While researching his book on the invention of the birth control pill, writer Jonathan Eig immersed himself in the culture of 1950s America — a time when men dominated society and women lacked access to reliable birth control and family planning resources.
Those were rough times for women in America. Crude birth control devices and methods were ineffective, dangerous and in some states still illegal; abortion was illegal everywhere, and botched attempts could be fatal. It was a time when doctor’s advice for a woman desperate to avoid pregnancy and escape her husband’s advances was anything but helpful: Have him sleep on the roof.
Eig’s 2014 book “The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution” chronicles the controversial effort to create the revolutionary contraceptive. He was in Madison Wednesday to speak at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin’s annual dinner.
Margaret Sanger, a radical feminist and one of the “four crusaders” profiled in Eig’s book, founded what later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
In an interview with Isthmus, Eig says recent efforts at the state and federal level to discredit and defund Planned Parenthood give him “a little bit of deja vu — in a very disturbing way.”
“Now, we find ourselves again living in a time when people in some parts of the country are having a hard time getting access to birth control,” he says. “You would have thought the fight was over.”
The 1965 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Griswold v. Connecticut, ruled that reproductive decisions, including the use of contraception, were protected under the 14th Amendment’s constitutional right to privacy. The decision paved the way for legalized abortion in 1972.
“For a long time, Democrats and Republicans supported that right,” Eig says. President Richard Nixon signed Title X, which expanded family planning services, and as governor of California, Ronald Reagan signed into law the “Therapeutic Abortion Act” to prevent “backroom abortions.”
“It wasn’t until the 1980s when you saw a change,” Eig says. “Republicans used [family planning] as a wedge issue, in the South mostly, to try and win back conservative voters.”
By tying the issue to religion and saying it is a “sin” to promote birth control and sexual freedom, opponents have successfully made contraception — and Planned Parenthood — “political footballs,” Eig says.
Earlier this year, the anti-abortion group the Center for Medical Progress released a series of “sting” videos that purported to show Planned Parenthood officials selling tissue from aborted fetuses for profit. Though the videos have been found to be deceptively and misleadingly edited, the issue has prompted massive outcry from conservative politicians.
Just this week, the U.S. House of Representatives created a special task force to investigate Planned Parenthood, and Republican candidates for president have touted their opposition to the agency in debates and on the campaign trail.
In Wisconsin, members of the state Assembly voted last month to prevent Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin from receiving $3.5 million in federal Title X funds.
“Politicians try to make it sound like [Planned Parenthood is] some kind of radical left-wing group,” Eig says. “But they’re a provider of health care and one of the few outlets for poor women in many communities.”
Eig predicts the debate is far from over. But after researching the against-all-odds effort that led to the birth control revolution, he predicts that society’s support for reproductive rights will prevail.
“Women’s equality and women’s rights is something that we should be proud of — it’s one of America’s great contributions to the world,” he says. “It’s boosted equality for women around the globe, and that’s the direction we’re always going to be pushing.”
