Dr. Jennifer Lincoln is the TikTok-famous OB-GYN, educator and author providing “the health class you wish you had” to millions.
You may know—and love—Dr. Jennifer Lincoln already. If you are unfamiliar, she’s a board-certified OB-GYN and a famous content creator with 2.8 million followers on TikTok and large platforms on Instagram and YouTube. Dr. Lincoln is also a practicing OB-hospitalist who works in labor and delivery, night and day.
She makes content to dispel medical misinformation, a frequent tool of the patriarchy. As ‘MAHA’ influencers decry everything from birth control to Tylenol, at the expense of women, she’s pushing back with evidence-based, nuanced information.
On her online platforms, she’s covered topics ranging from abortion access to period pain, birth trauma, sexual pleasure, birth control and postpartum depression. She also regularly discusses the Trump administration’s devastating impact on women, immigrants and all vulnerable groups, outlining how irresponsible public policy translates into negative health outcomes.
After the Dobbs decision leaked in 2022, Dr. Lincoln founded Three for Freedom, an organization that gives people control over their reproductive future in all 50 states by mailing birth control, Plan B and abortion pills around the country to those who need them.
Additionally, she is the author of Let’s Talk About Down There, a shame-free guide to vaginal, sexual and reproductive health. Her second book, The Birth Book, will be published by Rodale Books in March of 2026. As the title suggests, this book answers questions about labor and delivery from her perspective as an OB-GYN in the field.
Like most Americans, I felt uninformed about sexual and reproductive health, even after my in-school health classes. In high school, I searched YouTube for information, where I found my way to Dr. Lincoln, who not only provided the health class I never had, but also ignited my interest in reproductive justice.
Without her influence, I likely would not have become a feminist writer at Ms.
Over Zoom, I had the privilege of chatting with Dr. Lincoln about her journey from OB-GYN to viral educator, how the post-Dobbs landscape has reshaped her work, and why she believes accurate, inclusive sex education is one of the most powerful tools we have for liberation. Our conversation spanned everything from social media strategy to Christian nationalism—and what it really means to fight misinformation with empathy.
Our discussion is below, lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Ava Blando: Starting your journey as a content creator, what was that like for you, and what inspired you to do that?
Dr. Jennifer Lincoln: I think I started back in 2018, using social media to break down simple topics. [My decision to create online content] came out of two things.
One was that I grew up before the internet—in the 1900s, as my kids like to say. I went to a Catholic school, an all-girls Catholic school. I mention that because we just did not get sex education. I went off to college on a hope and a prayer … and I missed a lot of education. That’s still happening, even with the internet.
The other reason I do it is, there’s so much misinformation [online]. And so, I wanted to make content that fills in those gaps. I started on Instagram, and then I begrudgingly went onto TikTok right before the pandemic, before it was everybody’s social media platform, because other doctors on social media were like, “Jen, your audience is here, like younger people.” And so I did that, and that went viral.
Blando: Tell me about your journey as a YouTuber.
Lincoln: YouTube is terrifying, and I put it off as long as possible… I did it because I wanted to go more in-depth on topics that I just couldn’t on a 30-second reel.
… It was the same thing, also, where I was seeing people with huge accounts peddling terrible misinformation. I was like, “We got to be there, too.”
… Out of all the social media platforms, YouTube actually seems dedicated to elevating and amplifying real voices that are experts in their individual fields. They have [the label] “Certified YouTube Health Creator.” I think that’s just really great for people like you, or somebody else, who’s looking for information … And you’re like, “Oh, this comes from a licensed medical provider.”
I see YouTube more as my pet project. I don’t care if it’s going to get only a few thousand views, I just know that when I look this up, there was nothing there, and I just want it to be there … I feel like it’s less about trends and more about, just, creating this library of information that may not exist, if you go to a school where it’s not taught, or your parents couldn’t teach you because they were never taught.
Blando: I read your article, ‘I Was Anti-Abortion, and Then I Began Performing Them,’ about your experience growing up Catholic and antiabortion, and then entering the medical field and realizing that you had been steeped in this culture that was misinforming you. Can you talk a little bit about that journey and what that was like, the stigma that you encountered, and how you’re trying to combat that now?
