There was an AP article in the Boston Daily Worker* today about the fiftieth anniversary of the introduction of "the Pill". That's not an insignificant milestone, and all of us ought to take note of it. Fifty years of smaller families - and shorter marriages. Fifty years of women "taking control" - and dying early or suffering horribly from breast cancer. Fifty years of being free to "act like men" - and wondering why men don't treat them like ladies any more.
The author of this article, however, seems to think that it's all good. Let's take a look:
America’s favorite birth control method reaches its 50th year
US spends $3.5m on ‘the pill,’ in dozens of brands
By Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press
May 8, 2010
CHICAGO — A world without “the pill’’ is unimaginable to many young women who now use it to treat acne, skip periods, improve mood, and, of course, prevent pregnancy. They might be surprised to learn that US officials announcing approval of the world’s first oral contraceptive were uncomfortable. Of course they'd be surprised - the MSM has been the captain of the cheerleading squad for the 'sexual revolution' - why would they bother to tell the other side of the story?
“Our own ideas of morality had nothing to do with the case,’’ said John Harvey of the Food and Drug Administration in 1960. Because... morality is subjective?
The pill was safe, in other words. Don’t blame us if you think it’s wicked. "Safe" is not the opposite of "wicked" - this is a sort of straw man. Is the author not demonstrably sympathizing with the proponents of 'the Pill'? And do you suppose the AP - or the Boston Daily Worker - will tell us WHY anyone might think this novelty was "wicked"?
Tomorrow, Mother’s Day, is the 50th anniversary of that provocative announcement that introduced to the world what is now widely acknowledged as one of the most important inventions of the last century. The mind boggles - is the irony of 'Mother's Day' completely lost on Miz Johnson?
The world has changed, but it’s debatable what part the birth control pill played. Debatable? Perhaps for one who is used to believing what she reads in the pages of The New York Times...
Some specialists think it gets too much credit or blame for the sexual revolution. After all, sex outside marriage wasn’t new in 1960. 1.) And some "specialists" think that the Nazis got a raw deal at Nuremburg. Bravo sierra. 2.) Who could possibly think that a product that dramatically altered the rules of Nature and seemingly nullified the consequences of illicit sexual intercourse might lead to a dramatic increase of that sort of behavior.
The pill definitely changed sex, though, (she is forced to admit it) giving women more control over their fertility than they had ever had before (not quite - the option of keeping ones legs closed has always been effective) and permanently putting doctors — who previously didn’t see contraceptives as part of their job — in the birth control picture. Strange, this; but again Miz Johnson misses the irony - these days a doctor can lose his job for refusing to prescribe perhaps the only pharmaceutical which "treats" a normal, healthy organic bodily process by disabling it.
But some things haven’t changed. Now as then, a male birth control pill is still on the drawing board. Why not - at $3.5M per annum for 'the Pill' there's got to be a market for this.
“There’s a joke in this field that a male pill is always five to seven years away from the market, and that’s what people have been saying since 1960,’’ said Andrea Tone, a history professor at Montreal’s McGill University and author of “Devices and Desires: A History of Contraception in America.’’ And this is funny... why? Perhaps a 'news' article by a 'news service' published in a 'newspaper' would consider explaining the history of the attempt to develop a male version of this wondrous pill.
The pill is America’s favorite form of reversible (except for the irreversible consequences) birth control. (Sterilization is the leader overall.) Nearly a third of women who want to prevent unwanted pregnancies use it. “In 2008, Americans spent more than $3.5 billion on birth control pills,’’ Tone said, “and we’ve gone from the one pill to 40 different brands.’’
There are Yaz (I cringe every time I hear this. I hope Carl Yastrzemski sues them for every cent they've ever made), Yasmin, Seasonale, Seasonique, and Lybrel — all with slightly different packaging, formulations, and selling points.
In the 1960s, anthropologist Ashley Montagu thought the birth control pill was as important as the discovery of fire. Turns out it wasn’t the answer to overpopulation, war, and poverty, as some of its early advocates had hoped. Nor did it universally save marriages. The four big lies we heard over and over again about 'the Pill' - do you supose there will be anything forthcoming about those who opposed 'the Pill', or their predictions?
“Married couples could have happier sex with more freedom and less fear. The divorce rate might go down and there would be no more unwanted pregnancies,’’ said Elaine Tyler May, 62, a University of Minnesota history professor who wrote “America and the Pill. Married couples might be having "happier sex" but not with each other - the divorce rate has increased nearly TENFOLD. As for "unwanted pregnancies", the failure rate of artificial birth control was a primary argument in favor of legalized abortion, of which we have over a million a year.
“None of those things happened, not the optimistic hopes or the pessimistic fears of sexual anarchy,’’ she said. Huh? Nice of her to admit that the 'experts' were wrong, but insofar as the "pessimist[s]" predicted "sexual anarchy", isn't that what we have now?
And it didn’t eliminate all unwanted pregnancies either. Nearly half of all pregnancies to US women are unintended and nearly half of those end in abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which has gathered data on abortions for years. Quelle surprise.
The pill is often associated with the women’s movement of the 1970s. Because it IS associated with it. That's like saying that Babe Ruth is often associated with baseball!
But the two feminists behind the pill, the ones who provided the intellectual spark (like Hitler provided the "intellectual spark" for The Holocaust?) and the financial backing, were born a century earlier, in the 1870s.
As suffragists worked for the vote, renowned birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger distributed pamphlets with contraceptive advice and dreamed of a magic pill to prevent pregnancy. It is amazing to me that Margaret Sanger is still uncritically held up as a paragon of virtue - personally she was a libertine, and her "Birth Control League" was a eugenicist organization seeking to limit childbirth amongst the "inferior" races, e.g. blacks. (Her sentiment, not mine!)
Katharine McCormick, a philanthropist with a science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ("science" automatically = good) bankrolled the work of Gregory Pincus, the man Sanger convinced to develop the pill. “It was my grandmother’s idea and Katharine McCormick’s money,’’ Alex Sanger said, now chairman of the International Planned Parenthood Council. And we all lived happily ever after. What this article omits is mind-blowing, it just goes to show that media bias need not consist of slanted assertions or opinion masquerading as news, omission can be just as powerful.
*In fairness, its publishers refer to it as "The Boston Globe". What, exactly, would be different about its content and positions if it were published by the Communist Party I cannot discern.
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