Studies Renew Questions About Products Marketed to Women

Talcum powder litigation isn't a new story. It's been grinding through American courtrooms for close to a decade. But the verdicts keep landing, and they keep getting bigger.

A California jury recently awarded $966 million to a woman diagnosed with mesothelioma, a cancer that typically attacks the lining of the lungs, after her attorneys argued long-term use of talc-based baby powder was contaminated with asbestos, according to the New York Post. Mesothelioma is almost always linked to asbestos exposure.

The core allegation across thousands of these lawsuits: manufacturers knew about asbestos contamination in their talc products and didn't tell regulators or consumers. One major company set aside roughly $9 billion to handle the liability, according to the Post, and pulled its talc-based baby powder off shelves in the U.S. and Canada back in 2020.

Newer suits go further, alleging the company specifically marketed talcum powder to Black women for feminine hygiene use while internal documents showed awareness of ovarian cancer risk tied to that use. These are allegations made in litigation, not findings of fact from a court, and the company has fought them. But the sheer volume of cases and the size of recent verdicts suggest juries are finding the plaintiffs' evidence credible.

Some of the companies facing this liability have pursued bankruptcy-related legal strategies, a controversial tactic critics call the "Texas two-step," where a company splits off liabilities into a new entity that then files for bankruptcy protection. Courts have been skeptical of these maneuvers in several instances, and litigation continues in parallel.

The Birth Control Question

Separately, and on a different track entirely, there's renewed attention on injectable birth control, a method used by a substantial share of American women. According to the CDC, nearly 25% of sexually active women ages 15 to 49 have used a key injectable contraceptive at some point.

A 2024 analysis covering more than a million women found that those using the injectable for more than three years were three times more likely to develop meningiomas, tumors that form in the tissue surrounding the brain and spinal cord, according to the Post. Meningiomas are usually non-cancerous, but they can cause serious neurological problems depending on size and location, and some require surgery.

The biological mechanism isn't a mystery. Researchers have known since the early 1980s that meningiomas often carry progesterone receptors, meaning progesterone-based drugs can potentially fuel their growth. Injectable contraceptives work by releasing synthetic progestin. That connection has been in the medical literature for over four decades.

A fair question: if the biology has been understood since the 1980s, why did it take until 2024 for a large-scale study to quantify the tripled risk, and why isn't that risk more prominently disclosed to patients before they start a multi-year course of injections? This concerns how drug safety information reaches doctors and patients.

At the same time, meningioma remains a relatively rare outcome, and injectable contraceptives remain FDA-approved with labeling that includes risk information. No U.S. regulator has pulled the product from the market, and no lawsuits comparable in scale to the talc litigation have been reported in connection with the contraceptive research cited here. The comparison to talc is more about a pattern of delayed transparency than an equivalent legal or regulatory status.

What's Actually Provable Versus What's Alleged

The talc cases have produced hard numbers: a $9 billion liability reserve, a product pulled from two national markets, and now a $966 million jury verdict. Those are documented outcomes.

The claim that a company specifically targeted Black women with talc marketing while knowing the cancer risk is an allegation in ongoing litigation. It hasn't been proven in a final judgment covering that specific claim as of this writing, though internal company documents cited in the litigation are being used to support it.

The meningioma-injectable contraceptive link is supported by a large 2024 study, but it's an epidemiological association, not a claim that every long-term user will develop a tumor. Women considering or currently using injectable birth control should raise the specific data point—three years or more of use tripling meningioma risk—in a direct conversation with their doctor rather than relying on secondhand summaries.

What happens next in the talc litigation depends heavily on how appellate courts treat the bankruptcy-shielding strategies some manufacturers have used, a legal question still working its way through multiple jurisdictions. On the contraceptive front, the open question is whether the FDA or the drug's manufacturer updates patient-facing risk disclosures in light of the 2024 findings, something that hasn't happened as of now.