Tag Archives: contraception

The History of the Birth Control Pill, Part 2: Barbasco and the Roots of Hormonal Contraception

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Russell Marker. Image: Penn State University Archives

Russell Marker. Image: Penn State University Archives

Welcome to the second installment of our series chronicling the history of the birth control pill. Previously, we learned about the role a sex hormone called progesterone plays in inhibiting ovulation. Scientists had no easy way to isolate significant amounts of this chemical and wanted to find a quick and inexpensive method for synthesizing large quantities of progesterone.

Russell Marker was born to Maryland sharecroppers in 1903. Hoping to escape rural life, Marker was one of only two students in his junior-high class to attend high school. He graduated in three years and enrolled at the University of Maryland, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry. He needed one more class to receive his doctorate, but refused to take it, believing he had already mastered his chosen subject, organic chemistry. He was only interested in working in the lab and thought the required course would be a waste of his time. (The university did eventually award him an honorary doctorate in 1987.)

A wild-growing yam in Mexico provided chemicals that could be refined into progesterone, the active ingredient in the Pill.

At the time, the scientific community was abuzz with discoveries being made about hormones. They held tremendous potential for research, but scientists couldn’t figure out how to isolate large quantities of them for study. Up for a challenge, Marker set out to find a way to synthesize one hormone, called progesterone, in abundance. He hypothesized that plants from the genus Dioscorea, which includes yams and agaves, would be cheap sources of steroid hormones. Marker was specifically hoping to find plants rich in sapogenins, which are chemically similar to cholesterol. Continue reading →

A Conversation With Faye Wattleton: Part 2, Belief and Mission

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Ms. Wattleton speaks out against George H.W. Bush’s gag rule, which banned any mention of abortion in federally funded family-planning programs.

Faye Wattleton was president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1978 to 1992. She was generous enough to speak to me on January 7, 2013, and throughout the month of February we’ll be sharing her experiences and perspectives in observance of Black History Month. In this second installment, we discuss her religious beliefs and their influence on her work, which came up often in our conversation.

Religion was a strong influence during Faye Wattleton’s childhood and remains so in her adult life. She grew up in a fundamentalist family, and that religion, along with her experiences as a nurse, brought her to a belief in individual freedom that was absolute, including the conviction that every woman has the right to make her own reproductive choices.

When I asked about her work for reproductive rights, she said, “My view about that is perhaps most reflective of my religious upbringing, with respect to who shall judge. Judge not that you be not judged.”

“Our reproduction is still a proxy for the larger question of our full status as human beings and as citizens.”

That religious upbringing was shaped by the fact that her mother was an ordained minister in the Church of God, and her calling determined the course of Wattleton family life. While Faye was still little, this calling took her and her parents away from St. Louis and the safety of extended family. When she reached school age, her parents left her with families within the church, each year in a different place. During this time, she learned to rely on herself and think independently, perhaps preparing her to be a leader while keeping her within the protective bubble of the greater Church of God community.

The Church of God is Christian, Protestant, foundational, evangelical, and charismatic. Members believe in prayer, the inerrancy and literal truth of the Bible, personal salvation, and the unique, individual revelation of the Holy Spirit, which might include speaking in tongues. Ms. Wattleton often heard her mother preach and witnessed the emotional responses of her listeners in churches and revival meetings.

While her mother evangelized, bringing others to what she saw as the only way to God, Ms. Wattleton’s sense of mission came from the conviction that each person acts within unique life circumstances that must be respected. When I asked about this difference between her mother and herself, she replied that it “probably was due to my early training as a nurse. I went to college as a 16-year-old, graduated at 20. And so I was really deeply influenced by my professional training and exposure [to other people’s lives and problems]. It’s possible that, had I chosen a different profession, I may have seen life differently, but this is the profession that I chose.” Continue reading →

