How Many Women Are On Birth Control

Feminist Margaret Sanger was arraigned in the Federal Courthouse on Jan xviii, 1916 for distributing her journal "The Woman Rebel" by mail service in which she advocated for nascency control apply. Photos Courtesy: Bettmann/Getty Images

Across many industries, colloquial terms for products and inventions have a real staying power. You lot've probably heard someone refer to a tissue past saying "Kleenex," for example. Similarly, folks utilise the brand proper noun Ring-Help as a stand-in for referring to bandages.

Another common colloquialism? Calling birth control pills but "the pill." Taken orally, these hormonal contraceptives are synonymous with the term — even though many medications come in capsule (or pill) course. Still, if you say "the pill," people beyond generations will immediately know that you lot're referring to birth control.

Today, a person's contraceptive choices extend beyond the pill. But the history of the ubiquitous phrase — and the medication itself — effigy so prominently into the history of reproductive rights, wellness care, sexual health, and bodily autonomy. With this in heed, let's delve into the history of birth control in the United States, and how this history is still deeply tied into the fight for equal rights today.

What Is "The Pill"?

By definition, birth control is any activity or medication that help regulate when (and if) cisgender women, intersex people, and individuals assigned female at birth will become pregnant. Although the pill might exist one of the more common forms of contraceptive medication, intrauterine devices, implants, condoms, diaphragms, and methods of tracking ovulation are all forms of birth command.

Photo Courtesy: BSIP/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

Of course, the pill remains ane of the more than accessible, safe and effective methods of birth control. Not to mention, the pill left an indelible mark on American society when the revolutionary medication was first introduced. Prior to the pill, birth control methods were cumbersome and oftentimes unreliable. The pill, on the other hand, was discreet, easy to use, and less intrusive. Co-ordinate to the AMA Journal of Ideals, the Food & Drug Assistants (FDA) approved the first oral contraceptive in 1960, and, within two years, 1.2 one thousand thousand American women were using the pill.

So, what'southward in this revolutionary medication? Essentially, the pill is an ingestible form of progestin and estrogen. These hormones mimic pregnancy and trick the trunk into initiating all of the processes that make it more difficult to go meaning. For example, more mucus forms on the walls of the cervix, which, in turn, prevents sperm from traveling up the birth canal, and the walls of the uterus become thinner. Most significantly, someone taking the pill will stop ovulating, and then there won't exist any eggs to fertilize. Needless to say, the pill helped brand pregnancy more of a selection than an inevitability, allowing people to have a much larger degree of control over their reproductive health, bodies, sexual health, and futures.

History of Birth Command in the United States

In 1916, Margaret Sanger opened one of the primeval-known birth control clinics in America. Due to the Comstock Human activity, which deemed birth control "obscene," the clinic could non write, publish, or distribute whatsoever information about birth control. Since about all methods of birth control were illegal at the time, Sanger and her colleagues were also unable to perform or prescribe any methods of birth control. Rather, the clinic served as a source of information, allowing people — primarily women — to learn of safe and effectives ways of taking control of their reproductive health.

Appear past Sanger, a nativity control clinic was opened in secret on Offset Avenue in New York Urban center. Photograph Courtesy: Bettmann/Getty Images

Decades afterward opening her first clinic, Sanger met an endocrinologist, Gregory Pincus, who believed in her idea to develop a birth command pill. Testing the pill was perhaps fifty-fifty harder than creating the pill; there was plenty of legal red tape — not to mention an ingrained, societal (and misogynistic) fear surrounding the reproductive system and the sexual health of women. Afterwards receiving a generous donation from Katherine McCormick, a wealthy biologist and activist, Pincus and Sanger ran a larger clinical trial in Puerto Rico, where laws weren't as restrictive.

Eventually, the FDA approved the pill in 1957, but it was only to be used in the treatment of menstrual disorders experienced by married women. In 1960, the FDA fully approved nascence control as a contraceptive. Despite the expansion of the FDA approving, in that location were still millions of people who did not accept access to birth control. In 1965, the Supreme Court ruled that states were not allowed to ban birth control pills, but it wasn't until 1972 that the Supreme Court ruled that unmarried women had the correct to take nativity control pills. In many ways, referring to the medication as "the pill" was born out of a necessity — to be discreet and avert whatever stigma.

In the early decades of the widespread utilize of oral contraceptives, doctors and patients who were reporting serious side effects, similar blood clots and strokes, were ignored, and this led to a entrada against birth control from the medical community. In that location was also a concern surrounding where birth control pills were beingness distributed. "Sanger's stated mission was to empower women to make their ain reproductive choices," Time reports. "She did focus her efforts on minority communities, because that was where, due to poverty and limited access to health care, women were especially vulnerable to the effects of unplanned pregnancy." However, these efforts, and Sanger'due south legacy, accept been tainted by her well-documented comments in back up of eugenics, a now-discredited, discriminatory movement mired in white supremacist beliefs.

