America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation Read Free

most girls my age. Dinner-table conversa- tion often revolved around my father’s work as a clinical re- searcher testing the pill in his private practice, or my mother’s efforts to establish birth control clinics in Los Angeles where the pill was offered free of charge and my father served as medical director. I remember the press swarming around my father’s office, and I watched when he was interviewed. Would the pill make women promiscuous? No, he insisted. Like most of the pill’s advocates, he disapproved of premarital sex and

    believed that single women who engaged in sex would do so with or without the pill. But he hoped the pill would prevent unwanted pregnancy.
    I tagged along to medical meetings where the pill was a hot topic. I remember debates and controversies about side effects and risks, and my father’s frustration at the lack of a perfect control group to compare the health of pill-taking and non- pill-taking women over a long period of time. People I knew as my father’s friends and colleagues I would later read about as birth control pill pioneers.
    I was also a “human guinea pig” for the pill. In the early 1970s, after I was married, I asked my father what pill I should take. He suggested that I join the clinical trial of a low-dose pill being tested at the time. I dutifully showed up for the fre- quent medical checkups and lab tests required of study partic- ipants. My medical records are among the thousands used to document the safety and effectiveness of the low-dose pill.
    Although I knew my father was involved in research on the pill, until I began working on this book I had no idea that he played a key role in the FDA approval process. As I read recent work by scholars in the field of medical history, I discovered that my father’s caution and uncertainty about the safety of the pill delayed its approval, to the annoyance and consternation of the oral contraceptive pioneers John Rock and Gregory Pin- cus. The FDA refused to approve the pill for market until my father gave the green light. Prompted to write this book be- cause the fiftieth anniversary of the pill’s approval was ap- proaching, I was astonished to find my father at the center of that momentous event. 5

    So while my interest in the pill predates my life as a histo- rian, I now understand the events that swirled around me in a new way. This study of the pill also dovetails with my long in- terest in women’s history, particularly the relationship between private life and public policies. Questions of politics, gender, sexuality, fertility, and reproduction have all been central to my work—and are all central to the history of the pill. As the fifti- eth anniversary of the pill’s FDA approval approached, I de- cided to investigate its impact on our lives and our world.
    I wish I had been able to interview my parents for this proj- ect, to gain their wisdom and insights, hear their stories, and have them read and comment on my drafts. But they are no longer with us, so the best I can do is to dedicate this book to their memory, with gratitude for the work they did on behalf of women’s reproductive freedom.

    1
    Mothers of Invention

    You wined me and dined me When I was your girl Promised if I’d be your wife You’d show me the world
    But all I’ve seen of this old world Is a bed and a doctor bill
    I’m tearin’ down your brooder house ’Cause now I’ve got the pill
    All these years I’ve stayed at home While you had all your fun
    And every year that’s gone by Another baby’s come
    There’s a-gonna be some changes made Right here on nursery hill
    You’ve set this chicken your last time ’Cause now I’ve got the pill
    This old maternity dress I’ve got Is goin’ in the garbage
    The clothes I’m wearin’ from now on

    Won’t take up so much yardage
    Miniskirts, hot pants, and a few little fancy frills Yeah I’m makin’ up for all those years
    Since I’ve got the pill
    I’m tired of all your