America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation (23 page)

CHAPTER 7

1. Susan G, 26; Carol O, 29. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes in this chapter are from respondents to the Internet survey. Notes in- clude information provided by the respondents.
   

2. Anne S, 21, married, bisexual, ex-military, living below poverty line.
   

3. Alice Z, 30, married, white straight. She and her sisters are first- generation college attendees and first-generation birth control pill users. Atheist, Democrat. From a poor, working-class, fundamental- ist Christian, small-town family. “My parents are still together but miserable.”
   

4. Elizabeth M, 23.
   

5. Martha L.
   

6. Kelly R.
   

7. Jessica P, age 38, married, nonmonogamous, bisexual, a lawyer.
   

8. The call for stories was circulated on e-mail to numerous people who also sent it to others; it was also posted on feministing.com and linked to other sites. There were no survey questions, simply a call for people to respond with their thoughts and experiences. Although most of the respondents are women under age 40, some older women and a few men also responded. The respondents came from a wide range of racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, marital status, and sexual orientations.
   

9. Melissa G.
   

10. Samantha J, 23.
    

11. Jessica P, age 38, married, nonmonogamous, bisexual, lawyer.
    

12. Karen E, 21, bisexual, living with boyfriend for 3 yrs.
    

13. http://www.thepill.com/thepill/shared/pi/Tri-Cyclen_Lo_PI
    

    .pdf#zoom=100, accessed 1/1/09.
    

14. http://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/birth-control-pill, ac- cessed 1/1/09; http://kidshealth.org/teen/sexual_health/contraceptio
    n/ contraception_birth.html, accessed 1/1/09.
    

15. http://www.epigee.org/guide/pill_sex.html, accessed 1/1/09.
    

16. Mandy B.
    

17. Helen P, 20.
    

18. Valerie J, 24.
    

19. Barbara E, married.
    

20. Sally G, 27.
    

21. Caroline Tiger, “10 myths about the pill busted,” CNN Web site, March 13, 2007, http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEAL
    TH/03/13/ healthmag.pill/index.html.
    

22. Susan G, 26, chemical engineer, divorced, now living with her partner.
    

23. Katie M, 22, white, grad student, bisexual, single.
    

24. Jenny B, age 31, married, bisexual, began pill at 15, from a small town in north Florida.
    

25. Kristy H, 23.
    

26. Melissa B, 26.
    

27. Carrie R, 20, student, Canada.
    

28. Linda L, 27, white, pharmacy tech.
    

29. Erika B.
    

30. Carolyn P, 20.
    

31. Anita K, 25.
    

32. Julie D, 29.
    

33. Jane B, Melissa G, Carol O, 29.
    

34. Kristol R, 29.
    

35. As researcher Sheldon Segal explained regarding the placebo phase of the pill, “This schedule was not a medical requirement, but a marketing decision based on the belief that women consider men- struation as natural, and would be reluctant to use a product that stopped their periods.” With the newly formulated pills, “Finally, women will be freed from the control of marketers who decided that women want to have a pseudo-menstruation every month. They’ll be able to decide themselves.” Segal,
    Under the Banyan Tree
    , p. 78.
    

36. Robyn E, 22, Oxford, England.
    

37. Mary M, 23.
    

38. Linda O, 20.
    

39. Letty C, 27.
    

40. Jane D.
    

41. Natasha Singer, “A Birth Control Pill That Offered Too Much,”
    New York Times
    , Feb. 11, 2009, www.ny
    times.com/2009/ 02/11/business/11pill.html?_r=1&hp.
    

42. Lauren C, 23.
    

43. Renae J, 20.
    

44. Lucy T, Canadian, 20, student, single.
    

45. Regina H.
    

46. Marianne B.
    

47. Lorena A, age 20.
    

48. Lynn E, 34, librarian, white, married 7 years to first boyfriend, only sex partner.
    

49. Cassie K, 24.
    

50. Shelley H, 27.
    

51. Alissa A, age 28, married six years, liberal, college graduate, sexually active since age 18.
    

52. Sue G, 22.
    

53. Mandy B, 26.
    

54. Kendra H, 23.
    

55. Jacqueline G, writer and executive producer, married.
    

56. Rose H, 27.
    

57. Anita B, 26, graduate student.
    

58. “National Conference of State Legislators Pharmacist Con- science Clauses: Laws and Legislation,”
    www.ncsl.org/Default.aspx? TabId=14380, updated May 2009; Saundra Young, “White House set to reverse health care conscience clause,” www
    .cnn.com/2009/ POLITICS/02/27/conscience.rollback/index.html 2/27/09CNN.
    

