From today's perspective, it's hard to imagine a medical breakthrough so monumental that it would be known universally as "the Pill." But that's exactly what happened fifty years ago this month when the Advisory Committee of the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive for use as birth control. It was, indeed, monumental.
The notion that women might take charge of their fertility with an effective, female-controlled method of contraception was revolutionary in and of itself. It challenged the very essence of what society expected of women and what women expected for themselves.
Today, we take birth control mostly for granted but a woman's ability to decide when or whether she will have a child or an additional child is essential to her ability to participate fully and equally in society. Having access to birth control, increases a woman's ability to earn a living, complete school and, when she's ready, give birth to healthier babies who, in turn, tend to be healthier children.
It's fitting that the Pill's Golden Anniversary should follow on the heels of this spring's monumental passage of health care reform. Tucked inside the historic legislation signed into law by President Obama is the Women's Health Act. This measure requires health plans to cover at no or low cost comprehensive preventive care and screenings that address women's unique health care needs. At this point, coverage of the Pill and other forms of contraception are not explicitly named.
The Pill's 50th Anniversary provides a timely reminder that, without access to birth control, health care reform is not really meaningful health care reform for the vast majority of women. It's hard to imagine anything more unique to women's healthcare needs than birth control.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), the average American woman and family wants to have two children. To achieve this, the woman will spend approximately five years trying to become pregnant, pregnant or postpartum. She will spend roughly three decades trying to avoid becoming pregnant. It bears repeating that the average American woman spends thirty years, more or less, trying to prevent unwanted pregnancies.
Over the next few months, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will write the rules and regulations that will either include contraception as preventive care or not. To fulfill the promise of real access to prevention for millions of women, it is essential that HHS includes the Pill and other forms of contraception as part of the preventive health package for women. This is particularly true if health care reform is to be meaningful for those who need it the most.
In North Carolina, 21% of women in their childbearing years are without health coverage of any sort. An additional 11% of women in childbearing years rely on Medicaid for family planning services. Without taking teenagers into account, roughly a third of women in NC rely on or need some form of publicly funded birth control. These are the very women for whom health care reform promises to make all the difference.
For all women, birth control means far more than being able to plan pregnancies. Birth control means being able to take responsibility for our lives. It means being able to plan for our education, our career and our children. At heart, birth control means that a woman's destiny is not determined by biology, her marital status or her fertility.
This week we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Pill– a revolutionary moment in time that helped usher in women's full participation in our society. Let's hope that 50 years from now we're celebrating health care reform's ushering in true access to preventive care for women.
Paige Johnson is the Director of Public Affairs at Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina
