In Our Control (53 page)

The campaign specifically targeted Planned Parenthood and sought to exploit Margaret Sanger’s problematic history with race to suggest that the modern organization is pursuing a racist agenda. Whatever eugenic ideas Margaret Sanger truly embraced—and as we saw there is good evidence that she never truly bought in to a eugenic program—Planned Parenthood as a modern organization has worked tirelessly and heroically to provide a range of reproductive health services to all women who need them, including contraception, abortion, adoption referrals, and prenatal care.

  
37.
Barbara Seaman,
The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth
(New York: Hyperion, 2003).

  
38.
Carl Djerassi,
This Man’s Pill: Reflections on the 50th Birthday of the Pill
(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 16.

  
39.
Seaman,
Greatest Experiment
, 13.

  
40.
Ibid., 37–44.

  
41.
Lara V. Marks,
Sexual Chemistry: A History of the Contraceptive Pill
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001),
64
,

  
42.
Ibid., 70.

  
43.
Ibid.

  
44.
Ibid., 92.

  
45.
Katherine McCormick to Margaret Sanger, May 31, 1955, Margaret Sanger Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA.

  
46.
Barbara Seaman, “The Pill and I: 40 Years On, the Relationship Remains Wary,”
New York Times
, June 25, 2000, 15–19.

  
47.
Marks,
Sexual Chemistry
, 115.

  
48.
Solinger,
Pregnancy and Power
, 171.

  
49.
John Rock, transcript of a lecture to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America meeting, 1954.

  
50.
Seaman and Wolfson, together with other women’s health activists, went on to found the National Women’s Health Network (a grassroots organization that continues to advocate for women’s health causes and refuses funding from drug or device makers) and continued to write prescient critiques of other drugs, most notably those used in hormone and estrogen treatments for menopause.

Chapter Two: A Pill Primer

    
1.
The Pill
, Erna Buffie and Elise Swerhone, directors, National Film Board of Canada, 1999.

    
2.
Ibid.

    
3.
Jon Zonderman and Laurel Shader,
Birth Control Pills
(New York: Chelsea House, 2006).

    
4.
Kate Lunau, “Ditching the Pill For Good,” November 23, 2009,
Macleans
,
http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/11/23/ditching-the-pill-for-good
.

    
5.
Virginia Hopkins, “Truthiness in Advertising: Is Qlaira Really a ‘Natural’ Birth Control,”
http://www.virginiahopkins.com/qlairabirthcontrol.html
.

    
6.
Progestins are sometimes referred to as Progestogens. Frank Z. Stanczyk and Milan R. Henzl, “Use of the name ‘Progestin,’ ”
Contraception 64
, no. 1 (2001): 1–2.

    
7.
Zonderman and Shader,
Birth Control Pills
, 21.

    
8.
Rachel E. D’Souza and John Guillebaud, “Risks and benefits of oral contraceptive pills,”
Best Practice & Research Clinical Obstetrics and Gynaecology
16, no. 2 (2002): 133–54 (135).

    
9.
Family Health International, “Using Progestin-only Pills Correctly,”
http://www.fhi.org/NR/Shared/edFHI/PrinterFriendly.asp
.

  
10.
R. D. Blackburn, J. A. Cunkelman, and V. M. Zlidar, “Oral contraceptives—an update,”
Population Reports
, ser. A, no. 9 (2000): 1–40.

  
11.
Jane Bennett and Alexandra Pope,
The Pill: Are You Sure It’s For You?”
(Crow’s Nest, NSW, Australia: Allen and Unwin, 2008), 61.

  
12.
Family Health International, “Using Progestin-only Pills Correctly,”
http://www.fhi.org/NR/Shared/edFHI/PrinterFriendly.asp
.

  
13.
Barbara Seaman,
The Doctors’ Case Against the Pill
(New York: Peter H. Wyden, Inc., 1969), 83.

  
14.
Jean-Patrice Baillargeon, Donna K. McClish, Paulina A Essah, and John E. Nestler, “Association between the current use of the low-dose oral contraceptives and cardiovascular arterial disease: A meta-analysis,”
Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
90, no. 7 (2005): 3863–70.

  
15.
Richard P. Dickey,
Managing Contraceptive Pill Patients
, 13th ed. (Dallas, TX: EMIS Medical Publishers, 2007), 192.

  
16.
“Advisory on Contraceptives,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
284, no. 8 (August 23–30, 2000): 951.

