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The Pill turns 50

10 May 2010

The Contraceptive Pill celebrated its 50th birthday on Mother's Day this year. The Pill was approved by the FDA in 1960 giving greater control to women about when they would like to give birth. The choice was supposed to help eliminate unwanted pregnancies and help couples grow closer. It was also supposed to help the couple financially by not placing burdens of early children on them.

After its 50th anniversary there is a raging debate wondering just how good or bad the birth control pill has been for society. As per Claudia Goldin, a Professor of Economics at Harvard University, "In the late 1960s the median age of marriage was 23. In the next seven years it went up to almost 26. That's enough time to enable a woman to get that law degree or MBA or complete her medical training, safe in the knowledge that pregnancy is not going to derail her career. Employers and college admissions officers changed their views of what women were capable of."

A radical change

Statistics show that after the Pill was introduced the women in the workforce who went in for higher education degrees rose substantially. In 2008 about 36% of working women in the United States had university degrees as compared to 11 % in the year 1970. Also the number of women dropping out of high school was just 7% in 2008 which is a very low figure compared to the 34% who would drop out of high school in 1970.

The immediate success of the Pill can be seen in the statistic that 57% college graduates in the United States are now women. There is also an increase in the number of wives who earn more than their husbands. Currently 26% women claim this distinction.

Unusual beginnings

Surprisingly the Pill was the idea of a conservative Catholic nurse called Margaret Sanger who opened the first birth control clinic in America in 1916. With funding from the philanthropist Katharine Dexter Mc Cormick, Ms Sanger backed the research for an oral contraceptive made from progesterone and oestrogen.

Elaine Tyler May, a historian at the University of Minnesota said, "Pill was approved in the mid-1950s for treatment of infertility and menstrual problems but doctors and women both understood that it stopped ovulation. The instant it became available half a million women rushed to their doctors claiming they had menstrual irregularity"

The Pill is 99.9% effective in providing protection against unwanted pregnancies and 98% women have used it in the U.S. to avoid getting pregnant. The birth control pill is definitely one of the most defining inventions of the century.