It has been 60 years since the FDA first approved the birth control pill on May 9, 1960. It emerged as an essential pillar of women's ability to have good quality of life.
The benefits of the pill to both genders were obvious: a convenient solution that equalized and liberated both sexes. It reinforced our belief in the right of a woman to control her own fertility.
She outlined potential dangers such as heart attacks, strokes, depression, breast cancer, blood clots and asked questions: Why isn't there a pill for men? Why should birth control be a female responsibility? Why are women being used as guinea pigs?The fundamental question about whether the pill was safe forced us to examine and try to balance the freedoms we were winning because of it versus the liabilities, or potential liabilities that argued against its use.
They argued that this was just another example of patriarchal control over women's lives. And why do men control the medical profession, and the pharmaceutical industry? Women were not in charge of the pharmaceutical corporations; we were not the doctors and the researchers. We were not only absent, but systematically excluded.
Like me, she was in her early twenties, just back from England where she had recently graduated from Oxford with First Honors—an unheard-of achievement for a woman at that time. When the pill first came on the market the initial reaction by feminists was a welcoming one, an outburst of relief, pleasure and joy that there was something that facilitated sexual freedom.
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