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The Tiny Pill
That Changed the World

Forty years ago few could have forseen how a medical
innovation would so dramatically reshape soceity.

by Melvin Rhodes

If you had to name which of the technological innovations of the 20th century changed our world the most, what would your answer be?

The automobile? Radio? Television? The green revolution? The atomic bomb? Younger people might say computers or the Internet.

All of these have had an immeasurable influence on our way of life, especially in the West. But one invention is often overlooked, even though it has had a profound effect. Now 40 years old, the full consequences of its introduction have not been realized as it takes us further and further into uncharted territory.

The birth-control pill was first given to women in Illinois in the summer of 1960. No one could have foreseen how it would revolutionize the world's morals, change the marriage customs of thousands of years, alter the roles of the sexes and contribute to a major decline in many nations' birth rates.

Societal changes

The pill didn't start the '60s revolution. Society is always changing, perhaps never more so than throughout the 20th century, and the pill has been a dramatic part of that change. It followed on the heels of other significant developments.

Two world wars had already had a profound effect. The role of women had changed considerably. Suddenly compelled by the thousands into jobs when the men mobilized for the military, women began
to work more outside the home and to fill roles that had been reserved for men during peacetime. They had also been given the right to vote.

Moral standards were already changing. Other forms of birth control were already available. But the pill went much further. Now women could have sex, supposedly risk free, anytime, anywhere, anyplace and with anybody. Rather than cherishing their virginity, some now boasted to their friends about how many men they'd had. Women were free to aggressively pursue men.

The pill changed women's attitudes, but it changed men's as well-perhaps even more so.

Read the full article at www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn32/tinypill.htm