Archive for the 'Birth control and contraception' Category

Men killing women: maternal mortality, heterosexual desire, and the work of male transformation

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on September 30, 2009
in Birth control and contraception, Desire and objectification, Global Feminism, Health Care, Parenting and Science
. 53 Comments

Back to school with much work to be done.

After Friday’s post (immediately below) about male sexuality and its perceived dangers, I got an interesting email from blogger Erin Solaro. She wrote:

The reason male sexuality has been viewed as dangerous and yet at the same time men are supposed to push women has a great deal to do with biology, and no, I don’t mean that men have a higher sex drive than women…

…I mean that 1940 was the first time in America that the mythical average woman’s chance of dying in childbirth dipped below 1 in 100. (For black women, it was higher, about 3 times as high.) In modern Afghanistan, it’s about 1 in 7, which may be pretty close to the historic norm.

Until we understand that, we aren’t really going to understand why we think about men, women and sexuality the way we do.

It’s an interesting point. Any women’s history class must take into account the history of birth-related maternal and infant mortality. While it’s difficult to get accurate historic statistics, the 1 in 7 figure that Solaro cites for contemporary Afghanistan is probably lower than it was in many other time periods. It is generally assumed that until the 20th century, childbirth was the leading cause of death for all women of childbearing years; in some societies that maternal mortality rate may have reached 40%, while other medical historians prefer a lower figure of 1 in 4 or 1 in 5. Given that many women in the developing world still have half a dozen children or more, as they did in previous centuries, the overall risk is compounded by the sheer number of pregnancies carried to term.

Our cultural memory of this devastating toll is limited. We have a Mother’s Day, of course, but we have no public rituals to honor our countless female ancestors who died — quite literally — so that we could live. There is no Tomb of the Unknown Mother in Arlington, though more American women died from childbirth than male soldiers did in war for the first century and a half of our republic’s history. This legacy lives on best in fairy tales, replete with stories of single fathers (Beauty and the Beast) or wicked step-mothers (take your pick). When I ask my students what happened to Cinderella’s birth mother, it drives the point about maternal mortality home.

Whatever the exact figures, childbirth has probably killed more women than any other single cause in human history. Until very recently (a miracle two millenia ago in Palestine notwithstanding), the only possible cause for pregnancy was heterosexual intercourse. So if childbirth kills women, and sex causes pregnancy, then by the logical transitive property, heterosexual intercourse has been, not so indirectly, the most lethal of all human activities for one-half of the population. To put it even more bluntly, men have killed far more women by ejaculating inside of them than they have by any other method. Semen has killed more people than any other body fluid (and yet it is menstrual blood that is considered far more “unclean” in many Western traditions.) (This, by the way, is a good moment to note how absurd the argument is about AIDS being “God’s punishment for homosexuality.” Even if we were to assume that AIDS was primarily transmitted through same-sex sexual activity, the number of deaths globally from AIDS has not yet risen to the historic levels of those from childbirth. If God punishes by death those who engage in forbidden sexual activity, how then to explain that the leading cause of death for women for centuries was having intercourse with their own husbands?)

Very few, if any, men ever presumably sought to kill their wives or lovers through intercourse. But men did devise patriarchal power structures that forbade women from using contraception or from refusing sex to their husbands. From both a moral and a statistical standpoint, cultures that don’t allow women access to contraception — as well as the right to say “no” after marriage as well as before — are complicit in the death of countless millions of women. Of course, many women surely enjoyed sex despite the risks; many women surely longed for children even in the face of the grave dangers that attended pregnancy, labor, and delivery. All the more reason to honor the bravery and the sacrifice of those who fought for life against death on a battlefield far more lethal than those on which their husbands, fathers, and brothers struggled. Continue reading ‘Men killing women: maternal mortality, heterosexual desire, and the work of male transformation’

“Poor girl”: Bristol Palin, and the chagrined pity of the right

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 12, 2009
in Birth control and contraception, Parenting and Politics
. 83 Comments

