Reproduction & revolution:

money, medicine & the Pill

HI268

Week 3

Pathway to the Pill• Laying the groundwork

Comstock Laws

Physiological research (often re infertility, impotence)

Women’s movements/enfranchisement of women (expanded role of women in the public sphere, esp. in relation to women’s and children’s health)

‘scientific motherhood’

• Show me the moneyWho pays, wins: Katherine McCormick and Margaret

Sanger

• ‘Fathering’ the Pill?Gregory Pincus, John Rock, Carl Djerassi

Pathway to the PillClinical trials

• Who?Infertile (often middle class) women in BostonPoor and ‘excessively fertile’ women in Puerto Rico,

India• How?

Tablets every day, every 6-8 hours or injections or suppositories;

body temp readings every day; vaginal smears every day; chart maintenance; urine samples over 2 specific 48 hour periods (so

confined to home those days); endometrial biopsies every month (and in some

cases laparotomies)

Pathways to the Pill

Why?

• Fears over population explosion

• Individuals’ desires to control family size, invest more resources into fewer children

• Eugenic drives to reduce birth rates of the poor and of ‘poor genetic stock’

Pathways to the PillWhen?

May 9, 1960: FDA approves the Pill as safe for contraception

‘"The pill" is a miraculous tablet that contains as little as one thirty-

thousandth of an ounce of chemical. It costs 11¢ to manufacture; a month's supply now sells for $2.00 retail. It is little more trouble to take on schedule than a daily vitamin. Yet in a mere six

years it has changed and liberated the sex and family life of a large and

still growing segment of the U.S. population: eventually, it promises to do the same for much of the world.’

Time Magazine, April 7 1967April 7, 1967

Controversies: the Pill and

politics

Black Genocide?

• 1959: Dwight Eisenhower proclaims that the US govt would not fund birth control: ‘That’s not our business’

• 1964 LB Johnson funds access to birth control for the poor

• Many African American (male) leaders see this as an attempt to control and reduce African American fertility rates

Black Genocide?Editorial, Thrust (African American newspaper) "Why couldn't blacks get basic health care like a free aspirin for a headache, but when you are a black woman old enough to look sexy you can get a truck load of birth control pills for free?"

Black Genocide?Tone Cade (Black liberation activist )

"I've been made aware of the national call to Sisters to abandon birth control... to picket family planning centers... to raise revolutionaries.... What plans do you have for the care of me and my child?"

Dick Gregory (African American Comedian, writer), Ebony Magazine: "First, the white man tells me to sit at the back of the bus. Now it looks like the white man wants me to sleep under the bed. Back in the days of slavery, black folks couldn't grow kids fast enough for white folks to harvest. Now that we've got a little taste of power, white folks want to call a moratorium on having children."

Sex, Drugs and … Religion?

Protest the Pill Day '08: The Pill Kills Babies.

A quick note on chemistry• How does the Pill work to prevent

pregnancy?– Primary mechanism

Inhibits ovulation: no egg no pregnancy

– Secondary mechanismsThickening of cervical mucus sperm cannot reach

the egg

Possible – but NOT proven -- endometrial effects: claims that there are such effects are scientifically and politically controversial. Groups opposed to birth control assert the existence of such effects, and argue that they render the Pill a de facto abortifacient; others argue that even with such effects, in the absence of fertilisation (see above, primary mechanism), endometrial effects, even if proven, cannot promote abortion.

So: questions to think about

• Are reproductive technologies like the Pill liberating their users, or not?

• Who benefits more? Men or women?

• Who has more control of fertility?