HAPPY (?) ANNIVERSARY TO "THE PILL"

By Tim Rohr

HISTORY.COM: On May 9, 1960, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control pill—Enovid-10, made by the G.D. Searle Company of Chicago, Illinois. FULL ARTICLE

Aside from the moral controversy, there is the basic fact that "the pill" is not "medication." 

Medication is stuff you put into your body to fix something that is wrong with it. "The pill" is stuff a woman puts into her body to stop something that is right with it: ovulation. 

Medication is also something you stop taking once the problem is fixed. That's not what happens with "the pill." A woman wanting to avoid conception might ingest "the pill" for decades. 

It is hard to imagine anyone not asking the obvious: 

What are the consequences of chemically forcing your body to suppress something it is naturally designed to do (ovulate) and possibly for decades?

We don't hear about them much, or at all, but there are a ton of cases brought by women who have been harmed by "the pill." Here's a couple:

On July 24, 1976, after approximately three years of using the pills, MacDonald suffered an occlusion of a cerebral artery by a blood clot, an injury commonly referred to as a stroke. The injury caused the death of approximately twenty per cent of MacDonald's brain tissue, and left her permanently disabled.

MacDonald v. Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp., 394 Mass. 131, 134 (Mass. 1985)

On June 26, 1991, Ms. Gurski went to the Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts, with severe abdominal pain. After an initial analysis, she was airlifted to Hartford Hospital where she underwent surgery for a ruptured hepatic adenoma (benign liver tumor). To control the hemorrhaging, a right hepatectomy was performed which resulted in the removal of sixty percent of her liver. On July 23, 1991, Ms. Gurski was released from the hospital only to be readmitted the next day due to an abscess around her liver. She was ultimately released on August 11, 1991 and to this day suffers permanent injuries.

Gurski v. Wyeth-Ayerst, 953 F. Supp. 412, 413-14 (D. Mass. 1997)

Note: In Gurski, the manufacturer of the drug, in part, lost its case because, as the court pointed out, the literature accompanying the drug downplayed the risks of liver tumors by repeatedly using the words "rare," "very rare," and "extremely rare." (Familiar words whenever we hear about the potential risks and harms of chemical contraception.)

Beyond the tragedy of damaged women and their ensuing legal battles, there is a whole genre of cases with an ironic twist: men suing women for not being on birth control and getting pregnant. Just google "man sues woman for not using birth control." 

It appears "the pill" liberated the wrong sex.