59. Katie M, 22-year-old white graduate student from Indiana, nondenominational Christian, bisexual, single.
    

60. Krista A, 34, graduate student in medical science, married.
    

61. Amy K, age 25, Midwestern, married, feminist.
    

62. Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, “FDA to allow ‘morning-after’ pill for 17-year-olds,” Associated Press, April 23, 2009; baltimoresun.com 4/25/09, “The politics of Plan B: Our view: Morning-after pill for teens is safe, but no substitute for doctor’s care”; Marc Kaufman, “Nonprescription Sale Sought for Contraceptive; Petition to FDA to Offer ‘Morning After’ Pill Over the Counter Could Become Entan- gled in Abortion Debate,”
    Washington Post,
    April 21, p. A02; Susan Aschoff, “In Case of Emergency Break Glass: Birth Control Has Backup,”
    St. Petersburg Times
    (Florida), April 09, 2002, South Pinel- las Edition, p. 3D.
    

63. Krista A, 34, grad student in medical science, married.
    

64. Cathy P, 20.
    

CONCLUSION

1. “The Age of the Thing,”
   The Economist,
   December 25, 1993, Section Modern Wonders, p. 47 (U.K. Edition, p. 87).
   

2. Quote and data from Sheldon J. Segal,
   Under the Banyan Tree
   

   (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 77.
   

3. William D. Mosher, Ph.D.; Gladys M. Martinez, Ph.D.; Anjani Chandra, Ph.D.; Joyce C. Abma, Ph.D.; and Stephanie J. Wilson, Ph.D., Division of Vital Statistics, “Use of Contraception and Use of Family Planning Services in the United States: 1982–2002,”
   Advance Data From Vital and Health Statistics
   , Department of Health and Human Services, Number 350, December 10, 2004.
   

4. Judy G, 23, Internet survey respondent.
   

5. In 2002, 7 percent of single women whose partners used condoms also used the pill, although double protection was much less common among married women. See Mosher et al., “Use of Contraception.”
   

6. Boston Women’s Health Book Collective,
   Our Bodies, Ourselves
   

   (New York: Touchstone, 2005 edition), pp. 332, 347.
   

7. Andrea Tone,
   Devices and Desires
   (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), pp. 203, 233–236.
   

INDEX

Abortion

conscience clause, 163–164 conservative political agenda in

the US, 54–55

early use as birth control, 4, 15–16

Hefner’s support of, 61 illness and death, 17

leading to birth control use, 85

Playboy
’s criticism of the Catholic Church stance, 65–66

postwar difficulties in obtaining, 77–78 Abstinence-only education programs, 55, 150

Access, 162, 170

college women in the 1960s, 83–89

Comstock Law limiting, 16, 18–20

conscience clauses, 163–165

conservatives limiting, 16,

18–20, 55

developing countries, 37–38,

52–555

morning-after pill, 165–166
Playboy
’s stance on, 65–66 poor African American

women, 47–50

Acne, 156–157

African Americans contraception controversy

within the black community, 49–51

women’s concerns over family planning, 46–48

Age of pill users, 152–153 Agent U5897, 107

Aristophanes, 45

Asian governments, 51

Baby boom, 2–3, 74

Baraka, Amiri, 49

Barrier method, 4, 15, 146, 169.

See also
Condoms; Diaphragm

Barry, Marion, 138 Bayer Health Care

Pharmaceuticals, 157

Beal, Frances, 49–50

Beat generation, 59

Bender, Jonathan, 113 Birth control clinics

defying restrictive laws, 118 McCormick’s involvement in

Sanger’s, 22

men targeting, 50 proliferation in the US, 39–40 Sanger’s clinic, 18–19

Birth Control Federation of America.
See
Planned Parenthood Federation of America

Birth control movement, 18–20, 22, 38–39

Birth defects, 128

Birthrate, 15, 37

Births, out-of-wedlock, 77, 81–82

Bisexuality, 146–147

Black Power movement, 49 Boston Women’s Health Book

Collective (BWHBC), 134–136

Brautigan, Richard, 59–60
Brave New World
(Huxley), 23 Brody, Jane, 109–110

Brown, Helen Gurley, 61 Brown, Quentin, 114

Brown University, 87

Bucalo, Louis, 104–105 Buck, Pearl S., 71–72 Buckley, James, 54 Bush, George H. W., 54

