Our July cover story on 50 years of The Pill (in the US, just over 40 in Canada) is now online. Our lead editorial on The Pill as false liberator is also available. An excerpt:
So, instead of fulfilling the promise of temporary infertility, that could be turned on and off like a switch, the pill has made infertility the default option for women. The pill has made romance and marriage – which, after all these years, is still the hope and the dream of all little girls – into a union which men do not have to enter. Uncommitted carnal couplings are now the place where women must attempt to find emotional fulfillment and lasting happiness. The pill made it possible for women to be reduced to erotic automatons of male desire; childbearing, and the companionship and enduring commitment it invites, is now entirely optional.
