Birth Control Pill Context

FDA approval of the pill ushered in era of information about contraception.
Op-ed columnist Gail Collins wrote in the New York Times (5/8, A21), "A thousand years ago, popular birth control methods in the Western world included spitting into the mouth of a frog, eating bees and wearing the testicles of a weasel. In Córdoba, Spain, which was supposed to be on the scientific cutting edge, women were told to leap up and down vigorously after sex, and then jump backward nine times." Collins added that we should "give thanks that we avoided the era of the weasel testicles." She noted that the FDA approved the pill 50 years ago on Mother's Day. Collins also discussed the obstacles advocates faced in providing women with information about contraception, and noted that Margaret Sanger "was the first person to publish an evaluation of all the available forms of birth control."
The pill's "bad image" endures partly because it must still be prescribed, obstetrician says. British obstetrician Malcolm Potts writes in a Los Angeles Times (5/10) op-ed, "I knew the biologists who developed 'the pill' and the doctors who tested it. In the 1960s, as a young obstetrician in Britain, I began prescribing oral contraceptives. I saw how they gave women a freedom they'd never known." But, "from the get-go the pill was intensely controversial. Would women become sexual hedonists? Would the pope approve its use? Was the pill so dangerous it should be taken off the market?" Potts says that in-depth studies on the pill have revealed that it is safe, "suppresses ovulation," and "is the only drug a doctor can prescribe that is known to prevent cancer." Yet, it continues "to have a bad image," in part "because it has remained a prescription drug."