New Control for Women.
The development of a birth-control pill—which, taken daily, prevents the re-lease of a fertilizable egg from a woman's ovaries and thus makes it impossible for her to get pregnant—raised moral issues in the 1960s on both the personal and social levels. Throughout the decade greater numbers of women took the pill (actually there were twelve different varieties), breaking the link between sex and reproduction and giving the users unprecedented control over their own sexual behavior. Health concerns were frequently ex-pressed, and some critics argued that easy access to birth control was the same as condoning liberal sexual behavior; but, as Time magazine reported, by 1967 almost 20 percent of all American women who could conceive were using oral contraception.
Wonderful News for Sanger.
The pill was the product of decades of human fertility research conducted in various places, but...
Source: American Decades: 1960-1969, ©1994 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
(The entire page is 1019 words.)
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