It's amazing to think about all the technology present in modern society and how this technology has profoundly impacted the manner in which we live. Computers, for example, came out of a need to store massive amounts of “collective knowledge” into small bits of information that could then be manipulated and put towards solving a particular problem. The computer can be thought of as a tool that allows humans the ability to better control the abundant amount of information encountered on a daily basis as a result of living in a world, well now run by computers. Another example that comes to mind is when technology has produced tools that have better allowed humans to control their bodies, such as in the case with antibiotics and vaccines. This is a story about one such case that is as highly debated 50 years ago when first made public as it is today. A technology that parents and schools are reluctant to share with children but something that no woman should be denied. I am talking about one of the biggest game changers around- the birth control pill.

Prior to the advent of the pill, birth control practices were highly ineffective and many times down right dangerous. Lysol, for example, was used to clean the vaginal area in the belief that it would kill the sperm that may have entered the womb. Then in 1839 Charles Goodyear invented the condom but this still left birth control largely in the hands of men and that is never a good idea.

The birth control movement, however, was met with some opposition. One influential player Charles, a devout Christian, believed that the majority of Americans were wicked and birth control was to blame. Thanks to Charles who took his irrational views all the to Washington in 1872 lead in part to Congress’s decision to enact the Comstock Act focused on stopping the distribution of pornography and birth control information. It also targeted information on birth control devices, sexually transmitted diseases, human sexuality, and abortion.

Just as one nut job can make a difference so too can rational folks as in the case of Margaret Sangor and Katherine McCormick. Margaret was the first born of 12 and had to watch her mother suffer as a result of having too many children and not enough resources. Katherine was married to a man who had schizophrenia and feared the disease would be passed on to her children and wanted to be able to prevent this from happening. In light of this, both Margaret and Katherine fought fervently for dissemination of basic birth control information, information that could have helped their own family.

“Everywhere we look, we see poverty and large families going hand in hand...We see that those parents who are least fit to reproduce the race are having the largest number of children; while people of wealth, leisure, and education are having small families." – Margaret Snager

The U.S. Legislative, however, had different views of birth control, seeing it as a sin against God and believing that it would lead to promiscuity among females. Margaret and Katherine directly challenged the Comstock law in 1916 by opening up the first birth control clinic in America. The in 1936 they helped bring the case of United States v. One Package to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals resulting in the ability of physicians to legally mail birth control devices and information throughout the country. Finally, in 1965, the Supreme Court case of Griswold v. Connecticut overturned the Comstock Law, ruling that the private use of contraceptives was a constitutional right.

Margaret and Katherine did not stop there, they also wanted to create an oral contraceptive women could utilize to prevent unwanted pregnancies. In 1953, Margaret Sanger and Katherine McCormick found a researcher by the name of Pincus, a American physician who studied hormonal biology and steroidal hormones, known at the time for producing vitro fertilization in rabbits back in 1934. They asked Pincus if he would be able to create an oral contraceptive. Pincus agreed, however, he would need to find an investor. Pincus asked Searle, a owner of a pharmaceutical company, but initially he was unwilling to partake in the adventure. Despite Searle's reluctance, Pincus was eventually able to get sample of a pill accidently invented by Frank Colton while working in a lab funded by Searle. Pincus used these samples to create and release The Pill under the pretense that it would be used for treatment of menstrual cramps. Ultimately Searle would stand to make a sizable fortune from Colton’s accidental discovery of the first birth control pill.


The FDA finally approved the pill for use of birth control in 1960, though by this time women many women had already been going to their doctors complaining of unbearable menstrual cramps. The pill, however, during this time was used a dose of 10 milligrams of progesterone, leading led to side effects including nausea, blurred vision, bloating, weight gain, depression, blood clots, and strokes. Doctors blatantly dismissed women’s complaining of these symptoms as being nothing more than women discussing things they were incapable of understanding. It would not be until the 1980’s before doctors would finally lower the high dosage of The Pill to the current dosage used today, one milligram of progesterone.

