A String of Lies

Chemical contraception is bad for women, couples, society and the environment...

Philosopher Dr. Janet E. Smith writes on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the FDA' approval of The Pill:

This year we “celebrate” the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, or “the pill.”

For the 40th anniversary of the pill, PBS produced a thorough retrospective on its history. The material is still on the PBS website and is an invaluable resource for those interested in this subject.

The story PBS tells is fascinating and, without meaning to denigrate PBS, the broadcaster tells the history of the pill in a surprisingly honest way — surprising not only because of PBS’ usual biases, but also because the pill is a subject that involves a great deal of dishonesty. PBS is even honest about the dishonesty and even simple foolishness that surrounds the pill. For instance, when it reports on early efforts to get the pharmaceutical companies — including Searle, which eventually became the first company to receive FDA approval to sell birth control pill — to develop a chemical contraceptive, PBS notes:

Beyond the legal and religious complications, Searle executives just didn’t believe there would be a huge market for an oral contraceptive. The men at Searle found it inconceivable that any woman would consider taking pills every single day just for contraception. The prevailing wisdom was that no healthy woman would ever willingly take a drug that neither treated nor prevented disease.

Deceptive drug trial

Sadly they were oh so wrong. Women have proven wretchedly willing to “take a drug that neither treated nor prevented disease” and, indeed, which has been plausibly identified as a cause of lethal diseases.

PBS also noted that some of the early research that was done circumvented laws against contraception by purporting to do research to help women with problems with infertility. Not only were some of the trials illegal, some of them involved giving women in psychiatric hospitals drugs without their knowledge or consent.

Deception was even written into the pill; since the pill creates a pseudo-pregnancy, women on the pill would not be menstruating. Researchers, however, devised the pill so that women would experience pseudo menstruation each month. This was done so that the pill might seem more “natural” and thus perhaps make it more acceptable to the Catholic Church.

Researchers chose Puerto Rico as a place to test the pill because they reasoned if they could get a poor Catholic country to accept contraception, it would be an easy sell elsewhere.

The fact that three women died during the course of the trials did not provoke researchers to examine the risks of taking the pill.

Read the rest...

Isn't it interesting to note how, over and over again, the proponents of abortion, euthanasia and contraception, the advocates of the culture of death, resort to lies, distortions, obfuscations, and simply changing the subject to get their way?

(H/T: Wisconsin Catholic Musings)