The Pill Is a Good Thing, Actually

Let's not take for granted how far we've come

Photo by Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition on Unsplash

In the wake of Louise Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution and Mary Harrington’s Feminists Against Progress, I’m noticing an emerging trend in liberal and heterodox circles: an argument that the birth control pill, actually, is bad for women.

This isn’t entirely new. Historically, there’s been a contingent of feminists who argue that patriarchal institutions fail to address women’s needs, while simultaneously disparaging whatever products addressing women’s needs manage to emerge. See also the idea that the advent of menstrual products reveals society’s discomfort with menstruation as something that needs suppressed.

Among my real-life female friends, this critique takes the form of claims that birth control pills make women sick. These women proffer the usual concerns about migraines, nausea and weight gain (though in practice, these symptoms vary with formulation and tend to wane within a few months). But increasingly, they also talk about depression, suicidality, low libido, brain fog, and the loss of some nebulous harmony brought by experiencing the “natural” female cycle. These ideas, espoused largely by middle class women who now enjoy the childfree or small-family lifestyle that their own decades of birth control use have afforded them, are luxury beliefs.

They are also beliefs shared by those pro-life gynecologists who refused to fill my prescription in rural Ohio, proponents of abstinence-only sex education, Quiverfulls, and a recent substack commenter worried that birth control pills make women choose weaker mates. This latter concern comes from research that shows, essentially, that unmedicated women are attracted to cowboys and roughnecks, while those who partake in hormonal birth control prefer gentler men. The mechanism is thought to be hormonal: the female body on the pill is a non-ovulating body, and in nature, a non-ovulating female is a pregnant female. As such, her interests shift from getting laid to finding someone who’ll make a good father.

To this commenter I say: so what. Current events suggest no shortage of gun-slinging, rape or warmongering. Clearly, it takes more than family planning to tame male aggression. Perhaps the commenter needs to develop new techniques for sweeping reproductively responsible women off their feet, but I digress.

Harrington, for her part, has implied that the availability of birth control makes sex less meaningful, and in turn, causes women to seek more casual, less satisfying sex. Perry makes a similar argument. I’m unsympathetic to the paternalistic idea that women cannot be trusted to know ourselves, control ourselves, or care for ourselves in the face of shiny new products. As I’ve argued before, feminism is meant to remove barriers to women’s fulfillment, not to prescribe what fulfillment looks like. It’s up to every woman to know and honor her sexuality, deciding for herself whether and why and with whom to have sex. The ability to control our fertility allows us to make those decisions without duress. For countless women, hormonal birth control remains a highly effective, time-proven tool for maintaining that control. And yes, condoms, IUDs, diaphragms and spermicides will work better for some. But each has its drawbacks, and because of its effectiveness and tolerability, the pill is second only to surgery in popularity.

We know, but seem to have forgotten, that societies with widely available birth control produce healthier, better educated, more financially independent women. Such societies also produce fewer impoverished children.

I was on the pill for 33 years. My prescription was medically necessary before it was a contraceptive, but that’s a topic for another time. Side effects were minimal, and I never once had a serious pregnancy scare (though I’ve taken a few pregnancy tests out of hypervigilance). I was never cut out to raise children, nor should any child be subjected to my maternal deficiencies. Though raised by drunk rednecks, I eventually earned a graduate degree, and I’m financially independent enough that I risked a good career in IT to write a controversial book.

Be careful what you wish for. In the time we’ve spent taking birth control for granted, as well as women’s rights in general, Planned Parenthood has shifted its focus to transgender medicalization and Roe vs Wade has been overturned.

At the moment, sex education in schools is worse than it was in 1995. While it invites young people to choose from an ever-increasing menu of “genders” and sexual identities, it leaves them disadvantaged when it comes to negotiating sex and using birth control properly. This comes at a time when kids have unlimited access to violent porn and are so addicted to social media that it’s stunting their growth. They’re vulnerable and they need information, guidance and leadership. Offhand musings on the pros and cons of various modern conveniences are idle fun for those of us who’ve made our way. But let’s not pull up the ladder behind us.