The fight for women to be able to have access to safe, reliable, and-most important a female-controlled type of contraception has not been easy facing many opposition mainly from the Catholic Church. The basis of their beliefs is that coming from the passage

Genesis 38: 7-10.
And Er, Judah's first-born, was wicked in the sight of Jehovah.
And Jehovah slew him.
And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother unto her, and raise up seed to thy brother.
And Onan knew that the seed would not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest he should give seed to his brother.
And the thing which he did was evil in the sight of Jehovah: and he slew him also.



In 1968, Pope Paul VI called a press conference to reaffirm the Church's traditional teachings on birth control. He classified The Pill as an artificial method of birth control because it deliberately excluded the basic purpose of sex, which is procreation. In addition, it was believed by many that uneducated poor women would not be able to remember to take it everyday and therefore the use of the pill in low-income families would never be effective. Research in the 1960’s and 1970’s on the effects of the pill, however, on lower class women revealed no difficulty in their ability to take a pill everyday. Others ran under the false pretense that birth control pills can kill fertilized eggs creating a who new debate over abortion rights largely routed in miss belief about the nature of the pill. Seeing the act of killing a fertilized egg a sin against God.

The pill eventually experienced widespread integration and acceptance into society but this was not the end of the women’s right for control over her body but only the beginning. As Ladies Home Journal proclaims, it “transformed our lives like nothing before or since, it’s easy to forget how truly liberating the pill seemed to be in 1960.”

In Leah Lawrence’s discussion of the pill and social reform, she says “with more choices about the timing of starting a family, women could complete or extend their education and then remain in the work force longer before having children.”

The Pill was the precursor for the Women's Liberation Movement allowing women the power to challenge status quo. The feelings that The Pill created were eventually incorporated into the "Statement of Purpose" by the National Organization for Women: "The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.

The Pill was helped change the law allowing for cases such as Roe v. Wade in 1973, which gave women the right to choose to have an abortion and the development and approval of the RU-486 ("abortion pill") in 2000.

The fight is not over, 50 years later and women are still fighting with conservative politicians and religious associations that are trying to reverse these earlier decisions. They are trying to take the right of women to have access to birth control. I will never understand how conservative Republicans want run on the platform of small government yet still want the government to control things like education and women’s rights.

In addition, today many Evangelicals - who consist of roughly 30 percent of the population- are joining the Catholics in fighting against The Pill. The argument this time is focused directly on the chances that a women taking the pill might still become pregnant only to have the baby aborted by the hostile environment created in the womb by taking the pill.

For example Christianity Today has a featured story entitled "A hard pill to swallow" about one women plight with her knowledge that the pill she was taking was a sin against God. "I grew uneasy with the minuscule chance—be it one in a million of millions—that my womb might turn away a cluster of 128 or 256 cells knitted together in the image of God."
Amy was inspired by Amy Laura Hall, a Duke Divinity School's moral theologian. ”Amy preaches American Christians tend to view children—and even the possibility of their arrival—as an inconvenient interruption. Why, she asked, do we feel the need to perfectly time and fit children into our busy schedules? Is this a Christian instinct?

This is not good considering that 76% of Republicans believe that abortion is murder and this to the already 34% of republicans who actually believe that abortion pills are murder.

”Former Republican presidential hopeful Gary Bauer and Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Daniel Lapin have started an advocacy group, with headquarters in the nation's capital, for conservative Christians and traditional Jews. Even the Bush administration tired to pass a pill protecting health care workers who do not believe in birth control methods including the pill in 2008. In response to the bill, one NIH researcher said, "It's a redefinition of abortion that does not match any of the current medical definitions. It's ideologically based and not based on science and could interfere with the development of many new therapies to treat diseases."

It is not the government's duty to decide what a woman can and cannot do with regards to her body. Some believe that abortions should only be allowed when a woman's life is in danger, in the case of rape or incest, or if the fetus is deformed, which would take women back to 1965 when abortions were banned in all fifty-states, except under those conditions. Recently Florida, among other states, have ruled that all women seeking an abortion must first pay for a ultrasound before being able to get the procedure. How far does the establishment want to take women's rights back? Are they eventually going to push women back to 1919, before the 19th amendment, when they weren't allowed to vote?

That is why it is vital to remember the earlier struggles in the women's rights movement and continue to fight today with their same desire and conviction. As the years progress, human rights should be a higher priority but instead people with their own agenda want to take away basic freedoms necessary for quality of life.

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