The Pill at 50

More nostalgia today: fifty years ago today, the US FDA approved the oral contraceptive pill for use under medical supervision, specifically to treat "menstrual irregularities" - a convenient euphemism that enabled millions of American women to complain of menstrual irregularities. The Pill was not yet available in Australia; we had been married three years by 1960 and had to rely on the other available and often messy alternatives. I can't remember when we first moved in social circles where use of the Pill was commonplace, heard younger women chatting casually about how the Pill had liberated them; our main emotion was envy. There's no doubt it was a major contributor to the liberation of girls and women from excessive, inappropriate pregnancies and perpetual fear of unwanted pregnancy. It was among the small handful of really important twentieth century innovations in preventive and clinical medicine that had, and will always have, a transformative effect on society. It seems entirely fitting that its fiftieth anniversary should fall on Mother's Day.