My friends who self-describe as social conservatives are having a bad week. The chair of the Republican National Committee, Michael “Wait, what I meant to say was” Steele is in hot water again for apparently endorsing the pro-choice position on abortion. On Monday, President Obama eliminated Bush-era bans on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research. The new omnibus spending bill, signed yesterday, reduces funding for abstinence education and increases funding for contraception on campus. And the bitter cherry on this unhappy cupcake of a week for my right-wing friends is the announcement that Bristol Palin, the adolescent daughter of the former vice-presidential candidate, is not getting married after all to Levi Johnston, the lad who fathered her out-of-wedlock baby boy. Eliot was wrong; March is turning out to be the cruelest month for the socio-cons. (And at wit’s end, they’re now accusing dear Jessica Valenti of turning into Bridezilla, merely because the celebrated author and activist wants an egalitarian wedding.)

Here’s National Review columnist Lisa Schiffren on the Palin situation:

I certainly don’t know if they should have gotten married. You’d have thought so . . . even if it didn’t last forever. Better odds for the kid. If the parents didn’t like it, well, they should have thought about that when they were drinking and fooling around. But, as we all know, shotgun marriages lead to plenty of unhappiness, some of the time. And very young marriages have a lousy track record. So parents of the expecting teens are not willing to push. And maybe they are sometimes right. Still, the default position of the girl, left on her own with the baby, now in serious and immediate need of further education and a set of remunerative skills with which to support herself and Tripp, which will be harder to acquire with her maternal responsibilities, isn’t much of a happy picture either.

For all of the high-minded discussion of marriage policy on these pages and elsewhere, to me it looks very late. That train left a while ago. Even Corner readers, who will discuss choosing life vs. abortion, with endless passion, do not get so worked up about marriage. Which is why all I have to say is, “poor girl.”

You want to know why your side is losing the culture war, Lisa? Because of that last line (the bold emphasis is mine). If all you can do in the face of normal human frailty and adolescent impulse is mournfully shake your head and mutter “poor girl”, then yours is a movement whose race is run. I understand your frustration. She had all the advantages you want to foist on to the rest of America: two heterosexual Christian parents, an abundance of siblings, a first-class abstinence only education. Even after she and Levi “fell short of the mark”, they were offered a chance at redemption; they chose not to terminate the pregnancy and they promised to wed. Oh, how we love the narrative of the redeemed sinner, particularly when that sinner is a pretty white adolescent girl! But now the wedding is off, and one senses it might all have been a sham to advance mother Palin’s political career. Brave Bristol, in a moment of dangerous candor, remarked on national television (on Fox News, the Pravda of the right) that abstinence-only education was “unrealistic”, and her mother didn’t step in to correct her. No wonder, Lisa, you’re frustrated and at wit’s end.

On the other side, Lisa, some of us are having small episodes of intense schadenfreude, for which we ought to ask forgiveness. But once we’re done taking in the spectacle, most of us are going to say that we don’t think Bristol Palin is a “poor girl.” Not only is she still in a very privileged family, but she also lives in a society in which a great many young unwed mothers with fewer advantages than hers have ended up just fine. Only those who are rigidly committed to the notion that lifelong heterosexual marriage is the One Great Prophylaxis against all social decay would be so quick to predict doom for this young woman and her baby. But for those of us on the left, helping Bristol to raise little Tripp on her own is as much the responsibility of broader society as it is of the Palin clan. We’re pushing for a substantially expanded public sector, one which offers economic and educational support to women in Bristol’s position. We’re pushing for a world where not only is marriage for everyone who wants it, including same-sex couples, but also a choice that can be made without regard to financial necessity. We’re pushing for a world where Bristol can have access to excellent day care for Tripp, so that she can be a single mother and work on what you, Lisa, rightly call her “serious and immediate need for further education” while remaining confident that her son is cared for. We’re pushing for a world where men like Levi are encouraged to be involved in the lives of their children, but where women are not forced to choose between poverty on one hand and a marriage to a man they do not love on the other. The more robust the public institutions that provide care, the less the potential for young people to trap themselves into unhappy relationships for which they are unready and ill-prepared. This is at the heart of the progressive understanding of marriage: that is a bond of affection, a vehicle for personal transformation, and one particular venue in which to bring children into the world. But it ought not any longer — if it ever was — be the sine qua non of prosperity and opportunity.

