The Bitter Pill
Can you consent if you're not informed?
Writer Mary Harrington once observed that feminism in our day owes most of its success not to the rise of liberalism, but rather to various advances in technology. Feminists probably won’t want to hear it, but the Industrial Revolution did as much to give women choices away from their homes and children as the arguments about equality ever did. Harrington points out that when work which had traditionally been completed by women, such as weaving and sewing, moved from homes to factories, women were pressed to follow. The same influence could be credited to the war machine of the early twentieth century, which catalyzed the normalization of separate home and work lives for women.
But no technology enabled “women’s liberation” quite so dramatically as the contraceptive pill. It single-handedly began to push apart marriage, sex and children into little fragments. Bestowing the magical power to “plan” families, women could now be as unconstrained as men, or so the thinking went. Harrington calls the Pill the first trans-humanist technology; it appeared that through sheer cleverness, humanity had reined in nature’s unruly system and transcended human limitation. Yet there is a limit to how much you can tinker with God’s creation before it comes back to bite you. It would seem half a century later, that we messed around and found out. Unfortunately, women often don't know the danger until they’re neck deep in it.
The pandemic years revealed more than ever that the scientific establishment is not above corruption, especially drug companies. We now know that pharmaceutical makers cut plenty of corners in the race to win the lucrative prize of delivering the first covid vaccine. The apparent urgency of the situation was used to justify shorter term studies than were usually required; the same for small study sizes. Safety goalposts were moved and harms downplayed. The cozy relationship between drug companies and regulators saw top execs shift from one side to the other, with no conflict of interest seemingly felt. Some elusive “greater good” was more important than these trifle concerns.
In many ways, the covid years were not something out-of-the-ordinary, however. Admittedly, the level of malpractice and manipulation (as well as the amount of damage) was unprecedented on account of our globally-connected age – it was hard to escape the fallout entirely, no matter your level of participation in the program. But we tend to forget that what we saw in the pandemic was not really new. The predictable trend for corporations to maximize profit and of officials to want to make their mark at any cost did not break out with the novel coronavirus. The naive rarely understand what is being done to them and the vulnerable usually lack agency to stand up for themselves. History repeats itself because human nature runs in patterns. The powerful fearmongering over the pandemic allowed subterfuge to be packaged in with a message the public wanted to hear. We wanted to believe there was a miracle drug, a quick fix to solve the problem. The tale of the birth control Pill is no different.
People began to suspect the contraceptive pill was dangerous from the outset and the evidence began piling up. Just over fifty years ago, Senator Gaylord Nelson (yes, the one who founded Earth Day) convened an investigation into the safety of the Pill. It had been discovered that just 132 women had been trialed on the Pill for only twelve months before the FDA had approved it. The British Medical Journal had published an alarming study showing that women on the Pill were at a much higher risk of blood clots and stroke. Feminist journalist Barbara Seaman had also published a bombshell book of interviews with physicians who were concerned about the Pill in 1969.
The Nelson Pill hearings aimed to provide, as Senator Nelson put it, “the best and most objective information available” for people to decide. In a time before patient information pamphlets were required to be included with medication, such a hearing was in the public interest. How can you consent if you’re not informed? The inquiry ended up uncovering medical negligence and a long list of side effects. It was clear that the drug developers and regulators knew that the Pill caused strokes and breast cancer, triggered auto-immune diseases, and higher rates of manic depression but went ahead anyway.
If you think on it a bit, it will come as no surprise that the development of the hormonal contraceptive pill was sponsored by depopulation devotees, concerned about the planet straining under the weight of too many people. Or, perhaps, too many of the wrong type of people. Margaret Sanger made no secret of her approval of eugenics and gladly roped her wealthy friends into funding the development of synthetic hormones in the hope that it would allow assist population control. Scientists tested the contraceptive Pill on women from the slums of Los Angeles and Puerto Rico with, it seems to me, little regard for their lives.
But that was then and this is now, right? All these decades later, even teenage girls are advised by their doctors to start on the Pill to reduce menstrual pain, stabilize their mood, regulate their cycles, even to clear up their skin in the bargain. Oh, and to prevent pregnancy, of course. Women remain on hormonal contraception for years and years and they’re okay, aren’t they? Governments have started to regulate estrogen-like “forever chemicals” in our plastic containers, so surely if there was danger from ingesting it every morning, they would tell us?