How Nascency Control Relates to Equality

Using the pill is far less controversial today than it was in decades by, but nascence control — and other facets of reproductive liberty — continues to be met with opposition in the U.S. For case, many conservative Christian sects object to birth control, believing that it goes confronting God's volition. Politically, this has long been a stance that right-wing politicians and supporters accept on too, often taking aim confronting Planned Parenthood, reproductive rights, access to abortion and contraception, and more than.

Why? Because birth command relates to sexual health, these groups of people act as though the pill is a matter of morality. That is, their religious or political beliefs can actually interfere with health care. Even now, religious and not-turn a profit employers can offering health insurance plans that exclude coverage of nascence control if done and so considering of a religious or moral belief.

On the other paw, the Affordable Intendance Act states that all wellness insurance plans offered in the Health Insurance Marketplace must encompass FDA-approved methods of nascence control. That's only 1 step toward providing access to reproductive health intendance. For case, birth control is one of the safest medications on the market today, but it tin can't be bought over the counter (OTC); many groups, such as Free the Pill, are fighting to make OTC birth control a reality in the U.Due south.

Planned Parenthood of St. Louis on May 29, 2020 — merely after a state judge ruled against an attempt by the Gov. Mike Parson administration to shut downwards Missouri's lone ballgame clinic. Photo Courtesy: Robert Cohen/Getty Images

Of form, others are hoping to make the pill free of accuse to further support gender equity and equality efforts — in addition to making the pill more accessible to all people, regardless of socioeconomic grade, race or gender. "Despite significant strides in women's reproductive health, disparities in admission and outcomes remain, especially for racial–indigenous minorities in the United States," a 2020 study reports. "Data suggest that the asymmetric risk for women of color for reproductive health access and outcomes expand beyond individual-level risks and include social and structural factors, such as fewer neighborhood health services, less insurance coverage, decreased access to educational and economical attainment, and even practitioner-level factors such as racial bias and stereotyping." Needless to say, the pill being gratuitous of charge — and more easily attainable — could get a long way in remedying these racial disparities.

People who support access to nascency control — and fight for reproductive justice — sympathize that without nascence control women and other people at take chances for pregnancy face severe disadvantages beyond many facets of life. For one, an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy can impact 1's ability to work or build a career. In other instances, someone who may become pregnant might not be physically, emotionally or mentally good for you plenty, or accept admission to the resources, to have and heighten a child safely. In fact, over 800 people die during pregnancy ever twenty-four hour period; millions are saved from this fate due to nascency command admission.

Access to contraception allows people to plan their lives by affording them more opportunity; that is, instead of being handed a decision, people can choose. The pill may be tiny, but, undoubtedly, it gives millions of people a huge boost of support by allowing them to plan for parenthood if they want to embark on that path.

Photo Courtesy: Bill Tompkins/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Resource Links:

"History of Oral Contraception" via AMA Journal of Ethics
"Birth Control" via Clinical Methods: The History, Concrete, and Laboratory Examinations | U.S. National Library of Medicine
"New Written report Confirms What Many Have Long Believed to be Truthful: Women Use Contraception to Amend Achieve Their Life Goals" via Guttmacher Institute
"5 Ways Family Planning Is Crucial to Gender Equality" via Global Citizen
"Nascency Control Benefits" via HealthCare.gov
"History of Yaz" via Drug Law Center
"What Margaret Sanger Really Said About Eugenics and Race" via Time
"Contraception: traditional and religious attitudes" via NIH | National Library of Medicine
"The Side Furnishings of the Pill" via WGBH, PBS/KQED
Estelle T. Griswold et al. Appellants v. Country of Connecticut — Case Information via Legal Information Establish | Cornell Police Schoolhouse, Cornell University
"Katherine McCormick" (biographical information) via Iowa State University
"Comstock Act of 1873 (1873)" via Middle Tennessee State University
"Starting time American Birth Control Clinic (The Brownsville Clinic), 1916" via The Embryo Project | National Science Foundation, Arizona Land University, Centre for Biology and Social club, the Max Planck Constitute for the History of Science in Berlin, and the MBL WHOI Library
"Birth Command: The Pill" via Cleveland Clinic
"Birth Control Pill" via Planned Parenthood
"Half a century of the oral contraceptive pill" via CFP – MFC, The Higher of Family Physicians of Canada | U.S. National Library of Medicine
Gratis the Pill | freethepill.org
"Racial and Indigenous Disparities in Reproductive Wellness Services and Outcomes, 2020" via Obstetrics and Gynecology, Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins | U.Southward. National Library of Medicine