So this Mother’s Day, The Chronicle Herald celebrated a little early by wishing a happy ann’y to the pill. I thought I had missed the boat on posting, but the articles celebrating the pill and its ‘achievements’ just keep coming. They’re all in the same vein, promoting the pill, painting the naysayers as backwards, unsuccessful hillbillies. The Herald was particularly strong on that, finding references so obscure they couldn’t even name the individual.
One Montreal psychiatrist concluded in 1965 that the pill made women unfeminine and that some patients complained “they were no longer interested in their homes, in their children, even in their husbands.”
Or this gentleman, and his defunct magazine.
“What we need is not birth-control, but self-control,” Ralph Cowan told the now-defunct Weekend Magazine. “If things go on this way, in 20 years we’ll have so many old people there won’t be enough young people to pay for their welfare programs.”
They finally conclude…
“Some doctors felt it was an abortifactant, that it provoked abortion,” she [Christabelle Sethna] explains. “They were confused how it worked because it was so new.”
Confused, or well informed?
This morning, Forbes released this little number, praising the pill. This quote from the CEO of Dermalogica is my favorite.
The birth control pill gave me the opportunity to delay having children and start my own company.
Amazing folks! Step right up, take this pill and you too can be an entrepreneur!
Pharmaceutical companies have gone a long way to promote the pill, it’s big business. What I would like to see, is a little less blind faith in it.
by 
I wish they would be more upfront about the increased risk of breast cancer. The studies are there, but the Cancer Society refuses to acknowledge them. Do you think they are afraid of the subsequent law suits?
I think there are claims that the pill increases and/or decreases certain health risks depending on the takers specific health situation. I don’t think it’s lawsuits, so much as lack of concrete, court withstanding, evidence.
“Dr Lesley Walker, director of information at Cancer Research UK said: “Previous studies have shown that the pill may increase the risk of breast cancer and lower the risk of ovarian cancer.” That’s from a BBC article in 2003 (source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2913465.stm)