Albert Mohler: The Pill-The Human Pesticide

Monday, April 26, 2010

Anniversaries and commemorations come and go as history unfolds, but few dates are as significant as May 9, 1960. On that day the Food and Drug Administration approved the sale and use of Enovid — the first mass pharmaceutical form of what is now simply known as “The Pill.” Quite simply, the world has never been the same since.

The 50th anniversary of the Pill will surely draw a great deal of media and cultural attention. TIME magazine devoted its My 3, 2010 cover story to the meaning of the Pill after a half-century. Executive Editor Nancy Gibbs wrote the main story, entitled “Love, Sex, Freedom and the Paradox of the Pill.” The magazine’s cover trumpeted the significance of The Pill with three short sentences: “So small. So powerful, And so misunderstood.” Misunderstood? Managing Editor Richard Stengel seemed to get the basic story just about right: “It was a medical breakthrough many years in the making, the most convenient and reliable form of birth control ever invented — but it quickly became much more. Arriving at a moment of social and political upheaval, the Pill became a handy proxy for wider trends: the rejection of tradition, the challenge to institutions, the redefinition of women’s roles.”
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The Pill turned pregnancy — and thus children — into elective choices, rather than natural gifts of the marital union. But then again, the marital union was itself weakened by the Pill, because the avoidance of pregnancy facilitated adultery and other forms of non-marital sex. In some hands, the Pill became a human pesticide.