The Pill

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The Pill

In 1968, a popular writer ranked the Pill's importance with the discovery of fire, among other things. Twenty-five years later, the Pill was still in the news, with The Economist, the leading British weekly, listing it as one of the seven wonders of the modern world. In the 1990s, over ten million women in the United States used oral contraceptives, "the Pill," as birth control. During the 1950s, Margaret Sanger, a nurse and feminist who championed birth control education and methods for women, played a pivotal role in finding research funding for the development of the birth control pill.

Shortly after chemist Carl Djerassi first synthesized the Pill, its widespread use helped to catalyze the "sexual revolution" of the 1960s, a time when people were exploring "free love"—sex with multiple partners, without traditional commitment. Because the Pill's accuracy rate in preventing pregnancy is almost 100 percent, it offered an opportunity, before AIDS, for people to be sexually adventurous without the fear of unplanned pregnancies. "The Pill's commercial availability in the early 1960s permitted women far greater reproductive choice, created a new set of ethical and religious questions, encouraged feminism, changed the dynamics of women's health care, and forever altered gender relations," asserted Elizabeth Siegel Watkins in On The Pill, A Social History of Oral Contraceptives, 1950-1970. The Pill liberated women's sexual views considerably, making them feel more in control of their bodies, as America was just coming out of the puritanical tyranny of the 1950s, when sex was still confined to the suburban, nuptial bed.

The 1960s was a landmark decade when America questioned conventional ideas about marriage, family, and sex. People continue to look on that period with nostalgia, whether they lived through it or not. The 1960s and 1970s combined student protests/the peace movement with the counterculture and oral contraceptives, to help create a climate where people felt freer about sex. Capitalism was challenged by such "new left" writers as Herbert Marcuse and William Riech, who argued that it demanded self-restraint and compulsive work, which were contrary to any liberated sexual expression. Sexuality was also becoming more political, and with the new freedom and ease that the Pill offered, relations between men and women, among other things, were starting to shift.

Introduced at a time of social reforms, such as the civil rights and gay and lesbian movements, and environmental and peace movements, the impact of the Pill is intertwined with these social changes. The social controversy surrounding the Pill stems from some critics asserting that the Pill encouraged promiscuity. Some analysts think the sexual mentality of the 1960s, which continued well after the decade, has caused devastating consequences for society. "It's woven its way into every single fabric of our society and has literally almost destroyed us," according to Dr. Joe McIlhaney, Jr., president of the National Institute for Sexual Health. In Kristine Vick's CBN report, "The Sexual Revolution Thirty Years Later," Dr. McIlhaney noted the abundance of sexually transmitted diseases (of which the Pill does not safeguard against), non-marital pregnancies, and abortions since the advent of the sexual revolution. Attitudes among the sexes were conflicted because although the Pill took the burden of unwanted pregnancy off women, it put the responsibility of contraception entirely on them. The sudden, widespread acceptance and use of the Pill caused men to often expect and assume that a woman would "go on the pill" when a couple began a sexual relationship. The Pill did make preventing pregnancy seem simple and easy, but it is not entirely innocuous, having various side effects ranging in severity, in addition to causing women to gamble with their hormone levels.

The Pill works by stopping ovaries from releasing an egg each month, making the mucus in the cervix thicker so it is harder for sperm to travel into it, and thinning the lining of the uterus, so it is more difficult for a fertilized egg to attach itself. It interferes with a woman's normal cycle of ovulation by creating a hormone imbalance (pills contain estrogen and progestin; progesterone blocks ovulation) that mimics pregnancy. Many women have no problems with it, but there are common, diminishing side effects—nausea, bloating, and changes in skin, are some. Although rare, there are more serious side effects, which include severe headaches, visual changes, blood clots and/or heart attacks. The Pill has been linked to cancer, in that it reduces the risk of ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer, but whether it causes breast cancer remained uncertain in the late 1990s. The Pill has changed the hormonal programming of women's bodies, has revolutionized birth control and sexual attitudes, and has continued to intrigue people at the end of the twentieth century.

—Sharon Yablon