Dear Kid,
Once upon a time, “the pill” didn’t exist.
Amazingly, pills existed but no one had thought to put “the” in front of them. So there were pills for this and pills for that and even pills for the other thing, but the “the” hadn’t been introduced to society.
On May 9, 1960, the “the” was introduced. It’s not clear if it was such an important invention that it got its own “the” or if sex (and therefore birth control) was something people whispered about (like cancer) because it might be contagious.
Seriously, back then people whispered about cancer. This is true.
Turns out that in 1873 men (emphasis on men) passed a federal law called the Comstock law which prohibited disseminating information about contraception because it was obscene. Amazingly, all the men that passed the law had sex which was (apparently) not obscene. People can be twits about things that don’t impact them and/or that they know nothing about.
Work on “the pill” (as it was not yet called) began in the 1950s, but it took until 1960 for the formulation to be finalized, tested, lobbied for, and approved by the FDA.
Development of “the pill,” as it became popularly known, was initially commissioned by birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger and funded by heiress Katherine McCormick. Sanger, who opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States in 1916, hoped to encourage the development of a more practical and effective alternative to contraceptives that were in use at the time.
Since then, the pill has been widely used to prevent pregnancy (obscene) and acne (perfectly acceptable).
The only reasonably conclusion from all this is that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people needs to include people who don’t all look, act, and talk like each other. This will not prevent us from having a government full of twits, but should help balance out things. Political lecture over.
Recent Comments