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

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  • In “wanting it both ways” news, a Catholic hospital is claiming that fetuses aren’t human beings in order to help themselves win a malpractice lawsuit. So, essentially, fetuses are only human beings when someone’s trying to abort them. Otherwise — NOPE! (Jezebel)
  • President Obama is here to remind you how pro-choice and awesome he is. (YouTube)
  • Religious women love their birth control as much as the rest of us. (Guttmacher)
  • In what will be a true victory for choice, Dr. Tiller’s former clinic is gearing up to start serving patients again. (The Daily Beast)
  • Taking time away from other controversies, the Catholic bishops have announced that they will not compromise with Obama on birth control. (NBC News)
  • Proving that all schools would benefit from giving students access to contraception, NYC has seen its teen pregnancy rate plummet. (Center for Reproductive Rights)
  • In nearly every state, the total number of abortion providers has dropped since 1978. (The American Prospect)
  • Guess what, naysayers, condoms won’t prevent you from having great sex after all! (New York Daily News)
  • Dear lovely lesbians, Pap testing is super important for you guys, too! (The Advocate)

Let’s Talk Contraception: Depo-Provera Injections, Another Progestin-Only Option

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Progestin-only birth control pills (POPs), also called the mini-pill, are good options for those who cannot take estrogen. But for those who have lots of trouble remembering to take a pill every day at the same time, Depo-Provera shots may be the way to go. Depo-Provera is medroxyprogesterone, a hormone similar to progesterone. It is given as a shot in a doctor’s office or a health center such as Planned Parenthood, and lasts for three months to prevent pregnancy. Sometimes it is used to treat other conditions, like endometriosis.

One Depo-Provera shot lasts for three months.

The first shot is given five days after you start your period or, if you do not plan to breastfeed, in the first five days after giving birth. You must not be pregnant when you get the shot because its effects may damage the developing fetus. But it’s OK to use Depo-Provera when breastfeeding, as long as you wait six weeks after giving birth before getting the shot. It’s given in your buttock or upper arm. You need to use a backup method like a condom for seven days after getting your first shot. And if you miss getting your regular 12-week injection by only a few days, you may need to get a pregnancy test before getting your next shot.

While you are on Depo shots, your period may change. You may have spotting, bleeding, or even no bleeding. Fifty percent of people who have been on Depo-Provera for one year have no bleeding at all. After stopping the shots, menstrual bleeding returns. Also, after stopping the shots, it may take nine to 10 months to get pregnant. Continue reading →

A Conversation with Faye Wattleton: Part 1, Historical Perspectives

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Faye Wattleton reflects on her career in the family-planning movement. Image: Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona, 1981

Faye Wattleton was president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America from 1978 to 1992. At 34 years old, she was not only the youngest and the first African American to head PPFA, but was also the first woman since Margaret Sanger to hold that position. She had already been executive director of the affiliate in Dayton, Ohio, for seven years, and is still PPFA’s longest-serving president.

Ms. Wattleton received her nursing degree from Ohio State University in 1964, and a master’s degree in maternal and infant care, with certification as a nurse midwife, from Columbia University in 1967. Working in obstetrics, she saw a wider world than she had known and was exposed to the choices women in other circumstances needed to make. She saw the results of illegal abortions when women were desperate to end unwanted pregnancies, and saw the judgmental attitudes of many of the doctors and nurses who treated them. These experiences, along with her religious upbringing by a strong mother who was a preacher in the Church of God, led her to a career in the movement for reproductive rights.

“What is different today is that the element of violence is much less of a factor in the struggle” for abortion rights.

Ms. Wattleton was generous enough to speak to me on January 7, 2013, and throughout the month of February we’ll be sharing her experiences and perspectives in observance of Black History Month. In this first installment, she speaks about the battle for women’s reproductive rights as it has evolved over time.