Bush, George W., 54–55, 163–164

Buxton, C. Lee, 118

Cactus in the Snow
(film), 90 Cade, Toni, 49

Cairo Agenda, 54–55

Calderone, Mary, 69

Capitalism, 3

Cartoons, 63–64 Catholic Church

Hefner’s criticism of, 65–66 institutional stance on family

planning, 119–126 opposition to population

control, 41

pill use in spite of ban, 118 Rock’s tension with, 26–27,

122–123, 126

Chang, Min-Chueh, 24 China

male contraceptive development, 113–114

one-child-per-couple policy, 51 search for effective male

contraceptives, 96–97

Chisholm, Shirley, 50

Chou En-Lai, 96

The Christian Century,
121 Civil disobedience, 18 Clinical and informal trials

author’s involvement in, 8 male contraceptives, 112, 114 psychiatric patients’ forced

participation, 27–28, 95 Puerto Rican trials, 29–31

Clinton, Bill, 54 Coercion

drug trials, 27–28, 95 international birth control

policies, 51–52 Norplant use, unsuccessful

attempts, 137–139 College campuses, sexual

revolution on, 84–89

Communism, 37, 41–42

Comstock, Anthony, 16, 18

Comstock Law (1873), 16, 18–20

Condoms, 4, 100, 146, 150–151,

161

Conscience clauses, 163–165

Conservative views, 80–81 Contraceptive saturation

programs, 52 Contraceptive use

alternatives to the pill, 169 contemporary alternatives, 144 contraception as vice, 16 current figures on, 168–169 laws restricting, 118 nineteenth-century methods,

15–16

pre-pill alternatives, 4 women and teens’ failure to

use, 83–84

See also
Condoms; Diaphragm

Cosmopolitan
magazine, 61

Coviello, Andrea, 113 Crane, Frederick E., 19 Curtis, Lindsay R., 98–99

Dalkon Shield, 103, 131–132, 140 Dangers of the pill, 5–6

Dating customs, 75
David Susskind Show,
133 Davis, Hugh, 131–132

Dawes, Marvin, 49

D.C. Women’s Liberation, 132–133

Death

Dalkon Shield, 103, 131–132 equating the pill with, 59–60 side effects, 128

deFelice, Jose, 33 Demographics.
See
Statistical

information

Depo Provera, 136–137

Depression, 155 Developing world

access to birth control, 53–54 concerns about overpopulation,

45–46

male contraceptives, 106–107

Norplant, 137 personal and political

ambivalence over international birth control, 50–51

search for effective male contraceptives, 96–97

Diaphragm, 5, 22, 72–73, 77–78,

89–90

Dichter, Ernest, 62 Disease, contraception as

prevention and cure of, 19 Djerassi, Carl, 14, 24–25

The Doctors’ Case Against the Pill

(Seaman), 97, 130–132

Dosages, 130, 136, 168 “Dottie Makes an Honest

Woman of Herself” (McCarthy), 77–78

DuBois, W. E. B., 48

The Economist,
167 Education

abstinence-only programs, 55,

150

McCormick’s activism for, 21 Effectiveness of the pill, 1, 169

Ehrlich, Paul, 44

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 22, 43,

53, 119

Eisenstadt v. Baird,
118 Emergency contraception,

164–166

Emotional side effects, 154–155 Empowerment and emancipation

of women

birth control movement, 17 challenging religious and

political authority, 117–119

developing countries, 52 family harmony replacing, 20 impact of the pill over time,

143–146

male contraceptive, 97–98,

115–116

men’s concerns over Pincus’s research, 23–24

pill’s promise and success, 13–14, 168

political and personal mobilization of women, 170–171

Sanger’s belief in, 24–25, 40 separating contraception from

sexual intercourse, 57–58

sexual revolution, 72

threatening men, 5–6 women’s sexual responsibility,

157–159

Enovid, 5, 32–34, 95

Epigee Women’s Health, 147–148

Ericsson, Ronald, 111

Esquire
magazine, 101, 105–106 Ethics

conscience clauses, 163–164

involuntary testing, 27–28, 95 Norplant use in developing

countries, 137–138 teens and pill use, 154

Eugenics

choice and coercion in birth control, 48–49

global population control, 38–39

Oneida Perfectionists’ group marriage, 15

population explosion and, 37 racist tone of population

control, 47

Sanger’s involvement with, 19–21

Fahim, Mostafa S., 106–107 Family development, 3 Family planning

Catholic Church stance on, 120–126

conservatives’ attempts to underfund and undermine clinics, 55