Imagine a world without the Pill. It is difficult, but this is the reality for millions of women worldwide who lack access to reliable forms of contraception.
Sometimes, I wonder where I and other women would be without the birth control pill or other kinds of contraceptives. You might find this a silly mind-game. Yet as we mark the 50th anniversary of the approval of oral contraceptive pills in the US, the question still resonates. Would we fall pregnant at the wrong time? Would we be able to go to school and finish our education? Could we pursue a career?
If you ask me, the answer is clear: Access to contraceptives has had a myriad of social, health, and economic benefits. It has expanded our ability to manage fertility. It has put us in the driver’s seat of our own lives.
How it changed our lives
Opponents of the Pill – most often men – say it promoted promiscuity. Promoters of the Pill like to say that it sparked the sexual revolution. Certainly it was one factor and it became a symbol of women’s liberation. To me, the Pill – and other contraceptive methods – represent something else. Freedom over my reproductive life. Freedom to choose the number, timing and spacing of my children. Freedom to get an education and to pursue a career. I’ll even go as far as saying that the Pill has been life-changing in the sense that I can make life choices my mother – and definitely my grandmother – couldn’t.
Since 1960, more than 200 million women have used the Pill which makes it the most popular form of contraception worldwide. Along the way, new technologies have been added to the mix of contraceptives. But the sad fact is that too many women still don’t have access to modern contraceptives.
Consider these facts
More than 200 million women in developing countries cannot get modern contraception – either because of cost, availability or because their family doesn’t want them to use it.
I have met women all over the world, who want to prevent an unwanted pregnancy but can’t. The most recent example was this week in Malawi, where hundreds and hundreds of women queued up for hours and hours to get contraceptives.I’m dedicating this blog-post to these women.
According to a recent analysis, the immediate health benefits of fulfilling unmet need for contraception could result in 640,000 fewer newborn deaths and 150,000 fewer maternal deaths each year. One thing is imagining a world without the Pill. Another thing is imagining a world in which these newborns and mothers would still be among us.
50 Years after the Pill, the revolution remains incomplete. Let’s make sure that it doesn’t take another 50 years to until every woman can choose when and how many children to bear.
Join the competition!
Conversations for a Better World wants to hear from you. Take part in our global competition “Let’s talk about the Pill”, and submit your blog-post before June 4. The Pill and its consequences will be discussed during the Women Deliver conference, where the winning blog-post will be announced.
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I love the positive spin here!! Do you work in PR for some multi million dollar pharmacutical company or something?? Have you spoken to women who feel addicted to the pill and who feel like a slave to big business because at the age of 16 they believed that taking a medication every day of their lives untill they were around 50 sounded like a good idea they now can not not take it because of things like weight gain, mood swings and irradic periods?? I believe there are more than 200 million women on some form of hormonal birth controll but lets go with that, the pill has a 4 to 6 percent failure rate and when you consider that with the actual (estimated) number of women taking it that is a fair number of women this will fail based on pure statistics, then there are the women who's body can not take the pill at all!!
Selling the pill as a one size fits all solution to a problem will not work anymore!! We live in a technological age where we can gain as much information, real information that WE need to make choices about our bodies. Thank God us girls do not need to listen to old women with narrow minded views who truly believe that the pill will save the world!
About
Katja Iversen is a Media Specialist and Campaign Coordinator with the United Nations Population Fund, where she heads the communication effort on sexual and reproductive health and MDG 5. For more than 15 years she has worked in the field of communication and development: As Information and Web Officer with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, as Head of Information in the Danish Family Planning Association, as cross cultural trainer of corporate executives, as coordinator of various information and fundraising campaigns and as director of KatComm a communication company focusing on strategic and political communications. Katja is Danish and holds a Master's Degree in Communications, a Bachelor's Degree in Public Administration and certificates in Management, International Politics and Cross Cultural Communications. When she is not working, you will find Katja diving down to the corals, at the dance floor or discussing the state of the world with friends.
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Friday 7th May, 2010, 5:33pm
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