I wish Bristol and Tripp and Levi nothing but the best. I’m glad that they are not getting married, since it seems that one or both of the two young adults isn’t ready to cross that bridge. I’m glad for the message that brave young Bristol sent on national television, when she spoke honestly of the hard work of being a mother to a new infant — and spoke even more honestly about the inefficacy of the abstinence-only curriculum which had been foisted upon her to no avail. To paraphrase Jeremiah, Bristol may be little more than a child, but she knows how to speak the truth. And in the face of the messy reality of that truth, as we come to the end of a hard week for those morality is rooted in a nostalgic longing for an age that never was, no wonder that even on their flagship blogs, their best writers can offer no more than a chagrined, rueful, and impotent “poor girl”.

Your words, Lisa, not ours.

Babies, family planning, environmental stewardship and the needs of the preborn: the real roots of the culture war

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 05, 2009
in Birth control and contraception, Christianity, Environmentalism, Faith, Favorite Posts 2009, Feminism, Global Feminism, Kabbalah and Science
. 82 Comments

Regular readers know that I tend to discourage my conservative commenters from derailing threads by questioning the very suppositions on which this blog is based. This is a feminist blog, for example, and one which seeks to explore various things from a feminist perspective. This is not a place to question whether the feminist lens is an appropriate one through which to see the world; similarly, a Calvinist blog which seeks to offer a Calvinist perspective on current events is not the place to question the essential tenets of Calvinism. This is why I read quite a few very conservative blogs, but rarely — if ever — comment there. I’m interested in what is said, but since I reject the fundamental premises on which their worldview is based, I don’t think I have much to offer to the conversation. It would be like insisting on speaking Finnish to a group which prefers to dialogue in Thai.

That said, reading all these blogs, I’m increasingly convinced that the core of the split between social conservatives and progressives in this country revolves around not abortion or gay marriage, but a more fundamental disagreement: population. Religious conservatives have become increasingly vocal about their desire to see larger and larger families; indeed, their arguments against abortion and gay marriage seem less couched these days in an assumption that these are intrinsic evils, and more in the language of concern that these practices pose a threat to the large families which the right venerates above all else. Hostility to feminism is surely a sine qua non of contemporary social conservatism, but reading what the pundits on the other side have to say, it seems more and more obvious that their hatred of feminism is rooted in the recognition that increased sovereignty for women over their own bodies is inextricably linked with the reasonable desire to not have, in Amanda Marcotte’s happy phrase, their “vaginas turn into clown cars.”

Feminists and environmentalists have formed common cause over the vital issue of family planning. Those who believe that the world’s resources are already over-taxed by humans whose behavior is frequently parasitic have allies in those who believe that women can and should be encouraged to find fulfillment in pursuits other than motherhood. The longer women wait to marry or reproduce, the less likely they are to have large families; the more opportunities we can create for women to pursue happiness outside the home, the greater the likelihood they will delay marriage and childbirth. The intersection of sound environmental policy and the campaign to give women the precious right of personal autonomy is a fortuitous one indeed! And almost to a man and woman, social conservatives despise this alliance, one which is changing family structures across the western world — and increasing the possibility for greater happiness for the earth and its creatures.

Here, replete with grammatical error on top of grammatical error, is a piece by David Goldman in First Things: What Should Conservatives do about Obamanomics? It takes the “we must have big families” argument to a new level, by suggesting that the collapse of the real estate bubble is due — wait for it, can you guess? — to, yes, birth control:

The first thing that conservatives have to tell Americans is: “You are poorer because you failed to bring up enough children. The decline of the traditional family is undermining the American economy.”

Right. Apparently, that’s why the countries with the highest birth rates, like Sierra Leone and Chad are so rich, and countries with among the lowest, like Sweden and Switzerland, are so desperately poor?

This isn’t the place to point out the risible foundations of the “we must have more babies or the world will collapse” argument. Plenty of economists have pointed out that the “growth” model can be replaced by a healthy “sustainability” model. The transition may be wrenching, but far less so than the apocalyptic impact on our planet of ever-growing voracious human appetites.

What I’m wondering — to get to the point of this post — is why religious conservatives are so eager to have large families? I get the economic argument (we need more future workers to maintain retired ones), but the churches were urging their flocks to “be fruitful and multiply” long before anyone thought up modern pension schemes, or modern feminism. Beyond the instinct to reproduce and survive, what are the theological roots of this obsession with making babies?

I know my Mormon friends believe, or so they tell me, that there are countless billions of “pre-born souls” wandering around up in the ether, each longing to be born. Thus, having a large family is an act not of irresponsibility but of self-sacrifice: parents give up their freedom in exchange for the satisfaction of helping as many of these pre-born souls as possible become incarnate. (My LDS friends, please tell me if I’ve misrepresented the idea.) Some of my friends in the Kabbalah Centre believe that in the Beginning, God created a “vessel” which then shattered into trillions of tiny sparks. Each of these sparks is a sentient soul, and each longs to be born into human flesh for the sake of reassembling the broken vessel and completing what in Hebrew is called tikkun olam, the repair of the world. Thus for Mormons and Kabbalists, family size limitation is selfish on an eschatalogical level — it delays the final redemption and robs the “pre-born” (the term sends chills down my spine) of their shot at participating in the glories of incarnation. Continue reading ‘Babies, family planning, environmental stewardship and the needs of the preborn: the real roots of the culture war’

More linkage: Magical thinking and unplanned pregnancy, a new report

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 03, 2009
in Birth control and contraception, Sexuality and Youth
. 2 Comments

Since I’m in a linky mode today, let me direct readers to a PDF file (cap tap to Kate D.) from the good people at the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. Entitled Magical Thinking: Young Adults’ Attitudes and Beliefs about Sex, Contraception, and Unplanned Pregnancy, it takes a detailed look at some of the issues that came up in these two posts last year.

The study looks at young adults, whom the National Campaign defines as 18-29 year olds. These aren’t minors, and yet the fatalistic attitude towards pregnancy which we often associated with younger folks is all-too-prevalent among those who surely ought to fall into the “old enough to know better” category.

A note on the National Campaign: its chair is Thomas Kean, the Republican politician who served on the 9/11 commission. Yes, Virginia, there are pro-choice Republicans who are passionately committed to women’s rights and environmental causes. Tom Kean is a good lad, and he’s a fine ally on at least some issues. Would that more in his party were of his caliber and of his views.

Colleges and Crisis Pregnancy Centers: troubling signs of an alliance

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 12, 2008
in Abortion, Birth control and contraception and Sexuality
. 13 Comments

The new Ms. Magazine is on the shelves. The feature article (only a preview is available for free online — please subscribe) is on the disturbing growth in the number of college health centers who refer pregnant students (or those who think they might be pregnant) to CPCs: “crisis pregnancy centers.” Crisis Pregnancy Centers, funded by churches and, increasingly, by the federal government, are in the business of preventing abortion by counseling pregnant women and girls to carry to term. They rarely, if ever, offer the same panoply of health care options that might be found at, say, a Planned Parenthood clinic.

A survey conducted this past summer by the Feminist Majority Foundation, publisher of Ms., found that of 398 campus health centers at four-year colleges that responded to a questionnaire, 48 percent routinely refer women who think they might be pregnant to CPCs. Although 81 percent also refer women to full-service health clinics, some campus centers say they want to give students “all of the options,” as one health-center director put it.