Unlike some of the worst drug scandals in living memory – the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide disaster, the 1955 Cutter Incident, thalidomide, opioid addiction – the damage from sophisticated modern drugs can be harder to detect. It may not be as obvious as “patient takes drug today and exhibits new symptoms tomorrow”. Doctors may dismiss patient’s concerns that autoimmune diseases and cancers are connected to their taking the Pill, since those are considered “genetic” conditions. But that doesn’t mean a chemical compound, in this case a synthetic hormone no less, isn’t responsible for upsetting processes which were mitigating damage or is itself cascading harm through biological systems. Research into the interrelatedness of physiological systems (I’m thinking of gut biome, diet, immunity and epigenetics, just to name a few) suggest that we know better than that now.
Other known Pill-induced side effects, such as depression or anxiety are seen as standalone issues and treated with yet more drugs. A large study found that children of women who recently stopped using hormonal contraception were 30% more likely to have ADHD, which is usually treated, yet again, with drugs. The ability to spin these seemingly-unconnected ailments off as happenstance reminds me of the messaging around covid and its vaccines. Rather than consider that the vax might be creating toxic substances using the body’s own systems, doctors seemed hypnotized into the mantra: maybe it’s long covid?
Mike Gaskins, a documentary maker, has been writing for a long time about the dangers of hormonal birth control. Even though this generation of Pill is not quite the same as the original, he understood that ingredients hormonal birth control are known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors and that estrogen plays a big role in autoimmune diseases and cancers. In a recent podcast, he retells how his chance encounter with a world-renowned autoimmune disease doctor piqued his curiosity – why did this revered physician not connect the potential impact of the Pill on his field of expertise?
Gaskins started to dig into the murky history and scientific literature around chemical contraception. Once he started writing up his findings, messages from people harmed by the Pill began coming in – parents whose daughters had taken their own lives after starting on contraception, one whose daughter had collapsed and died, women who had strokes, blood clots and all the rest. He hopes one day all the injured will combine their voices and make the message clear.
Of course, with their limited understanding, governments try to stave off the worst outcomes, but there are usually unintended consequences. In the wake of the thalidomide scandal, the Kefauver–Harris Amendment of 1962 aimed to make drug manufacturers prove the efficacy of their products. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 had ruled that drugs must be safe, but this additional Act “strengthened the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's control” of drug regulation, which as the pandemic showed, is not always an unalloyed good. The Bayh–Dole Act of 1980 sought to promote innovation by allowing private entities to retain ownership of their government-funded inventions, but this paved the way for corporate- and university-held patents. Again, a two-edged sword.
The squandering of public trust by so many institutions during the pandemic was needless, yet I can’t help but wonder if all these machinations of government and the greedy deceit of drug companies would have had less impact on us if we weren’t such idolatrous control freaks. Harsh, I know, but isn’t that why suffering hits so hard? We all want to believe we are in control of our lives and that we have earned it. So if something is not as you’d like it, you’ve just got to find the right app, pill or method and things will be sweet. Even with something as mysterious as procreation, it’s easy to hermetically seal off the concept of “having kids” from the rest of life’s randomness. Children are not in the “gift from God” category, they’re in the “when-I’m-good-and-ready” box. Isn’t that why an unexpected pregnancy would not be met with joy?
As a society, we really have bought into the ambient assumption that science can solve our problems including the getting of children. But it is a lie. The average young woman, if she thinks about her fertility at all, assumes it’s largely in her hands. She has absorbed the idea that, if necessary, she will be able to use drugs to procure children when she desires them and also to do away with any babies she doesn’t want. In the mean time, she has things she wants to do before she becomes a mom. But it’s a trap. An article at Mercator argues that “unplanned childlessness” is what is driving low birth rates, not smaller families. Educators will tell “students not to have children in order to save the planet; yet rarely do they discuss the fertility window and preparing for family life.” Throw the Pill and its complications into that mix and too many women find themselves with waning fertility and there is no drug to get it back again.
No doubt, dear reader, you are awake, but many are not. It was reported just last week that hormonal birth control will be available over-the-counter very soon in America, with one advocate saying it will be “real big game changer for women and their reproductive rights.” American women and teens will be able “to purchase contraceptive medication as easily as they buy aspirin.” Many women, convinced the Pill is the ticket to the life they want, will not be aware of what they’re consenting to by taking it. How would they know unless they ask and, really, why would they ask?
I realize there are many “what abouts” in this discussion which I have not addressed, nor would I want to impose upon another’s conscience. But it is hard to deny the anti-natalist fog that has quietly swept over our society and indeed crept into the church. There are many important ways the church can comfort the barren, support young parents and encourage better ways of thinking about God’s gift of children, but we have to have to face some hard truths first. The damage from hormonal contraception is difficult to detect and often taboo. But gently raising awareness of the danger is a way to love our neighbors. If we truly believe that all of life is a gift from a loving Creator, that it is his mercy that sustains the whole universe, the difference that makes is something this world needs to see.