Research at Princeton University.
Dr
The Pill: past its use-by date
Actually, the whole idea that
technology can deliver consequence-
free sex has outlived its shelf life.
On July 25, 1968, Pope Paul VI published a
document, Humanae Vitae, which said that
the Pill was incompatible with Catholic
morality. Did this shunt his Church into
decades of irrelevance or did it make the
Church a beacon of moral clarity? This
week MercatorNet publishes three articles
about the world after Humanae Vitae.
Below, Jennifer Roback Morse asks why
former champions of the contraceptive Pill
are disenchanted with it and what exactly we
expected the Pill to do.
How quickly things can change. One week
we read about the need for school nurses to
give contraceptive pills to girls who just
can’t say no; the next, this headline from
London’s Daily Telegraph leaps out from
our news feeds: “‘Contraceptive pill
outdated and does not work well,’ experts
warns”.
Well, I thought, that is curious. Whatever
could have happened? Are women all of a
sudden immune to the effects of estrogen? Is
it something in the air, or the water? And
who was the expert delivering this
disturbing news?
It turned out to be Dr James Trussell,
Professor of Economics and Public Affairs
and Director of the Office of Population
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
Trussell is one of the Mr Bigs of birth
control research so the Telegraph was
listening carefully when he spoke recently at
a conference of one of the UK’s main birth
control groups, the British Pregnancy
Advisory Service.
And yes, he certainly was disenchanted with
the Pill. “One in 12 women taking the Pill
get pregnant each year because they miss so
many tablets,” he lamented. “The Pill is an
outdated method because it does not work
well enough. It is very difficult for ordinary
women to take a pill every single day.”
Frankly, this is something well known in
Britain where pregnancy rates among
schoolgirls continue to rise, and thousands
of women have three or four abortions. But
what does Dr Trussell suggest should be
done with these “ordinary women” who,
although he is too polite to say it in so many
words, are too stupid to take a pill every
day?
Shoot them up with long-lasting hormonal
contraception amounting to sterilization --
not to put too fine a point on it. “The beauty
of the implant or the IUD is that you can
forget about them," enthused the professor.
"If you want to seriously reduce unintended
pregnancies in the UK you can only do it
with implants and IUDs.”
So now we get to the heart of the matter.
The problem is not that the Pill doesn’t work
-- it does, reducing the probability that any
given act of intercourse will result in
pregnancy. The problem is that women do
not take it regularly enough. But that raises
the all-important question: What, exactly,
are we trying to accomplish with the Pill?
This is my theory: the Pill has been an
instrument in the creation of what author
Lee Harris called, in another context, a
fantasy ideology.
A fantasy ideology is a variety of
utopianism that is not about making a better
world, but making its adherents feel good
about themselves. The believer is assured
that he is one of the chosen, one of the few
enlightened ones who truly understands the
universe. In the name of supporting the
fantasy, the believer is entitled to impose
large costs on other people. Indeed, he
seldom notices these costs, because he is not
checking in with reality on a regular basis.
Data fly right over his head.
Though Lee Harris developed his concept of
the fantasy ideology in relation to Islam, his
analysis could apply just as well to the
contraceptive ideology. The fantasy
ideology of contraception is that people are
entitled to behave as if they had perfectly
functioning contraception; in other words, to
act as though sexual activity and
reproduction are completely disconnected.
Adherents of the ideology get to feel good
about themselves as progressive, modern,
enlightened. They are ever so beyond the
tired old ethics that connects sex with
responsible parenthood through marriage.
Most importantly, believers in the faith that
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
contraception prevents all consequences of
sex never have to apologize for any sexual
misdeeds. There are no sexual misdeeds,
with the possible exception of rape.
It is no wonder that poor Dr Trussell is
disappointed. The Pill could not possibly
meet the standard of creating a lifetime of
harmless and guilt-free sex.
Yet on the road to the society of perfectly
controlled reproductive freedom, millions of
people’s lives have been ruined. Women got
themselves involved in relationships that
had no chance of sustaining a pregnancy.
Then, they were shocked and appalled when
they got pregnant. In their desperation, they
turned to abortion. Or they kept babies they
were ill-prepared to raise, because they
could not bring themselves to have an
abortion and no-one encouraged them to
consider adoption.
Or, men got themselves involved with
women who claimed they wanted no deeper
involvement. But then, when they became
pregnant, they wanted the child after all. In
some cases the woman wanted the child all
along, and deceived the man into believing
that he was participating in a sterile sexual
encounter. Since sterile sex is the new social
norm, thanks to the Pill, it is not difficult to
convince a man you don’t mean to have a
baby.
Men and women alike thought the addition
of a condom protected them from sexually
transmitted diseases. They didn’t notice
when the sexual spin doctors quietly
changed the term “safe sex” to “safer sex”.
Some were naïve enough to think that the
Pill looked after all safety issues, even
though it offers no protection against STDs
whatsoever.

The true believer in the fantasy ideology of

contraception does not look too closely at
problems like these. Any problem that
cannot be solved by more contraception is
not worth considering.

This is why the indefatigable Dr Trussell

advocates more aggressive and intrusive
methods of contraception. He and his allies
must not, at any cost, question their premise
that contraception eliminates all negative
consequences of sex. They are reduced to
sewing more patches over the tattered quilt
of an outmoded fantasy ideology. It is not
just the Pill that has outlived its shelf life,
but the contraceptive ideology itself.

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the founder

and president of the Ruth Institute, and the
author of Love and Economics: It Takes a
Family to Raise a Village and Smart Sex:
Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up
World.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.