THE MAJORITY of women throughout the world who are allowed access to the pill will tell anyone who ask that it has revolutionised their lives and the lives of the family, which includes men.
Women up to the 1960s were having on average over six children, with ten not being uncommon.
Abortions were carried out by backstreet operators without regard to safe health practices.
Many women died without ever telling the authorities the name of such abortionists. With the advent of the pill, family sizes could be controlled, and the family began to advance, with a falling off of malnurishment in children.
Money formerly used to look after so many children could be used to attend to maternal health and the health of the smaller family, to educate the children, to afford housing.
It has also led to fewer abortions, and especially unsafe abortions, and deaths from what can sometimes be referred to as “butchery”.
To blame the pill for an increase in divorces, the lowering of moral standards and a rise in fidelity and promiscuity, the decline in the well-being of children, to the numbers living in poverty and the numbers experiencing child abuse or neglect, is to ascribe to the pill all of society’s issues and challenges.
Where is the evidence to support these allegations? Is it the pill that so worries the author of A Most Bitter Pill or is it the advancement of women and the continued request for equity and equality by more and more women that really has this person’s hackles up? I fear he doth protest too much!
MARLENE HEWITT
