The Birth Control Pill's 50th Anniversary, From Three Generations of Women

Frances Tobin: Going On the Pill: An Empowering Moment for Young Women

When I was 16 years old, I took the advice of my fifth-grade teacher -- whose sex education class taught me all I needed to know about my body, its power and the personal responsibility and authority I had over it -- and asked my doctor for my first prescription of birth control pills. Though I wasn't yet sexually active, the prescription was something I had planned, for quite some time, to discuss with my family doctor, who had been treating me for as long as I could remember.

The Pill was -- and still is -- a symbol of personal empowerment. For me, at 16, the Pill was as important as getting my driver's license and buying my first car. The license, the junky car and the pill were all momentous steps in my young adulthood, epitomizing both freedom and responsibility -- and I craved both. I wanted the freedom to drive my parents crazy every time I jumped into my car and dashed away, but I also wanted the responsibility that was required to have my own car, to put gas in it and drive myself to and from school and work. Similarly, with the Pill, there was a particular feeling of freedom in knowing that when I did eventually have sex, I didn't have to depend on a guy for everything. At the same time, I knew what responsibilities the Pill carried with it: to be diligent in taking it and to still practice safe sex.

As I approach my 25^th birthday, I look back on the last nine years and think about how much of it would have been different if a kid were in the picture. I have lived my life as a woman who was not forced into motherhood simply because of biology and sexuality. Some girlfriends of mine have had children since high school and are raising beautiful families, and that's wonderful for them. It's a choice they've made, just as I've made one to ensure that my life is child-less (for now). Reproductive rights: They're a lovely thing.


I may have never known a world in which birth control was not a choice, but that doesn't mean I would dare take this power over my own body for granted. Though the Pill has dramatically changed our social and cultural landscape for the better, women's bodies are still very much a battleground. I can't speak for all women my age, but for those of us who rely on the pill and our reproductive rights to live by our own volition, the fight still very real. What gives me comfort is knowing that there is an entire generation of women whose work and activism are there to be built upon, and I plan on doing just that.

Here's to the next 50 years!


Joann M. Weiner: How the Pill Changed the Course of Women's History

Back in about 1976, my high school history teacher asked us which of the following inventions had had the bigger impact on society: the Pill, or the TV.

I had had no contact with the pill at that time but lots of TV time, so I was amazed that the Pill was even in contention. As with Delia Lloyd, who was surprised when her mother said that the birth control pill was the most important invention that had happened during her lifetime, the question puzzled me. Surely there are inventions --- the internet, Facebook, TV, or the credit default swap (that's a joke) --- that have had a greater impact on history than the birth control pill.

But many disagree with me, including The Economist magazine, which calls the Pill the 20^th century's greatest advance in science and technology. But, where's the proof? Let's look at the research.

The Pill was approved as an oral contraceptive on May 9, 1960 and within five years, 40 percent of married women under age 30 who used contraception were using the Pill. But, its influence really hit in the early 1970s when the "age of majority" was reduced to 18 years old. Young, single women could now get on the Pill, and within a couple years, 73 percent of all single women age 18 and 19 using contraception were using the pill.

These facts come from a 2002 study by Harvard economists, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, called "The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women's Career and Marriage Decisions" that shows the pill's incredible impact on women's lives.

It gave college-educated women the freedom to pursue advanced degrees in the professions. Before the Pill, a woman faced the risk of spending a lot of time studying for an advanced degree only to have to give it all up if she got pregnant and had to quit to take care of the baby. The Pill liberated her from this mental ball and chain and she scurried off to graduate school. The result: the number of female physicians tripled between 1970 and 2000, while the share of female lawyers and judges soared by 600 percent.

The Pill also made women less choosy about whether to have sex or not --- without the fear of getting pregnant, she could now have sex outside of marriage just as freely he could. This freedom allowed her to delay marriage. Although almost 50 percent of female college graduates born in 1950 were married by age 23, just 30 percent of those born in 1957 and who had free access to the Pill were married by age 23. The Pill also made it less likely a woman would get divorced. Goldin and Katz speculate that because women on the pill got married later, they took more time finding the right mate, and thus had a better quality of marriage than women who married at a younger age.

Economist Tim Harford showed another side of the Pill's benefits in his book, "The Logic of Life": The lifetime earnings of women who delayed marriage, which also meant they delayed having children, were ten percent higher for each year she waited to have her first child, which the Pill allowed her to do.

The Pill is not the sole factor in explaining women's expanded opportunities, but as the Harvard economists report, "a virtually foolproof, easy-to-use, and female-controlled contraceptive having low health risks, little pain, and few annoyances does appear to have been important in promoting real change in the economic status of woman."


Bonnie Erbé: The Pill at 50: Not All of Us Were So Thrilled by Its Advent

As a card-carrying member of the Woodstock generation, I did not imbue the Pill with game-changing qualities. Rather I saw it as part of the broad, blurry pastiche of the '60s and '70s that made the era so singular and special. There was peace, love, music, psychedelic drugs, communes and oh, yes, the Pill. We "loved the ones we were with" and plenty of them. But we gave credit for our sexual liberation not just to the pill but to the panoply of birth control options available to us.

While I had plenty of friends who used the Pill, I never actually did. I recall being alarmed by reports of possible health hazards from early high-dose versions of it. The alarm bell was sounded first by the 1969 book "The Doctor's Case Against the Pill" and again by Sen. Gaylord Nelson's (D-Wis.) congressional hearings on the Pill's safety. In 1970, the Food and Drug Administration was prompted by those hearings to order drug manufacturers to provide a nasty dose of information about possible risks and side effects with each prescription package of pills. Those warnings made a bigger impression on me than the fadvent of the Pill itself, scaring myself and many others off hormones for life. A little-known fact about the Pill is that these warnings were a first for any prescription drug and helped launch the consumer health movement.

One thing I never thought I'd live to see 50 years hence is today's high rate of unintended pregnancies, now running just below 50 percent nationwide. Among women 18-29 years old, a shocking seven in 10 pregnancies are unintended. That is the kind of problem I had thought the pill, the diaphragm, the IUD, et al., would have tossed on the junk heap of history by now. But the Pill is much more expensive now than when it first came on the market, as are other forms of birth control, so poor and uneducated women have limited access. That, my dear, is a full-fledged shame.