SAN ANTONIO - She was a sophomore at a Catholic women's college
in Baltimore. Her boyfriend was pre-med at Johns Hopkins
University. They were in love but not ready for marriage.
Then it happened. Just a few months into her first sexual
experience, Pat Kelly started feeling sick and went to the family
doctor. The doctor confirmed that Kelly was pregnant.
The only birth control Kelly knew about was the rhythm method -
abstaining from sex during monthly ovulation - and it hadn't worked
for her.
There is wider acceptance of single mothers today, but this was
1968. And this was the oldest of four children in a strict Irish
Catholic family from a small town in New Jersey, the first in the
family to attend college. For this 19-year-old, there could be only
one response to out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
Shame.
Kelly, who now serves on the board of Planned Parenthood of San
Antonio and South Central Texas, remembers her mother's words.
``Well, now you've done it,'' she said, confronting Kelly with
the doctor's report. ``Now you've done it.''
Painful discussions followed, but her boyfriend assured her it
would be all right. They would get married. She would drop out of
college and work. His family would help support them while he was
in school.
As it turned out, it was not all right. The marriage lasted 2
1/2 years.
``It was your classic shotgun wedding,'' Kelly said. ``It was
clear my parents were not going to do anything to help. If I hadn't
gotten married, I would have ended up in the home for unwed mothers
across the street from the Catholic hospital where I volunteered as
a candy-striper.''
The first thing Kelly did after her daughter was born was go on
the pill. She was determined she would have control over her
reproductive life and be able to plan any future pregnancies -
determined her education wouldn't be interrupted again.
The pill, the oral contraceptive that uses hormones to block
ovulation, turns 40 this year. Approved for use in this country by
the Food and Drug Administration in 1960, it was introduced by G.D.
Searle & Co. under the name Enovid.
With its 40th anniversary, Kelly and others are looking back on
how, quietly and privately and without great fanfare, the pill
changed their lives.
Women interviewed for this story view the pill positively, and
it is considered a major public-health milestone, but it has
detractors.
By 1965, the pill was the most popular form of birth control
among married women, for its convenience and almost 100 percent
effectiveness when used correctly. Today, the Alan Guttmacher
Institute, which researches contraceptive trends, estimates at
least 45 million women of childbearing age have used it. But that
may be an underestimate.
``If you look at women who have ever used it, the figure is much
higher,'' said Susan Tew, a spokeswoman for the institute, adding
that firm statistics on pill use are hard to come by. ``It's
shocking but true - the government didn't include unmarried women
in its surveys until 1982.''
Use has dropped slightly in recent years. Still, in a given
year, 10.4 million American women, or 27 percent of those using
contraceptives, choose the pill, making it the most popular
reversible birth-control method. Twenty-eight percent choose female
tubal ligation. Some 20 percent rely on the male condom and about
11 percent on the vasectomy (male sterilization).
A year ago, the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District looked
at the approximately 7,000 women using its family planning clinics
annually and found that 60 percent to 65 percent used the birth
control pill.
The little pills gave women the kind of control Kelly craved.
And they transformed women's lives - personally, economically and
socially - and, in the process, forever changed American society.
The pill was a revolution and then some, said sociologist Dr.
Kristin Luker, a professor at the University of California at
Berkeley. ``It was like discovering fire.''
The fire took a few years to spread.
Luker recounts how, as a single woman in 1968, she was refused a
graduate fellowship. ``I was told I might get pregnant and have
babies. But by 1970, (if that was said) you could look your
graduate-school adviser in the eye and say, `Don't be ridiculous.'
That was a truly momentous change.''
Affirmative action and equal-opportunity policies opened
academic and employment doors for women. But the pill and power
over the timing and frequency of pregnancies allowed women to walk
through those doors, Luker said.
Use of the pill dipped in the mid-1970s before rising again
until the late 1980s. Now people are choosing condoms over the
pill, prompted by fear of sexually transmitted diseases.
In the future, the daily pill faces some competition. Approval
is expected for Lunelle, a combination estrogen-progestin,
once-monthly injection. And a weekly transdermal patch is being
developed using combined hormones.
``It will be interesting to see how this is going to change the
market,'' Tew said. ``The failure rate is high when people don't
take the pill perfectly.''
