The Pill: How Is It Affecting U.S. Morals, Family Life?

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The Pill: How Is It Affecting U.S. Morals, Family Life?

The Pill and the Sexual Revolution

Magazine article

By: Anonymous

Date: July 11, 1966

Source: "The Pill: How Is It Affecting U.S. Morals, Family Life?" U.S. News & World Report (July 11, 1966).

About the Author: This unattributed article was written by a staff writer for U.S. News and World Report, a weekly news and commentary magazine with a wide circulation.

Introduction

"The pill," the nickname given to an oral contraceptive for women, was the most effective form of birth control ever developed. It separated sexual intercourse from reproduction and made it possible for women to engage in strictly recreational sex. With the introduction of the pill, the sexual revolution of the 1960s became possible.

Created by the American physician Gregory Pincus (1903–1967) at the instigation of birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger (1879–1966), the pill could be taken as easily as an aspirin. A combination of synthetic progesterone and estrogen, it was approved for use as a contraceptive in 1960. By 1965, the two leading producers of the pill, Searle and Syntex, had respective annual sales of $89 million and $60 million. In that same year, it was estimated that one in four married American women under 45 either had used or was using an oral contraceptive. However, not all women could obtain the pill because some states prohibited the sale of contraceptives. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court struck down bans on the use of contraceptives by married couples on the grounds that the Constitution established a "zone of privacy." In 1972, it would extend the same protections to single people.

The availability, ease of use, and reliability of the pill permitted people to engage in sexual activity more freely. In the space of just a few years, sexuality became very open. Sexuality was affirmed as a value in itself, not only for married couples, but for single people as well. The Human Sexual Response, a 1966 book by scientists William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, opened a public discussion of how sexual response could be heightened for greater enjoyment. Six years later, Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex climbed the best-seller list.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s was not the first dramatic shift in sexual attitudes. In the 1920s, young people threw off the restraints of the Victorian era by dancing the tango, petting in the backseats of cars, and devising the idea of romantic sexual love. The sexual revolution of the 1960s lacked the innocence of the earlier era because the pill removed the fear of pregnancy as a major restraint on sexual behavior.

PRIMARY SOURCE

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SIGNIFICANCE

The sexual revolution made it acceptable to be open about sexual matters. Things that were once only whispered about or hidden behind closed doors suddenly were made public. The repercussions of this shift in attitude are still being felt at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

While the pill was not 100 percent effective, the fear of pregnancy largely vanished. Women, free to regard sex as another recreational activity, began pursuing sexual opportunities. Men, under increasing pressure to provide sexual pleasure to their partners, began purchasing widely advertised and readily available drugs to cure erectile dysfunction. While new freedoms were gained, the focus on sexual pleasure also led to a number of developments that are of questionable merit, including a rise in pornography and the sexual objectification of women.

Removing the taint from sexuality also made it possible to openly discuss such matters as rape. The anti-rape movement of the 1970s grew out of the women's movement and rape crisis centers were established as activists succeeded in shifting focus from the rape victim to the rapist, as sin was no longer attached to sex.

The sexual revolution also made possible the gay rights movement that began at the Stonewall Bar in New York City in 1969. Homosexuality became visible, and familiarity led to increasing acceptance of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals as well as the transgendered.

The pill began a celebration of sexuality that dramatically transformed culture and politics, and greatly impacted medicine. Despite the pill, a general increase in sexual activity among young persons led to increased rates of teenage pregnancy and unintended pregnancy among young adults in the United States. Elective abortion was made legal in the United States in the 1970s, and by 1990, the United States had one of the highest abortion rates in the Western world. One study sponsored by the National Research Council in the 1990s found that up to 60 percent of all pregnancies in the U.S. were unintended, and recommended increased availability, education about, and access to contraception, along with research to develop a new generation of contraceptives.

Another feature of the sexual revolution was a general increase in the number of sexual partners that a person had during his or her lifetime. This, in turn, facilitated the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, such as genital herpes, the human papilloma virus, and AIDS.