Sexual revolution
“For as long as men and women have been making babies they’ve also been trying not to,” says Jonathan Eig in “The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution.” “The ancient Egyptians made vaginal plugs out of crocodile dung. Aristotle recommended cedar oil and frankincense as spermicides. Casanova” — devil that he was — “prescribed the use of half a lemon as a cervical cap.”
Despite this ingenuity, in 1800 the average white woman bore seven children. By 1900, that number would fall to 3.54 as mothers tried to take control over their sexual lives, despite laws banning contraception and even information related to it. Prohibition helped some. So did illegal abortions, which had became increasingly common. And yet for most women, sex still involved much scrambling, secrecy and pseudo-science — in a 1920 survey on contraception, the most popular form of birth control was found to be Lysol.
“The Birth of the Pill” tells the stories of four pioneers who tried to fix this by inventing a pill that would prevent pregnancy and that women could control. No more asking men to wear condoms. No more household cleaners. The plan’s mastermind was
Margaret Sanger, who devoted her life to promoting birth control. She was 71 in 1950 when she visited Gregory Pincus, a brilliant but down-andout scientist, to see if he thought it possible. Over the next decade, the pair would make it happen with the help of John Rock, a good-looking doctor (and progressive Catholic) who “sold” the pill to the public, and Katharine McCormick, a wealthy rebel who bankrolled the operation.
Aside from being a fascinating look into the evolution of medical practices, funding and ethics, “The Birth of the Pill” is an intricate portrait of how completely women’s reproductive lives are woven into our culture in disturbing and contradictory ways. In some respects, it is not surprising that the 1950s produced the pill. In 1948, Alfred Kinsey’s book “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” was a best-seller. According to Eig, “Kinsey’s most important finding was probably this one: Women desired sex, and not just to make babies. They masturbated, they enjoyed orgasms, and they slept around much the same as men did.”
And yet there remained a gulf between what people did in private and what they told friends, pastors and pollsters. Laws throughout the country — from those allowing marital rape to those prohibiting contraception and abortion — were designed to equate women’s role with reproduction. Consequently, as Eig shows, the idea that women (single-handedly, without telling anyone!) might postpone marriage and motherhood for educations and careers was not an easy sell. Literally. The pill’s first manufacturer initially sought FDA approval for it as a cure for “menstrual disorders” for this reason. Only later, and after much controversy, did it market it as birth control.
When that happened, in May 1960, there was apparently no turning back. That year, 400,000 were on it. By 1965, more than 6.5 million were, despite its being illegal in some states. (In Massachusetts, unmarried women could not receive a prescription until 1972.)
The pill was then and remains now the most common form of contraception. And yet, as the essayist and critic Katha Pollitt demonstrates in her astute and convincing new book, “Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights,” 50 percent of pregnancies are unplanned today, often because the psychological and legal barriers to contraception remain taxingly high.
Unlike many liberals who only tepidly support abortion — in the “safe, legal, and rare” vein — Pollitt actively advocates for it as a necessity. She reminds us that, when push comes to shove, we are a prochoice nation. One out of 3 women will terminate a pregnancy. Abortion “does not happen on the edge of society, community, and family,” she explains. “It is enmeshed in the way we live. ... But that is not the way we talk about it.”
Indeed — as in the 1950s — our private actions often differ from our public pronouncements. Our reticence today, Pollitt argues, is due to a small but energetic antiabortion movement that deceptively devalues women’s lives by casting abortion as a selfish and irresponsible act. They have done this so effectively that countless restrictions plague Roe vs. Wade in many states, making the procedure unavailable to huge swaths of the country. In Texas, nearly 1 million women live more than 150 miles from an abortion clinic.
While Eig and Pollitt have different approaches, their underlying message is the same: We need more bravery. Eig focuses on four “crusaders” who said aloud what most people only thought. Pollitt targets the people themselves, the millions who say we “don’t want to ban abortion … but don’t want it to be widely available, either.” With her witty brand of style and substance, she calls us on our contradictions. To the 1 in 6 — 1 in 6! — who think women should die rather than terminate a pregnancy, she asks, “Really? I doubt these people would say it was all right for me to kill someone to take their kidney, even if I would die without it.”
But Pollitt is compassionate too. As she sees it, women are permitted their abortions only if they “feel really, really bad about it.” Yet even “responsible” women run into trouble. “Every single [birth control] method has a failure rate, even with perfect use, and perfect use for thirty years is improbable: People are only human.” I doubt there is a woman who could honestly disagree. We’ve all had our heart drop in a bathroom at some point.
What these books teach us is the importance of acknowledging this. More than 1 million women get an abortion every year. Eighty-two percent have used the pill. Whether you’re Republican or Democrat, male or female, you have likely benefited from these two things. Maybe they enabled you to finish college. Maybe they got your wife that promotion that got you out of debt. Maybe they saved your mother’s life. Whatever the case, Eig and Pollitt agree it’s time to start celebrating.