“The topic of birth control has never not been fraught, but it has also long been dominated by men,”
Well, as a man I am fully aware that whilst women may be empowered by the pill, men benefit at least as much. Whatever tthe word empowered is supposed to mean of course – As far as I can see it means little more than pretending that no distinction can be made between men and women. From a man’s point of view, women are much easier to lay if there is the promise of an easy way to avoid pregnancy. For whilst pregnancy is a life-changing, as well as a life-creating event for a women, it can easily prove little more than an inconvenience for a man. (Men who come here and deny that elementary biological and psychological fact are not telling the truth) Of course, prior to the pill, we found many creative ways to have fun. Perhaps Americans were too prim to indulge in such things and preferred bible-bashing – Each to his own.
We mustn’t forget that the risk of pregnancy provided young women with a very effective means of denying s e x to suitors who they didn’t fancy. Useful, as women are clearly a lot fussier than men (this is not a compelling argument for not being on the pill, but let’s not dismiss it entirely), I remember when my then girlfriend and I went to a family planning clinic to get a prescription. It seemed to me that the main concern of the polite but formidible ladies at the clinic was to ensure that I was in a serious relationship with my girlfriend. Rather quaint by modern standards perhaps, but I didn’t object, as I knew that their concern was genuine: Older women defending younger women – Lament the demise of the chaperone!

The pill did not liberate women, sexually, it liberated men… from the responsibility of parenthood, and spawned a legacy of single mothers. Sex outside of a loving, committed relationship is all upside for men and all downside for women. Hope this trend discontinues soon as we desperately need to get our birth rates up!

Also…

“For those funding the research, the pill represented a way to keep the wrong people from procreating.”

Indeed. Those people were eugenicists… same sorts of people who engineered the death camps. Evil, God-loathing types.

I had been on hormonal birth control since I was about 16 and only recently came off of it a few years ago at 33 (mainly due to a complete loss of trust for pharmaceuticals after the mRNA vaccine push).
I’ve suffered anxiety and depression my whole life, but within about 6 months of coming off the pill my symptoms subsided significantly. It’s definitely something that exists even though I’m no longer interfering with my hormones, but to a much smaller degree.
I had no expectations when ceasing use that anything would change, I had just become uncomfortable with long-term treatments that weren’t medically necessary.

Agree with a lot that has been said below already.
What baffles me as a women is how the medical Establishment ans big pharma suggest that a woman can become pregnant at any time… but the reality is that its only a few days a month which women if they follow their cycle and know their bodies can very well circumvent naturally without having to Pop hormone pills with all their potential side effects. That would be true empowerment.

As someone who has been put on the pill when I was 16 by my doctor for convenience sake of dealing with my teenage acne im horrified today of how “well meaning doctors” are treating their patients. There is in 99% of the cases NO I formed consent or true education.

What this article ignores is that not all women take the pill for pregnancy avoiding reasons. Some women suffer terribly every month with heavy, painful bleeding and wild hormonal mood swings and the pill can help relieve this, in the same way that some women benefit more from HRT than others.
I’d also add that hook up culture concerns should be more about the spreading of STIs than unwanted babies and condoms are the most effective for protecting against both.

The pill exists… take it if you want to, don’t take it if you don’t.
Are you adults with agency or mindless pawns unable to control your own life?
The author of this piece seems more than a little ambivalent about the entire subject, sitting on the fence throughout. Her only one concrete remark is that men are responsible for all the problems.
In terms of pros and cons surely one of our greatest concerns should be the female hormones excreted in urine that pollute our rivers and drinking water: adversely affecting the reproduction of amphibians, fish, and to and unknown extent, even humans.

In a way the pill took away a woman’s right to say “no”. Before the introduction of the pill, if a woman said “yes”, she’s a s/*t ( /=l, *=u, the algorithm doesn’t like the actual word); after the introduction, if she said “no” she is frigid. Either way, she was demonized. No such demonizing occurs for men.

I remember in the 80’s an advert came out saying to the effect that you are sleeping with every person that your partner has ever slept with-I think it was primarily aimed at gay/bi men to encourage condom use during the AIDS panic, but is no less applicable to heterosexuals today. The Pill has never been the panacea for sexual freedom/sexual liberation that its’ advocates have pushed. The one thing that the pill has never protected against, or prevented is venereal diseases (initially renamed sexually transmitted diseases, STDs, and now renamed the much less scary term, sexually transmitted infections, STIs) which are-once again-on the rise. The scary part is that some strains are resistant to any treatment that we currently have. Perhaps this is something that should be stressed in sex ed courses. Best to take no chances, use the pill for pregnancy and insist your partner wear a condom for both your safety.