  
17.
Barbara A. Frempong, Madia Ricks, Sabyasachi Sen, and Anne E. Sumner, “Effect of Low-Dose Oral Contraceptives on Metabolic Risk Factors in African-American Women,”
Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
93, no. 6 (June 2008): 2097.

  
18.
It is important to mention that this particular study was not comparing African American women with women of other races. It wasn’t arguing that the Pill posed a greater risk to black women; rather, that it was worth asking what discrete risks it posed to that community.

  
19.
T. M. Farley, O. Meirik, J. Collins, “Cardiovascular disease and combined oral contraceptives: reviewing the evidence and balancing the risks,”
Human Reproduction Update
5, no. 6 (November–December 1999): 721–35.

  
20.
Ibid.

  
21.
Ibid.

  
22.
H. C. Pymar and M. D. Creinin, “The risks of oral contraceptive pills,”
Seminars in Reproductive Medicine
19, no. 4 (2001): 305–12.

  
23.
A. M. Walker, “Newer oral contraceptives and the risk of venous thromboembolism,”
Contraception
57, no. 3 (1998): 169–81.

  
24.
Cheryl A. Frye, “An overview of oral contraceptives,”
Neurology
66, no. 6, suppl. 3 (March 28, 2006): S29-S36.

  
25.
Jean-Patrice Baillargeon, Donna K. McClish, Paulina A. Essah, and John E. Nestler, “Association between the Current Use of Low-Dose Oral Contraceptives and Cardiovascular Arterial Disease: A Meta-Analysis,”
Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
90, no. 7 (2005): 3863–70.

  
26.
The Associated Press, “Some Birth Control Pills Linked to Blood Clots,”
MSNBC
, Wednesday February 7, 2007,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17005448/
.

  
27.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “ACOG committee revises recommendations on OCs with third-generation progestins,”
ACOG Today
42, no.
6
(July 1998): 5.

  
28.
Ojvind Lidegaard, Ellen Lokkegaard, Anne Louise Svendsen, and Carsten Agger, “Hormonal Contraception and the Risk of Venous Thromboembolism: National follow-up study,”
British Medical Journal
339 (2009): b2890.

  
29.
Natasha Singer, “Health Concerns Over Popular Contraceptives,”
New York Times
, September 26, 2009, B1.

  
30.
Ibid.

  
31.
L. M. Lopez, A. A. Kaptein, and F. M. Helmerhorst, “Oral contraceptive containing drospirenone for premenstrual syndrome,”
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
2 (2009); Faustino R. Perez-Lopez, “Clinical experiences with drospirenone: From reproductive to postmenopausal years,”
Maturitas 60
, no. 2 (2008): 78–91.

  
32.
Conversation with the author, March, 31, 2010.

  
33.
Dickey,
Managing Contraceptive Pill Patients
, 205.

  
34.
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “The use of hormonal contraception in women with coexisting medical conditions,”
ACOG Practice Bulletin
(2006): 73.

  
35.
Rachel E. D’Souza and John Guillebaud, “Risks and benefits of oral contraceptive pills,”
Best Practice & Research Clinical Obstetrics and Gynaecology 16
, no. 2 (2002): 140–41.

  
36.
World Health Organization (WHO),
Cardiovascular disease and steroid hormone contraception: Report of a WHO scientific group
, Geneva: World Health Organization, Technical Report Series, no. 877 (1997): 90; Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, “Hormonal contraception: recent advances and controversies,”
Fertility and Sterility
90, no. 3 (November 2008): S103-S113 (S108).

  
37.
Practice Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, “Hormonal contraception: Recent advances and controversies,”
Fertility and Sterility
90, no. 3 (November 2008): S108.

  
38.
Salynn Boyles, “Low Dose Birth Control Pills May Up Heart Risk,” WebMD Health News, July 7, 2005,
http://www.webmd.com/sex/birth-control/news/20050707/low-dose-birth-control-pill-may-up-heart-risk
.

  
39.
Ibid.

  
40.
Leslie Allison Gillum, Sai Kumar Mamidipudi, S. Claiborne Johnston, “Ischemic Stroke Risk With Oral Contraceptives: A Meta-analysis,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
284, no. 1 (July 5, 2000): 72–78.

  
41.
Cheryl D. Bushnell, “Stroke in Women: Risk and Prevention Throughout the Lifespan,”
Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery 26
, no. 4 (November 2008): 1161–76.

  
42.
Gianni Allais, Ilaria Castagnoli Gabellari, and Ornella Mana, et al., “Migraine and stroke: the role of oral contraceptives,”
Journal of the Neurological Sciences
29 (2008): S12-S14.