This week was a big one for media coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Pill. And it looks like this is also being taken as an opportunity to reflect on women’s history over the past 50 years, which will also be a good thing. Women often lose our history, and those of us who are 70 now grew up in a very different reality than those of us who are 20. I am 45, smack in the middle of that span, and it’s very interesting to me to look both forward and back. We are living through incredible changes in social history, and we need to know this to understand what is going on today and what will happen tomorrow.
The pill made the front cover of Time magazine. The author, Nancy Gibb, makes some very good points about how the existence of the pill changed young women’s ideas about the possibility of planning a career path that included being sexually active (probably in the context of marriage) but with control over the timing of pregnancy.
There’s a Time editorial here.
And there are a few interviews with Nancy Gibb, the author of the Time article, on Time’s own web page, on CNN, and NPR (Gather.com).
In the Huffington Post, Christianne Northrup discusses important social and medical context for decision-making about contraception, including the Pill.
Katrina Onstad wrote about the pill’s birthday in Chatelaine magazine.
Books and book reviews on the anniversary of the pill:
Michelle Goldberg reviews a new book about the pill in the American Prospect.
