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

crowin’ How you and your hens play
    While holdin’ a couple in my arms Another’s on the way
    This chicken’s done tore up her nest And I’m ready to make a deal
    And ya can’t afford to turn it down ’Cause you know I’ve got the pill This incubator is overused
    Because you’ve kept it filled The feelin’ good comes easy now Since I’ve got the pill
    It’s gettin’ dark it’s roostin’ time Tonight’s too good to be real
    Oh but daddy don’t you worry none ’Cause mama’s got the pill
    Oh daddy don’t you worry none ’Cause mama’s got the pill

Loretta Lynn
    The Pill , 1975 1

    C

    ountry singer Loretta Lynn’s rebellious anthem, the first popular tribute to the pill in music, tells the story of a woman whose dreams of marital bliss and adventure have been

    thwarted by constant childbearing. Resentful of her husband whose prenuptial promises went unfulfilled as she stayed home to tend to their brood, she declares her independence with sexy clothes and good times, thanks to the pill. But she does not abandon her mate. The last verse of the song hints at one of the pill’s initial promises: satisfying marital sex. She tells her man that without worries about pregnancy “the feelin’ good comes easy now” and invites him to a night of pleasure. She lets him know that the pill has positive benefits for him as well as for her: “Oh daddy don’t you worry none / ’Cause mama’s got the pill.”
    Loretta Lynn’s song articulates the hopes for liberation the pill promised to women. She sang to and for women who saw the pill as providing freedom from the fear of pregnancy and offering the opportunity to enjoy their sexuality with their chosen mates. Like the vast majority of women who took the pill, the song’s protagonist was married, and her dreams had been displaced by the birth of one baby after an- other. The pill offered her a chance once again to reach for her dreams.
    By the time Loretta Lynn belted out her hit song in 1975, the pill had been on the market for fifteen years and millions of women were taking oral contraceptives every day. As Lynn’s lyrics suggest, the story of the pill is a story about women. That fact may seem obvious to twenty-first-century readers. But when the pill first came on the market in 1960, few people imagined how powerful a force for women’s emancipation it would become. The scientists and medical researchers involved in the pill’s development hailed it as a miracle drug that would

    solve the global problem of overpopulation, thereby reducing poverty and human misery, especially in the developing world. They also saw the pill as the key to family planning, allowing couples to space their children, enjoy marital sex, and achieve domestic harmony. But women had other hopes for the pill, and it was their dreams that brought the pill to fruition and made it a powerful tool for change.
    The story of the pill is shrouded in myths and misconcep- tions, particularly as regards the central role women played in its development. The names most closely associated with the pill’s arrival are Carl Djerassi, who first discovered how to synthesize the hormone progesterone from Mexican yams; Gregory Pincus, the scientist who discovered how to use this synthetic progesterone, known as progestin, to inhibit ovula- tion; and John Rock, the physician who first tested the pill on human subjects and became its most visible champion. But these men did not initially set out to develop an oral contra- ceptive. Many of the developers of the pill were trying to find a cure for infertility, an effort that led them to contraceptive research.
    In spite of competing claims of paternity, there was no “Fa- ther of the Pill.” In fact, the pill had two mothers: birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger and the wealthy women’s rights ac- tivist Katharine McCormick. Both were in their seventies at the time they began their collaboration. As lifelong feminists, they had participated in