The Pill’s Difficult Birth
At The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot discusses Jonathan Eig’s new Book, The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution. The fourth crusader was gynecologist John Rock, a Catholic who disagreed with the Church on women’s reproductive and sexual rights. Rock became the face of a movement to convince ordinary Catholics and the Church to embrace birth control. Though most active Catholic women have used contraception today, Rock was never able to persuade the Church on birth control. Talbot writes, “He remained a believing Catholic, but, as he told his daughter, ‘Religion is a very poor scientist.'”