6/23/24

 Sunday, June 23, 2024

1960, the first contraceptive pill was made available for purchase in the United States

1996. Archbishop Tutu retires as head of the Anglican Church in South Africa

In bed at 10:30 after dinner at the Goldbergs and awake at midnight, with bad extensive back pain and out to TV room recliner around 12:10. Let Lilly out and she is nervously pacing and panting again.  Lights out at 1 a.m.,  but up at 1:50., remembering a muscle relaxant in the bathroom from Dr. Cheng from a couple years ago that I have never used, Cyclobenzaprine HCl, 10 mg.  I checked the internet for interaction with prednisone and saw none so I took one pill at 2:20.  The drug works on the CNS and side effects include dizziness, drowsiness, blurred vision, and dry mouth which are problems for me even without this drug.  The discard date on the packaging is 10/04/2024 . . .  Lights out again at 3:33.and up at 5:15, with dry mouth.  I nodded on and off til 6:30 when I woke up until at some point I fell asleep again until 10:45.

Prednisone, day 42, 15 mg., day 6.   I took my pills at 6:45 and a bowl of cottage cheese & berries later.  I missed my meds this morning and took them at about 2:30, My BP reading an hour later was 140/87.

Another death.  Geri spotted the obituary of Karen Finerty in today's Journal Sentinel.  She was 3 months shy of her 85th birthday.  De mortuis nil nisi bonum but husband John rarely spoke well of her or of her family and she was a frequent problem for the woman who managed the St. Catherine Residence for Women on E. Knapp Street.  I can't recall the manager's name but she was a good friend of Hannah Dugan's who introduced us and I served as a helper or consultant for her for some time along with another woman, whose name I also can't recall but who introduced me to the word "perseverate."  Funny the things we can recall and the things we can't recall.

Sarah visited us for a few hours this afternoon, schmoozed about current events and her acquiring German citizenship on June 22nd, Peter's visit, etc.  She also fixed some stuff on my laptop and phone, as always.

Anniversaries.  First, according to Planned Parenthood, On June 23, 1960, the FDA approved the sale of Enovid for use as an oral contraceptive. It was manufactured by G.D. Searle and Company,  By 1965, one out of every four married women in America under 45 had used the pill. By 1967, nearly 13 million women in the world were using it. And by 1984 that number would reach 50–80 million. Today more than 100 million women use the pill. 

It was just five years after the pill was approved for use as a contraceptive in 1960 that birth control became legal nationwide in the U.S. That is why the impact of the pill on the health and lives of women and their families will be forever intertwined with the 1965 U.S. SupremeCourt decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which protected the constitutional right of married couples in this country to use birth control (Griswold). (It wasn’t until 1972, in its decision in Eisenstadt v. Baird, that the Supreme Court found that unmarried people had the same constitutional right to obtain contraceptives as married people[Eisenstadt]).  In the five decades since these events, profound and beneficial social changes occurred, in large part because of women’s relatively new freedom to effectively control their fertility — maternal and infant health have improved dramatically, the infant death rate has plummeted, and women have been able to fulfill increasingly diverse educational, political, professional, and social aspirations. 

The birth control pill changed the world just as I was leaving adolescence and entering adulthood.   It was perhaps the biggest factor in enabling  Women's Liberation, not just sexually but also economically and thus socially and politically.  Increased freedom and economic power in women were threatening to male hegemony  The effects are felt today.

Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology, Margaret Fuller Slack:

I would have been as great as George Eliot

But for an untoward fate.

For look at the photograph of me made by Peniwit,

Chin resting on hand, and deep-set eyes i

Gray, too, and far-searching.

But there was the old, old problem:

Should it be celibacy, matrimony, or unchastity?

Then John Slack, the rich druggist, wooed me,

Luring me with the promise of leisure for my novel,

And I married him, giving birth to eight children,

And had no time to write.

It was all over with me, anyway,

When I ran the needle in my hand

While washing the baby's things,

And died from lock-jaw, an ironical death.

Hear me, ambitious souls,

Sex is the curse of life!

Loretta Lynn, The Pill:

You wined me and dined me when I was your girl

Promised if I'd be your wife, you'd show me the world

But all I've seen of this old world is a bed and a doctor bill

I'm tearing down your brooder house 'cause now I've got the pill

All these years, I've stayed at home while you had all your fun

And every year that's gone by, another baby's come

There's gonna be some changes made right here on Nursery Hill

You've set this chicken your last time 'cause now I've got the pill

This old maternity dress I've got is going in the garbage

The clothes I'm wearing from now on won't take up so much yardage

Miniskirts, hot pants, and a few little fancy frills

Yeah, I'm making up for all those years since I've got the pill

. . . .  

Second, Desmont Tutu, a hero.  I shared a ride in an elevator with him several years ago at the Marquette Student Union.  A thrill.

Because of last night's problems with back pain and sleep and perhaps because of the cyclobenzaprine, I've been 'out of it' all day, unable to think clearly, unable to write.  After Sarah left for Middleton, I watched a mibt of the Indiana-Chicago WNBA game with Caitlin Clark.