The Pill: After 50 years, what’s its legacy?

No one talks about “the Car, or the Shoe, or the Laundry Soap,” said Nancy Gibbs in Time, “but everyone knows the Pill.” It was 50 years ago this month that the first female contraceptive pill gained FDA approval and went on sale—a half-century in which this humble oral medication has entirely “rearranged the furniture of human relations.” In some respects, the Pill has been a disappointment, said Rita Rubin in USA Today. Unplanned pregnancies, far from being consigned to the dustbin of history, now account for a full half of all pregnancies in the U.S. Yet for giving women power over their own reproductive lives, the Pill has become an enduring “symbol of women’s rights and generational change.”

The Pill has other legacies, too—many of them negative, said Robert McCain in HotAir.com. Fifty years ago, when the Pill first appeared, we conservatives warned that it would lead to promiscuity, the breakdown of the family, and a coarsening of our culture—and we were, of course, right. But what we didn’t anticipate was how deep, and widespread, the damage would be. The Pill “liberated” millions of women to engage in meaningless sex with strangers, resulting in an epidemic of herpes, human papilloma­virus, and other sexually transmitted diseases. It also “helped” many women postpone plans for childbirth from their early 20s into their mid- and late-30s, to the point that they were no longer capable of conceiving. Thanks to the Pill, countless women will celebrate this grim anniversary “hopelessly and inconsolably alone.”

Fewer women may be mothers thanks to the Pill, said Elaine May in The Washington Post, but thanks to the Pill they are better mothers. The advent in 1960 of a reliable female contraceptive may have made life easier for young, single women looking to have a good time. But the real beneficiaries were those married women who had previously fallen pregnant every year, while struggling to feed, clean, and clothe an ever-expanding brood. The Pill brought sanity into those hectic, unmanageable lives, and gave women the choice of raising fewer children with more love, attention, and enjoyment. It also allowed us to work outside the home, said Susan Reimer in the Baltimore Sun. By giving young women the power to “plan children around a job or a career,” the Pill gave women economic freedom and a measure of independence from men. That’s the change that mattered most.

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