The Pill

I was going to let the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill go by without comment, but then it dawned on me how ironic it was that it fell on Mother’s Day. I’d have to dig into the old history books to confirm it, but I’m thinking that maybe it wasn’t a coincidence. Maybe, I’m thinking, it also fell on Mother’s Day 50 years ago, when it first became legal, and maybe there were political reasons for doing so. It’s hard to appreciate now just how different the environment was in 1960, and how truly radical, and controversial, The Pill was. Sure, we can kind of get a sense as to the magnitude of the development, at least on a personal level, by listening to Lorette Lynn’s, “The Pill,” but the fact that contraception was actually illegal in the U.S. for quite a long period of time isn’t something, I think, that most people realize. If you ever find yourself with a few extra minutes on your hands, check out the Comstock laws of 1873 and New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. It’s interesting stuff… Here’s the text of the Comstock law, named after family values crusader Anthony Comstock:

Be it enacted… That whoever, within the District of Columbia or any of the Territories of the United States…shall sell…or shall offer to sell, or to lend, or to give away, or in any manner to exhibit, or shall otherwise publish or offer to publish in any manner, or shall have in his possession, for any such purpose or purposes, an obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing or other representation, figure, or image on or of paper or other material, or any cast instrument, or other article of an immoral nature, or any drug or medicine, or any article whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale, or shall write or print, or cause to be written or printed, any card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind, stating when, where, how, or of whom, or by what means, any of the articles in this section…can be purchased or obtained, or shall manufacture, draw, or print, or in any wise make any of such articles, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof in any court of the United States…he shall be imprisoned at hard labor in the penitentiary for not less than six months nor more than five years for each offense, or fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars, with costs of court.

And this is probably a good time to remind folks that there are people in America today, including elected officials, that would like nothing more that to see contraception made illegal again.

On a happier note, however, I leave you with this comment by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the founding editor of Ms. Magazine, and founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus:

In 1962, when I was a 22-year-old Holly Golightly-wannabe living in Greenwich Village with my dog and my motor scooter, two events had a seismic effect on my life. Helen Gurley Brown wrote Sex and the Single Girl, and my doctor at the time (Shepard Aronson, who would become one of the first male members of the National Organization for Women) wrote me a prescription for The Pill.
Each in its way was transformative. Brown’s book, which was both frisky and practical, acknowledged what millions had known but denied — that nice girls “did it” and sometimes even enjoyed it, and that sex need not lead to marriage. In 1962, this was considered shocking.

The impact of The Pill was even more radical. It meant sex need not lead to pregnancy. But it wasn’t just another form of contraception, it was an equalizer, a liberator, and easy to take. For the first time in human history, a woman could control her sexuality and determine her readiness for reproduction by swallowing a pill smaller than an aspirin. Critics warned that The Pill would spawn generations of loose, immoral women; what it spawned was generations of empowered women who are better equipped to make rational choices about their lives.

And, yeah, I realize that I probably should have written about Elena Kagan and why she’s a bad choice to fill John Paul Stevens’ seat on the Supreme Court, but I got distracted by sex. Sorry. It happens to the best of us.