Lincoln: I’m glad that’s part of my story, because … I think it’s really powerful to see people change their minds. I want to share that story because I want people to know, it’s totally OK if you see my stuff and you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, what is she talking about, I will never support abortion,” but then you see that we can change.
When you’re in some of these schools, it really is abstinence only, and it’s really fear-based. So being children and being impressionable, we want to do well, we’re like, “Yes, if you have sex, you will die, you will get pregnant, you’ll get herpes, you will be left alone, and you will go straight to hell.” You internalize that.
And if you’re like me, and you’re Virgo rule follower, you’re like, “I will never do that.” And so what came with that was the like, “And anybody who does that is dirty and shameful and they deserve what they get.” Right? It’s very like, The Scarlet Letter.
I wrote a book report about how abortion was evil, in my all-girls high school. And, of course, I got an A, and I was so pleased.
… I went off to college, no idea what was going on, and then, lo and behold, I was like, “Wow, good people have sex. Good people might need birth control. I might be one of those people.” And then, I became one of those people.
If it wasn’t for my sorority sisters, and the local health clinic where I got birth control pills, I very well could have been somebody who needed an abortion, or whose life was derailed from an unintended, untimed pregnancy.
I was like, ‘Wow, good people have sex. Good people might need birth control. I might be one of those people.’ And then, I became one of those people.
… If you’re taught in a way that, really, is meant to coerce you, and it’s not factual and evidence based, and you’re told all these lies, then, of course, how can you expect people to understand? And then you mix in religion, shame, being a woman in America, it becomes very much a huge part of your identity. That can be hard to undo.
So, my goal is to try to counteract some of these lies that you’re taught at a very young age.
My parents were 19 and 20 when they had me, very young. I’m sure I was not planned, and I think they just raised me that way out of fear. You just assume that being super strict, taking your kid to church and sending them to these schools, that’s going to keep them safe. And we have, now, tons of data to show that this kind of education doesn’t work.
I only found out after I was out of college, in med school, my parents were like, “Oh, yeah, we actually didn’t believe any of that. We were just so scared that we’d mess you up. We just wanted to make sure that you stayed on the right path.” And I was like, “We would’ve saved a lot of time on those Sunday mornings if you’d just been like, hey, Jen. These are the things you should do, things you shouldn’t.”
Well, now this is what I do. I talk about sex every day. Ha!
Blando: Can you talk a little bit about the policy as of late and what impact that’s going to have, and is already having, on people’s reproductive health and also on OB-GYNs?
Lincoln: I think your readers will know, with the fall of Roe, so many states have banned or restricted abortion. I think that’s been well discussed. I think what’s important to keep in mind, now, is that this wasn’t an overnight thing. This was in the works, in the plans, and they’re not done yet.
I think what we really need to pay attention to more, now, is: as they work to dismantle the traditional healthcare system, which includes [cutting] funding for clinics that provide abortions, they’ve also been very smartly working to prop up other quote-unquote “clinics.” I’m talking about antiabortion crisis pregnancy centers.
They just want us to have more babies. So, they want to ban abortion.
You’d think, then, they’d be like, “Let’s use birth control!” Absolutely not.
There’s this whole movement now, against birth control, where there’s a ton of misinformation by a lot of MAHA influencers that it’s bad for you. They’re promoting Natural Family Planning, which in-and-of-itself is not a bad thing, but they’re doing it to teach you how to get pregnant, when they want you to get pregnant, and have lots of babies.
They want to make it harder to get certain birth control. We see this, as certain people are trying to categorize some birth control as abortifacients, like IUDs. Which of course, they’re not.
They’re trying to enforce the Comstock Act, which is this ‘zombie law’ saying that you can’t mail anything related to … abortion [or anything “obscene”]. So, that could be any sort of gynecologic tools. And if they decide, incorrectly, that birth control is included, is that then “obscene?” And, they’re trying to scale back, even further, sex education that’s already a hot mess in this country.
