The pill: How birth control pills have harmed society
ELAINE TYLER MAY planned the release of her new book in celebration of the 50th anniversary of FDA approval of the birth control pill to coincide with Mother’s Day 2010, and her article (“How the pill changed motherhood,” Opinion, May 9) connected the pill with better mothering.
The truth is, the pill kills families, the pill kills women, the pill kills babies and the pill kills the environment.
Since the pill was approved as a contraceptive in 1960 by the FDA, the institution of marriage has become endangered. The number of unmarried cohabitating couples has increased tenfold, from 439,000 to 4.2 million. Divorce rates have soared. Births to unmarried women have tripled. Some 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock each year.
The “contraceptive mentality” has resulted in decriminalization of abortion as a backup for failed contraception; 1.2 million children are aborted every year.
May rightly points out that women in the workplace are left with very little time to care for their children. In 1960, 70 percent of moms of childbearing age stayed home and 30 percent worked outside the home. Following the introduction of the pill, women flocked into the workplace.
Today, the numbers are reversed, with 30 percent staying home and 70 percent working outside the home. Many mothers who want to stay home with their children are forced into the workplace to make ends meet in a society that has built its economy around the two-paycheck family, thanks largely to the pill.
Many children stay at home alone for many hours every day, with no babysitter other than a television or a computer, a situation that has had a devastating effect on our children and on our society.
Studies show the pill has wreaked havoc on women. The health risks of the pill are legion; 50 women in Indiana alone have brought lawsuits against the makers of the popular contraceptives Yaz and Yazmin. The alleged lethal side effects include blood clots, strokes and pulmonary embolisms, among many others.
The pill has three modes of operation:
1) It impacts the mobility of the sperm by thickening cervical mucus.
2) It suppresses ovulation; however, breakthrough ovulation does occur.
3) If there is ovulation and an oocyte is penetrated, the newly conceived baby will not find a lush, nourishing endometrium, but a barren wasteland in its place, making it difficult for it to attach and received nourishment, which can result in the death of the baby in its earliest stages of development.
Additionally, scientists say the pill has endangered our fish population, because the synthetic estrogen contained in the pill is secreted through urine and ends up in our rivers and streams, via wastewater.
In fact, a 2006 study of the Potomac River and its tributaries found that 80 percent of male Smallmouth bass had strange intersex characteristics – these male fish were growing female reproductive parts. Scientists have also found that exposure estrogen may be one factor in the reduced production of immune-related proteins in fish, making them more susceptible to disease.
Demographic researcher Dennis Howard predicted the long-term economic consequences of the population implosion in his book, “The Abortion Bomb: America’s Demographic Disaster.” Howard heads up Movement for a Better America, an American Life League associate group in Mt. Freedom, New Jersey.
“The negative impact of the pill and abortion can be seen nowhere more clearly than in the black community with all the social costs that go with these — more children born out of wedlock, lower marriage and higher divorce rate, and higher poverty and incarceration rates,” Howard said. “Children born without the benefit of two parents are much more likely to suffer negative outcomes. Black mothers can thank the pill.”
Equally serious, he points out, is the demographic impact on our economy. To date we have had an estimated 52.7 million abortions, and — combined with more “efficient” birth control — the under-45 generation is more than 100 million people smaller than it would have been without them.
That translates, he says, into more than $70 trillion in lost GDP that is the underlying fundamental cause of our country’s current economic crisis. We just don’t have enough younger people to support the cost of the social revolution that the politicians of the Sixties promised the boomers and their parents, Howard says.
As women are becoming aware of the dangers of the pill, they are taking to the streets. On June 5, there will be protests nationally in front of Planned Parenthood facilities, pharmacies and at busy intersections. The women and men will be carrying signs that say “The Pill Kills” with the hope of lifting the veil of ignorance that leads so many women down the path of poor health and even death, and tears their families apart.