But CPCs don’t offer all the options; rather, they push the unsuspecting young women who walk through their doors to keep the pregnancy. They often push dubious, or even long-since debunked statistics about the correlation between abortion and suicide, depression, breast cancer, and difficult conceiving future children. While health-care providers are required by state law and the Hippocratic oath to put the well-being of the patient first, CPCs follow a mandate to protect only one entity, the “pre-born baby” growing inside the body of a woman whose own needs are of, at best, secondary concern. Indeed, other than providing anti-abortion counseling, there’s very little that CPCs can offer:

19 year-old Nina Lopez, a student at nearby Santa Monica College, encountered CPC tactics first-hand:

“Even before I found out I wasn’t pregnant, the counselor said I should abstain from
sex,” says Lopez. She picked up a fact sheet on “post-abortion stress” and was asked to fill
out a form that sought nonmedical information about her family and her religious beliefs.
And then, when her urine test revealed not a pregnancy but a possible urinary tract infection,
the center did not offer her any medical treatment or refer her elsewhere.

College health clinics who refer students to CPCs thus put their clients’ health at risk. All medical providers have an obligation to either provide necessary care, or to refer to another provider who can provide that care. Nina Lopez’s UTI was not of interest to the CPCs, however, so she received neither care nor a referral. The fault lies as much with the college health department that referred her as with the CPC itself. Continue reading ‘Colleges and Crisis Pregnancy Centers: troubling signs of an alliance’

Pleasure, Prophylaxis, Procreation: more on “jumping the life to come” and unintended pregnancy

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 12, 2008
in Birth control and contraception and Youth
. 5 Comments

This post two weeks ago about contraception and adolescent risk-taking sparked some rather heated discussion. In an effort to shed light rather than merely generate heat, reader Kate sent me an article (not available online, she sent the PDF): Pleasure, Prophylaxis and Procreation:
A Qualitative Analysis of Intermittent Contraceptive Use
And Unintended Pregnancy, which appears in the September 2008 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

The study looks at what the authors call “pregnancy ambivalence”. It hasn’t been studied before:

Indeed, reflecting the field’s general neglect of the
role of sexuality in reproductive behaviors, few researchers
have examined whether unprotected sex or
ambivalence about pregnancy may heighten the sexual
experience, or whether the romantic notion of creating
a child with someone may deter the use of contraceptives.
We know little about the emotional, physical
and cognitive states that contribute to situations in
which lack of contraceptive use is pleasurable or purposeful
to women and men.

The study makes clear that the availability of safe and legal abortion has little bearing on the decision couples make to “spontaneously” avoid the use of contraception. Indeed, the idea of abortion as a “back-up” is never mentioned in the study. Rather, the triggers for intermittent contraceptive use, in addition to the phenomenon of “pregnancy ambivalence”, are three distinct types of pleasure both women and men may derive from unprotected intercourse:

1. Active eroticization of pregnancy risk. The least common
but most direct articulation of the pleasures of pregnancy
ambivalence took form in the eroticization of pregnancy
risk. In these cases, participants described increased
sexual arousal at the prospect of conception.

2. Passive romanticization of procreation. In many cases,
ambivalence manifested not as heat-of-the-moment
arousal, but as a less dramatic romanticization of the
general idea of a pregnancy with a particular partner.
Certain respondents flirted with pregnancy in the form of
a subtle romantic fantasy that also contributed to intermittent
use or non-use of contraceptives. While these
respondents did not actively intend to conceive, they did
not stringently avoid pregnancy, either.

3. Escapist pleasures. Even when they were not planning
or hoping for a baby, several respondents came to
embrace an unintended pregnancy as a way to foster
a relationship, cultivate a new family and potentially
escape the hardships of their lives. Not surprisingly, only
less socially advantaged women—especially those who
had become pregnant at a young age—described this
phenomenon. Pregnancies represented temporary hopes
that things would get better and that their unborn
children would enjoy brighter futures. Continue reading ‘Pleasure, Prophylaxis, Procreation: more on “jumping the life to come” and unintended pregnancy’

The longing to “jump the life to come”: some thoughts on Shakespeare, pregnancy scares, contraception, and romantic myths

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on October 29, 2008
in Abortion, Birth control and contraception, Favorite Posts 2008, Memories, Sexuality, Youth and Youth ministry
. 69 Comments