It’s not as dramatic as the fall of Roe, but it’s insidious. It’s well planned. And we have to be aware and try to protect these things as long as we can.
They’re trying to enforce the Comstock Act … It’s not as dramatic as the fall of Roe, but it’s insidious. It’s well planned.
When it comes to your second part of the question, about OB-GYNs, we’re seeing how they are leaving in droves in places like Idaho and Texas, because you don’t want to work where you can’t do your job, or you might be thrown in jail, or you’re afraid that you might be shot going to your clinic. It’s a real concern.
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the term “maternal care deserts,” but it’s counties where there’s no obstetric care, whether it’s an OB-GYN, midwife, birth center, labor and delivery. The number used to be, about 36 percent of all American counties are maternal care deserts. We know that will get worse.
Data I just saw the other day is that, now, 50 percent of American counties don’t have an OB-GYN. So they might have a midwife, which is great for low risk birth, but not great if you’ve got complications, or you need surgery. So, what we’re seeing is they want us to have more babies, but they’re making it hard to get that care safely. And the safest [time to have a child] is when you’re ready for it.
Blando: Would you say that this comes from growing Christian nationalism?
Lincoln: It’s all very Christian nationalist-based … It all goes back to Hester Prynne and the puritanical, patriarchal, purity culture way of, “How dare you spread your legs, until you’re married, and then you should all the time because you should have lots of babies. But you shouldn’t enjoy it because then that’s terrible.”
Some people are now saying the quiet out loud. Especially these “abortion abolitionists” who want people who have abortions to go to jail or themselves face the death penalty. Wrap your head around that…
But, we just assume abortion’s always been this controversial religious thing. Abortion was not always a big, politically divisive tool. It wasn’t until the Civil Rights Act, and Republicans saw that they couldn’t get people to the polls based on protecting segregation. And they went, “Oh, shit, what should we use now?” And abortion became sort of this, like, catalyst … It wasn’t always this big thing that a pastor talked about at a pulpit.
It’s become this divisive thing, even though, when you look at the actual polls, the majority, 80 percent of Americans, don’t want the government deciding these things. And that includes 62 percent of Republicans. So it’s not as divisive as we think. It’s just been marketed to us that way.
Blando: I’ve also seen that you’ve been doing a lot of work with Mayday Health and Three for Freedom, trying to get abortion pills to people. Can you talk a little bit about that fight back? How are people still getting the care that they need, and how are people getting it to them?
Lincoln: Mayday Health was an abortion-education nonprofit that launched a couple of days after [the fall of] Roe. I came on board as the executive director a couple of months later, did that for a year, had a lot of fun, really, with this idea of telling people that they can get abortion pills in all 50 states.
Also, doing these on-the-ground actions, with a way of absorbing legal risk, because we have a great legal team; we were able to put up banners, posters, stickers and fly planes to force people to have these conversations, even though they’re, you know, in a place like Florida or Texas.
Before that, I had started my own website, threeforfreedom.com, which was a similar thing, but showing people how to get mail order birth control pills, morning after pills and abortion pills. And I still run that website. I’m no longer the ED of Mayday Health, but I’m on their board.
The overall goal is just to show people that they can’t stop the mail …We’ve seen that hundreds of thousands of these prescriptions have gone out, because people are taking matters into their own hands, which is why attorneys general, people like Ken Paxton, are trying to go after these websites and these companies. Medication abortion is safe and effective. And people who are antiabortion hate that, because it’s hard to get in between somebody and their mail.
Medication abortion is safe and effective. And people who are antiabortion hate that, because it’s hard to get in between somebody and their mail.
That’s how we win: educating people, because once you’ve seen that sign, you’re like, “Oh, I know that even though I’m in Alabama, I can get that mailed to me.” They can’t undo that knowledge. The goal is to get everybody telling their own community.
Blando: What are some misconceptions or common misinformation about reproductive healthcare that you want to talk about?
