Thanks to Cedar Lounge Revolution for putting this up.
May 9th this year marks the fiftieth non-birthday of the contraceptive pill. Licensed rather more swiftly than the unpleasant, sometimes dangerous side-effects of its high dose hormones would warrant, the Pill’s ability to prevent pregnancy seemed like a miracle for women and society. Introduced on the cusp of the sixties, oral contraceptives have been credited with not only the liberalization of sexual attitudes, but also accelerating women’s liberation. Time magazine has run a substantial piece by author Nancy Gibbs that gives a good analysis of the changes made by the legalization of the oral contraceptive. Gibbs is clear that the Pill was not the key to a new feminist consciousness, but was instrumental in altering women’s lives at a practical level that catalyzed pre-existent feminist movements. As historian Elaine Tyler May claims, “the revolutionary potential of the Pill could never have been achieved without the opportunities that came about because of women’s activism.” So the synthetic hormones helped, but the change in social attitudes, economic activity, reproduction and education had all begun long before Enovaid. Market forces also contributed to its creation, given the huge profit offered to pharmaceutical companies. But the Pill’s female supporters – Katherine McCormack and Margaret Sanger recognized that “birth control is the first important step [a woman] must take towards the goal of … [becoming] a man’s equal”. These were not utopian leftists: Sanger’s proposed eugenic uses for it show the political, as well as the economic, stakes of contraception. From its inception the Pill was about power, control, and access – contraceptive freedom and coercion.
In practice, the Pill did not become the dominant means of contraception for at least a decade, but its convenience and effectiveness altered women’s experience of both sexuality and reproduction. It allowed a degree of autonomy previously unobtainable without significant sacrifice. The capacity to delay or avoid pregnancy all together allowed women to take advantage of work and education more freely than at any time previously, as well as enjoying heterosexual sex without the crippling anxiety associated with unwanted childbirth. Economically it gave the individual and the family increased mobility and flexibility to work in the public sphere. Again the rise of women in the workplace was a post-war phenomenon, but one which was confirmed by the Pill’s innovation. Research suggests that contraceptive rights, neatly symbolized by the Pill, have been the most important innovation for women’s economic and social status, linked to increased investment in education, perceived well being and participation in civil society. What could be more empowering than assuming economic responsibility and equality (in theory at least) with men?
In the Republic, where access to the Pill is a relatively recent and hard-won right, its anniversary seems even more relevant. A recent article in the Irish Times generally celebrates the Pill’s effects on society, whilst introducing a note of caution over long-term use. Praising the Pill’s ability to give women a liberating responsibility over reproductive choices, the article notes the disparity between the Republic, where doctors prescribe it, and countries like France, where nurses and pharmacists can provide it. The double standard applied to women’s reproductive rights lingers on; as seen in the USA, where you are more likely to get Health Cover for Viagra than for the Pill. Despite the fact that in the south, and to a lesser extent in Northern Ireland, bureaucracy and medical constraints still apply, what the Pill represents has changed society irrevocably.
Of course the Pill is not instant feminist liberation: its commercial availability in countries such as Saudi Arabia coexists with profound gender inequality and oppression. Feminism too is increasingly suspicious of the Pill, with mistrust of its hormonal intervention in women’s bodies going as far back as The Female Eunuch. The success of oral contraception has not translated to an equivalent for men (May quotes one scientist explaining that “the psychological trauma of shrinking testes just cannot be overcome”; well indeed). Recent bourgeois feminism has been much given to lamenting the horrors of choice created by the Pill: the paralysis of when or whether to procreate, with whom, how many times, the internecine bitchery of working versus stay-at-home motherhood and sitting in judgment on the choices of working class women. It’s ironic that glib lifestyle politics threaten to overshadow an innovation capable of liberating working class women from economic and social marginalisation. Issues of contraceptive coercion often masquerade as moral responsibility, and attitudes toward the Pill crystallize many class conflicts as well as more obvious gender conflicts. In marking its 50th anniversary it would be salutary to reclaim the Pill not as part of a bourgeois “moral property” (as a former French Minister for Health described RU486) but as a means of empowering mass solidarity, economic freedom and equality.
