CBC Radios The Current ran a great show on contraception this morning. It discussed the birth control pill, which is often credited with liberating women sexually and socially transforming society. But the show went further than many mainstream discussions of the pill and revealed some of the myths of the pill, including the racist underpinnings of the its development and the ways in which contraception is marked along racial, class and (more obviously) gender lines. The birth control pill has a shady past. For example, Margaret Sanger, the American woman credited with leading the US movement for birth control, was mostly interested in developing a pill for population-control reasons. She was a supporter of the eugenics movement and believed the pill would be effective in preventing poor women of colour from reproducing. The Current mentioned briefly that the pill was first tested by American researchers in Puerto Rico, but fails to fully explore some of the racist reasons why the pill was tested on Puerto Rican women, and doesnt mention that drugs developed by big pharmaceutical companies are still tested in third world countries, often without informing people of the potential side effects. The show covered a lot of other interesting pill-related issues. Listen to it here.
-
The myth of the pill
April 25, 2006 • Nicole Cohen
Like what you're reading? Please consider joining The Hall of Shameless to help sustain this volunteer-run project.
Discuss this story
Shameless prides itself on the diversity of opinions expressed by our writers, and we encourage and appreciate different points of view. Our intention at Shameless is to foster community and to maintain a safe and positive blogging environment; we do not consider it our duty to give a voice to anybody with an opinion.
Discussion on this site is moderated. We will delete comments that:
- use discriminatory language
- use hate speech
- attack our bloggers or other commenters
- are inflammatory.
(We get to decide what's discriminatory, hateful, attacking, or inflammatory).
In some cases, we will cap off comments on a discussion when we feel they are spiralling out of control and fostering an unwelcoming space for bloggers and readers. Comments will be closed by the Web Editor, unless the post is by the Web Editor, in which case the Editor in Chief will close them.
If your comments repeatedly make the same point, they may be deleted. This also applies to comments made by multiple members of the same organization.
Your comments should be about the topic of the post, not its writer—although we certainly encourage praise for our writers, if you want to say something nice.