Lincoln: I think a huge misconception, especially for parents, is that if you talk about it, kids will go out and hump everything that lives. And we’ve seen the complete opposite, which is that when you give comprehensive, medically accurate, culturally and age appropriate sex education, those kids have sex later.
And when they do it, they do it safer, as opposed to the kids that are told to “just pray or you’ll go straight to hell.” So talking about it doesn’t make them do it. And it makes them more likely that they’re going to talk to you, if they have issues.
When you give comprehensive, medically accurate, culturally and age appropriate sex education, those kids have sex later.
I think the other big thing is, there’s so much misinformation about birth control.
There’s this idea that if you use it, you’re going to become infertile; you’re going to get cancer; it’s going to make you depressed, gain weight, make your boyfriend break up with you, like, so many things. Birth control is a tool. So it’s not perfect. It’s going to be good for somebody, or not for somebody else. And there’s lots of different kinds. So it’s not a one-size-fits-all, but it’s not all good or all bad.
And, it can be lifesaving for people who need it, either to prevent pregnancy, stop hemorrhaging, treating premenstrual dysphoric disorder. It even decreases cancer risks, far more than it causes any cancer. I just think we never see those conversations, because what gets out there is abysmal.
I also think people, students especially, are never taught that it’s not supposed to hurt. You know, many people take the lens of, “Sex is painful.” … We never talk about how to speak up if it does hurt, or if it’s not pleasurable.
You see so many women in our office who are like, “I didn’t know that wasn’t supposed to hurt,” or “I didn’t know I was allowed to say I need this,” or “I’m having trouble with lubrication.” If we don’t give women, especially, the tools to speak up, then they’re going to suffer in silence for years.
It’s sad, because when they finally do speak up, they put it together, like, “It didn’t always have to be like this.”
If we don’t give women, especially, the tools to speak up, then they’re going to suffer in silence for years.
What I love about your generation, people are talking about sex. They’re talking about their periods, that’s another huge one.
We don’t, in sex education, say that periods shouldn’t hurt. I get so many people who yell at me, online, when I say that. They’re like, “Of course it should!” I’m like, no! Common does not mean normal, and we can make it better.
So, the fact that your generation is talking about, “It’s the first day of my period,” I’m like, thank you, because nobody was doing that for us … There is hope out there.
Blando: On your platforms, you talk in a very intersectional way. I’ve seen you highlighting trans-inclusive healthcare, immigration. Can you talk a little bit about why that feels important?
Lincoln: Honestly, I feel like social media has taught me so much. I started to see other people who used [trans-]inclusive terms. When I first heard it at a conference, I was like, “What is that?” Like, “That is not how I was taught.” And I pushed back.
… And then you see it. “Oh, I get it now!” So, I feel like seeing how other people do this, and then incorporating it, and then hopefully being that [teacher] for other people, it just felt natural.
And I really learned a lot from people who were active in abortion, even before Roe, that you can’t just be a one-issue person. If you think abortion is bad here, what do you think it’s like for somebody who is in El Salvador and is 14, or somebody who is undocumented in our country now, and is too afraid to go to the hospital?
… [During Hurricane Katrina] I remember just thinking about those people who were abandoned, who couldn’t get out, and who had pregnancy complications or couldn’t get access to healthcare. I was in Texas during that time, doing my OB rotation, and seeing so many people.
I saw what happens when you’re not ready to have a baby, or you don’t have healthcare. I was like, oh my gosh, I want to be an OB-GYN for sure. And I definitely want to be trained in abortions, because people need this care…
It’s all the same. I really think that the canaries in the coal mine are always the teenagers, and all the groups that you listed, because if they have a barrier to an abortion, or to getting a pap smear or a vaccine, that’s the real problem.
Like, great, if [someone] like me can figure out the system, but do *they* know how to get pills? Do *they* know how to get care? … They need to be our barometer for who we’re reaching, because if we reach them, we reach everybody else.
For continued reading, see Dr. Lincoln’s piece for Ms., “Americans Deserve Better Than Abortion Pill Misinformation.”
Great Job Ava Blando & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.