There are a great many things I could blog about this morning, my own pre-election anxiety not least among them. I’m grateful that I’m leaving town (actually, the country) from tomorrow afternoon until late Sunday night — and that will give me a break from incessant poll-checking. Yesterday, I visited RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight and the DailyKos at least a dozen times each. I met with Stephanie, my Pilates trainer, this morning at 6:00. Though I normally do a private session with her three times a week, because of my travel schedule I won’t see her until next Wednesday morning — the day after the election. “We won’t see each other until after the election”, I blurted on my way out the door. “Oh God”, Stephanie replied, “I know. Let’s hope we’re both giddily happy at this time a week from now.” “Amen, sister”, I replied.

I will have more posts up about porn soon, but I am always reluctant to post too often about the same issue. I have a diverse group of readers, fortunately, and want to do my best to cover as many bases as possible. Two important voices for sex workers rights and for a “pro-porn” position, Amber Rhea and Renegade Evolution, have thoughtful responses to my recent posts. (Ren’s site may not be work-safe for all.) I’m glad respectful dialogue can happen.

I’m thinking about something else sex-related this morning. In the past month, three of the students I mentor (two women, one man) have come to me reporting pregnancy scares. They are all between 18-21, and each is in a committed relationship, though not with one another. In the case of the lad and one of the gals, the tests came back negative; in the case of the second young woman, she’s planning on taking a pregnancy test later today. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I do have a solid number of students of both sexes whom I mentor — and some of those students choose to seek me out for advice about their private as well as their intellectual lives. In cases where professional counseling is needed, my motto is “affirm and refer”, but in most instances, what these students need is a safe and reliable ear. Given that I teach so many courses on gender and sexuality, it makes sense that some students would seek me out for direction and counsel. I see it as part of my job, remembering that in my college days, I had a few professors from whom I sought personal as well as professional advice.)

I’m familiar with pregnancy scares. Heck, I’m familiar with unintended pregnancies, both in my own life as an adolescent and in my work as a teacher and youth leader. I have helped arrange (and in a couple of instances, helped pay for) abortions, and helped facilitate one adoption. I have been to two weddings of former students who got married as a result of a pregnancy. I’m honored to be trusted by as many young people as I am, and I hope to continue to be worthy of that trust.

But I’ve been thinking more about why so many young people I know choose not to use contraception. The gal who came to see me yesterday had been on the Nuvaring, but her insurance coverage lapsed, and she couldn’t get the scrip refilled. She and her beau had condoms available, but chose not to use them. “I don’t know why we’re so stupid”, she said to me yesterday. The young man I work with who came to me last week, worried his girlfriend might be pregnant, also reported that “condoms were available” at the key moment, but “we went ahead without them anyway.” I wasn’t shocked. When I got my high school girlfriend pregnant, we had condoms nearby as well. I didn’t like wearing them, and my girlfriend said she hated the way they felt. So we used them “some of the time”. And predictably, a pregnancy resulted.

The $64,000 question is: “Why?” Why do bright, educated young people who are very clear about how exactly babies are made choose to have unprotected heterosexual intercourse so very often? Why, on many occasions, do they find such flimsy excuses for not using contraception, even when contraceptive devices are easily available? In some cases, of course, lack of affordability is an issue — condoms aren’t as cheap as some folks think, and other forms of prescription contraception have grown much more expensive in recent years. In other cases, one partner (almost always the male) will nag the other about how “uncomfortable” condoms are. But in plenty of cases, these young people have access to reliable methods of birth control, and choose not to use them. Ignorance is not an all-encompassing explanation, and neither is expense. Something else is at play. Continue reading ‘The longing to “jump the life to come”: some thoughts on Shakespeare, pregnancy scares, contraception, and romantic myths’

The Pill, autonomy, male responsibility, and the virtues of body sovereignty

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on June 02, 2008
in Birth control and contraception, Memories and Teaching
. 27 Comments

As noted on Friday, historian (and fellow UCLA Ph.D.) Elaine Tyler May is looking for stories about the Pill.

Since she asks for stories from men whose partners have used the Pill, I’ll take the invitation to offer some thoughts.