As an old man I don’t have a player in this debate any more.
But I remember talking to three young Mormon women about the “Silver Ring” movement while hiking in Utah. I asked one what the pregnancy rate of young women who wore one was compared to the wider population. She looked me in the eye and said “about the same”.

Well it didn’t stop unwanted pregnancies, did it?

“The anti-pill contingent, represented by old-school conservatives and tradfluencers alike, suggest that women are so seduced by the illusory freedom of artificially-induced infertility that they become like hedonistic children, squandering their fertile years on meaningless hook-ups and breakneck career advancement at the expense of society at large.”

I’m sorry to say that this critique rings true to me and that it applies to both women and men. Demographic decline is like a tailspin, once you’re in it, it’s extremely difficult to recover and yet every incentive in modern society is oriented towards maximising economic growth to pay for the entitlements of the generation who put us in this tailspin in the first place by following this path.

Once their demographic has shrunk to the extent that it can no longer swing elections, these entitlements will be removed as unaffordable and stuffy old school conservatives will be left to clear up the generational damage done to societies by putting the desires of the individual, and the market that feeds them, above society as a whole.

What this article fails to consider is the importance of family life. Before reliable birth control women held the power in relationships because they had to select a reliable male partner who could support her and the family. Birth control has resulted in meaningless sexual relationship with family life and stable marriages being the victims.

Women are “pawns in the contraception war”?
Only if they wish to be pawns….only if they see themselves as pawns…only if they sit there, dumbly, simply waiting to be moved by The Expert Hand (preferably one which appears regularly on podcasts & talk shows spouting expertise). Otherwise they’re as free to ignore or not ignore the little sign on the pill bottle which says, “Eat Me!” as they ever were. As free, in fact, as the Man who drives past a new car lot whose sign says, “Buy Me!” ….or anyone who steps into a bar and finds the Bud Light banner which says “Drink Me!”.
The fact that — as with most things — there are groups who push one way and groups that push another is completely irrelevant. We all are free to listen or not listen: to jump down the rabbit hole, or not. Nothing really has changed.
But this fundamental freedom of choice is here obscured by a confusing litany of exaggerations and quibbles.
No…there is no ‘right wing war on contraception’….and no, Conservatives have not been experiencing ‘consternation’ at the development of hormonal contraception because they’re “categorically antagonistic … toward non-procreative sex.” Rather there is and has been a significant Conservative concern about non-marital sex and the accompanying increase in out-of-wedlock birthrates (families without fathers) and the accompanying increase in community poverty & crime all of which tend to be exacerbated when people believe in the myth of ‘sex without consequence’.
These concerns, as it happens, have been justified time and again over the last 60+ years.
The author scoffs at what she describes as “The anti-pill contingent, represented by old-school conservatives and tradfluencers alike, suggest that women are so seduced by the illusory freedom of artificially-induced infertility that they become like hedonistic children, squandering their fertile years on meaningless hook-ups and breakneck career advancement at the expense of society at large.” But surely we recognize that the Pill does seduce with the ‘promise’ of an artificially-induced infertility…as much as the “you can have it all” dogma produced by the Advertising Agency and Gender Studies (strange bedfellows!) seduces. The truth is the sexual freedom sold with those same little pill strips is illusory. There is no such thing as ‘sexual freedom’ … not really. Freedom, as they say, is just another word for nothing left to lose.
Equally illusory the belief that you can successfully and consistently make career (and ‘girls just wanna have fun’) the number one life priority until you’re 40…and then find a lifetime mate…and then get pregnant on command…and then raise multiple children in a blissfully happy family.
So yes, we do squander. We’ve always squandered; men and women alike. “The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” This is not new; this is not ‘old-school conservatives’ nor ‘tradfluencers’ — rather this is life. And the way forward has nothing to do with “the topic of birth control being long dominated by men” and everything to do with people making clear-headed decisions based upon solid life priorities and values. Zipless f**** is neither.

Oh please – I went on the combined pill at 18, as I never wanted children, and had zero side effects. In my 30s I switched to the mini pill, this was recommended given I was, and still am, a smoker – again zero side effects. The mini pill was so much better – no one week break, taken all month and zero bleeding. As the article states, the one week break was never necessary – and plenty of women carried on taking their pills if, for example, they were going on holiday. I can take the mini pill for one more year until I hit 55, and my doctor and I both hope that any irregular menopausal bleeding that might happen if I was not on the pill, will have stopped by then. The pill was a complete revolution for womens control over when or if to get pregnant, yes there are issues for some women – but I still consider it one of the most important innovations of the 20th century.

Sex is fun and it doesn’t cost anything. There is nothing wrong with casual sex and many things right with it from time to time. Like drugs & Rock & roll, there is a price to pay: pregnancies and STDs and the pill doesn’t protect one from the latter. Anyone who is ’empowered’ should be able to choose whatever sexual avenue works for them without feeling like a s**t or walking into anything that is inconvenient or life-altering and we have the wherewith-all to achieve that. Hooray!

“The loudest voices in this conversation leave little room for a middle way, one that empowers women to avoid pregnancy if they want to, but also supports them if they wish to become mothers.”
The author embraces the lie that “choice” is what’s really important in human sexuality – while complaining that the choices often seem unsatisfactory. She complains about religious-minded arguments for abstinence – while acknowledging that the consequences of sexuality and reproduction go deeper than “just the facts, ma’am.” (That depth is precisely religion’s concern, ma’am.)
I am not Catholic and have no objection to birth control. But it has insidiously fostered the notion that science has mastered reproduction, that gestation is a happenstance of women’s lives, that children are burdens, etc. We can even draw a line from the pill to men crushing women in women’s sports… if you can choose when to have children, you are in a sense choosing when to be a woman, and if you can choose when to be a woman you can choose to be a woman.
The pill is obviously not going anywhere. But what has to change is our attitude towards it. It’s “liberating” the same way that a narcotic is liberating. In very specific situations, it’s a life saver. But you can get addicted, and miss out on the best things life has to offer.
In short, a typical essay from Unherd’s stable of feminists, in which the author uses hyperbole to complain about hyperbole, and complains about contemporary conditions unaware that her perspective causes contemporary conditions.

Interesting until the last paragraph – it seems de rigeur to always blame a male collective. There is also a biological error – s**t shaming is by womwn against other women – to reduce the biological attractiveness of one’s rivals.

More to say later when I have more time, but I will initially point out that the only institution with a sane and compassionate view on the Pill… (Jordan Peterson’s “hydrogen bomb”) , is the Catholic church. The world’s only true liberalism.
Not an accident that it was racist eugenicists like Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger… uber “feminist” who led the “Birth Control” movement.
And women were not “liberated” by the Pill. The exact opposite occurred. They were instrumentalized.
Lancet showed that NFP.. Natural Family Planning is MORE effective than the pill, is taught in third world settings effectively , and doesn’t change the the entire psychological nature of those who employ it.
As a Catholic, a true liberal, I get awfully tired of boring ideological simpletons presenting sane people as “right wing” and conservative.
It is no accident that American eugenicists and racists like Sanger and the Birth Control movement were the progenitors to this killing and antihuman instrument of death and enslavement and the breakdown of natural human life and relationships. The enslavement of women to the corporate whim.
Fakes. Frauds.

There is nothing remotely liberating nor empowering about casual sex or the fertility crisis. When are feminists going to grow up?

As a Catholic its rather fascinating to see the portrayal we get in the press. Demographers point to the demise of the west; our heritage by 2150; one lifetime and a half roughly.
And the church teaches that interfering with natural healthy human functioning is a profound evil; a perversion in the true sense of the word. Inducing vomiting after eating comes to mind. Or is breaking a limb clear enough?
And NFP as Lancet reported is actually more effective than the PILL and without the horrible side effects that can include total personality disordering including no longer being sexually attracted to one’s significant other. Aww…no big deal.
And that fine Marxist ideological term… “empowering women”. Right. Look at all those empowered young women having their babies cut out of them.
And the abortions that follow irresponsible sex. But what could be wrong with killing children.
How about societal suicide and disappearance from life itself. No big deal right? After all.. its only the west.
Catholic teaching, which is based upon simple natural law; simple facts about us all, is simply sanity. Truth. About us all. It is fully defensible from reason alone.

The Pill is the pathway, the road too traveled that leads to the question du jour. What is a woman?

when Dr Gregory Pincus began testing an early prototype for the pill, his test cases were incarcerated, institutionalised, and impoverished women. In other words, women whose incapacitation and economic despair made them easy to take advantage of. It was a deplorable measure, in a desperate time: funding for birth-control research was banned by the US government until 1959, so Pincus’s work was supported by private donors, whose advocacy was directly downstream from an unsavoury enthusiasm for eugenics.

Oh, so not “eugenicists?” Like maybe people experiencing eugenics like beliefs?

Times are ALWAYS desperate. My vote for the next Guinea pigs is people who white wash using people as Guinea pigs. And I do mean white.