Holly Grigg-Spall is a young woman who calls herself a feminist but who is deeply unpopular with some of the sisterhood right now. English, 30-ish, married to an American and living in California, she has written a book criticising the contraceptive pill. Actually, Sweetening the Pill: Or How We Got Hooked On Hormonal Birth Control is more than critical; it is a sweeping polemic against the pill and every form of hormonal contraception. Since this wonder drug is celebrated by mainstream feminists (Nancy Pelosi, Cecile Richards, Sandra Fluke…) as the great liberator of women, you can see why the others are peeved with her.
And yet, Ms Grigg-Spall (pictured, right) has so much in common with the pill’s diehard champions. Like Ms Fluke, she grew to adulthood thinking that taking this medicine daily was as natural as having toast for breakfast. Like Ms Pelosi and Ms Richards, she thinks contraception is a reproductive right. (No, she is not from what she calls “the religious Right”.) But, although once “hooked” on them, she has fallen out of love with synthetic hormones and wants everyone to know why.
In her mid-20s, when she should have been feeling on top of the world, Holly Grigg-Spall was feeling depressed and empty, ho-hum about sex. And that was when she was not feeling anxious and paranoid or erupting into furious arguments with her boyfriend. “I felt I was losing my mind,” she says.
She had been on the pill since she was 17, when her mother and family doctor told her it would solve the problem of heavy and painful periods as well as protect her against pregnancy. She did not yet have a boyfriend and would not become sexually active for another four years, but she accepted their view that it was the responsible thing to do. She knew nothing about how the pill worked – other than stopping babies arriving – and did not think to ask. Continue reading
Sources
- Carolyn Moynihan in MercatorNet
- Image: Mail Online
Carolyn Moynihan is a New Zealand journalist with a special interest in family issues and deputy editor of MercatorNet.