I lecture on birth control every semester in my women’s history class. I always begin the same way, by talking about semantics, namely to make what ought to be an obvious point: “birth” control is not identical to contraception. The very names make clear the difference: birth control encompasses a wide variety of methods to give women control over their entire (or nearly entire) reproductive process; contraception is, evidently, limited to those methods designed to prevent conception. Contraception, in other words, is a subset of but never a synonym for birth control. One key feminist goal remains ensuring safe and reliable access not merely to contraceptive technology but to birth control.

Invariably, some students get confused, largely because the phrase “birth control” in their minds has come to mean only the Pill. When they hear an expression such as “Mary’s on birth control”, they assume that means oral contraceptives. This equation of birth control with the Pill hasn’t changed noticeably since I first started teaching fifteen years ago. Nearly five decades after it first appeared on the market, the Pill continues to exercise a powerful hold on the language — as well, of course, on the bodies — of women young enough to be the granddaughters of the first generation to use it. Continue reading ‘The Pill, autonomy, male responsibility, and the virtues of body sovereignty’

Flying with Senator Scott, and a call for stories about the Pill

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 30, 2008
in Birth control and contraception, Books and Traveling
. 0 Comments

I’m home from a very quick trip up to Yuba City for our niece’s graduation last night. On the flight down from Sacramento to Burbank this morning, I got a chance to chat with the former Pasadena City College president, Jack Scott. Jack’s now a state senator and soon to be the chancellor of the California community college system; a fellow historian, he was very kind to me when I was first hired. I worked on his 1996 and 1998 assembly campaigns, and have always admired him for the decent, thoughtful way in which he blends his passionate faith (he’s an ordained Baptist minister) with strong progressive politics. When you fly on a Friday between Sacramento and Burbank, you’re guaranteed to have at least one state legislator on board; I’m glad that today it was my own state senator and former campus president.

But the point of this post is to pass along an announcement, sent to me by Courtney Martin.

Elaine May, who teaches history at Minnesota, is writing a book about the Pill. Here’s the announcement she sends out:

Dear Friends (and friends of friends…),

The Pill is often considered one of the most important innovations of the twentieth century. As I investigate this claim for a new book—set for release on the 50th anniversary of the Pill’s FDA approval (Basic Books, 2010)—I’m looking to include the voices and stories of real people. I hope yours will be one of them. I’m eager to hear from men as well as women, of all ages and backgrounds.

· Have you or any of your partners taken the Pill? Why or why not? How did it work for you—physically, emotionally, and ethically? How has it compared with other contraceptive methods you or your partners have used?

· What has been the impact of the Pill on your sex life, relationships, political or social attitudes, and beliefs about the medical or pharmaceutical establishments?

· Do you have opinions about public policies related to access, availability, approval or limitations on the development and distribution of the Pill and related contraceptive products (the patch, the “morning after pill,” long-term injections, etc.).

· Anything else you think I should know?

Send me your most richly detailed answers to any and all of these questions (and don’t forget to include your age, gender, where you live, occupation, ethnic/religious/racial background, sexual orientation, marital status, political party affiliation, or any other biographical info you think is important). If you would like to participate in my study but would prefer to respond to a questionnaire, please let me know and I will happily send you one.
I’m interested in hearing from men and women who have used the Pill and those who have not, those who used it briefly or a long time ago, or who use it now. I am also eager to hear from people who work in fields that relate to the use and availability of the Pill (such as medicine, public health, social work, education, etc.). You will remain anonymous. I will use your contact information only to respond to you directly and to let you know when the book will be available for purchase (at a discount to contributors!).

And just one more thing. I not only want to hear your voice, but the voices of those you love, teach, preach to, learn from, and work with. Please pass this request on! The more responses I receive, and the greater the diversity of respondents, the more the book will reflect the wide range of experiences and attitudes that have shaped the Pill’s history over the last half century.

I hope to hear from you. Please write to me at elainetylermay@gmail.com.

I’ll be blogging my own answers soon enough.