In the years since Roe, states have been passing more and more restrictive laws, such as Arizona’s strict 20-week cutoff for abortions, and mischaracterizing some birth control methods as abortifacients. I asked if it had been difficult to watch the worsening attacks against reproductive rights since she left Planned Parenthood — and was surprised when Ms. Wattleton said she does not think the struggle for reproductive rights has gotten more difficult. In some ways, she said, things have gotten better. Continue reading →

Roe v. Wade at 40: Lost Ground and the Moment to Reclaim It

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As 2012 came to a close, one of the last attacks on reproductive freedom in Arizona was in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the state of Arizona fought to defund Planned Parenthood. The state was appealing an injunction against HB2800, a new measure that would strip funding for family planning services from any health care facility that provides abortions.

The 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade should serve as a call to action to defend reproductive freedom.

Following a year that saw more state-level legislation to restrict abortion access than any year in the last three decades, 2012 saw no reprieve. Besides HB2800, Arizona lawmakers voted on bills that barred employer coverage for birth control and access to medically necessary abortions. In response to part of the latter bill, the Arizona Department of Health Service’s website added a new section on abortion, which made its debut late last year, called “A Woman’s Right to Know” — a guide that employed scare tactics and other manipulation to deter women from seeking abortions.

Arizona reflected what was happening nationally. According to a recent study by the Guttmacher Institute, Arizona has joined a new majority of states that are “solidly hostile to abortion rights.” In 2000, a third of women of reproductive age lived in such states. Today, more than half do. Since 2000, the number of states considered hostile to abortion doubled from 13 to 26. Continue reading →

The History of the Birth Control Pill, Part 1: Hormones, Our “Chemical Messengers”

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Welcome to the first installment of our series chronicling the history of the birth control pill, from our discovery of how hormones work, to the synthesis of these hormones from an inedible wild Mexican yam, to the creation of a pill that changed the world.

Underneath the surface of a large swath of Southern Mexico’s jungles lay the enormous roots of a wild yam, Dioscorea composita, known locally as barbasco. Mostly it was considered a nuisance, as it could get in the way of subsistence agriculture, but it did have its uses. Indigenous people used it as a fish poison, and traditional Mesoamerican healers used it to treat rheumatism, snakebites, muscular pain, and skin conditions. When the root was fermented in alcohol and put on aching joints, it was believed to work as a pain reliever.

The idea of a birth control pill was born in 1912 when Margaret Sanger dreamed of a “magic pill.”

Barbasco’s medicinal uses might not be surprising, given that scientists derived a chemical from the yam that led to the development of cortisone and oral contraceptives, both of which had sizable impacts on medicine and society. Oral contraceptives would not have been possible without a cheap and abundant source of progesterone, which was easily synthesized from the root after an American chemist, Russell Marker, discovered a process for converting a cholesterol found in barbasco’s roots to progesterone, a key ingredient in the Pill.

In the decades before this chemist’s excursion to Mexico, first-wave feminism was brewing in turn-of-the-century United States, and birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger demanded access to contraception — in 1915, she invented the term “birth control,” and as early as 1912, the idea of a birth control pill had been envisioned — again, by Sanger, who wrote of her hope for a “magic pill.” A nurse, Sanger was spurred to action by the horror of watching women die prematurely after having too many children, while other women died from botched abortions. Continue reading →

What the Holidays Mean for Your Sexual Health

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The following guest post comes to us via Morganne Rosenhaus, community engagement coordinator for Planned Parenthood Arizona.

The holidays bring a lot of joy, a lot of yummy treats, and, apparently, a lot of sex.

Rumor has it that during the holidays, we are all increasingly likely to have sex. Perhaps it’s the merry spirit of the holidays or maybe it’s the abundance of holiday parties. It’s tough to discern exactly what it is that accounts for this increase in sex, but the “why” is not nearly as important as the “how.”

Yes, exactly. How are people having sex? Are they having safe and protected sex? Are they having consensual sex? For Planned Parenthood Arizona, the “how” is the most important part.

As an organization that seeks to provide honest information and compassionate care to patients, the “how” matters to us. We want the men, women, and young people we serve to be healthy — to have healthy relationships and to have safe sex.

As one of the largest reproductive health care providers in Arizona, serving more than 60,000 patients each year, it is important to us that our patients have the tools they need to make the best decisions for themselves and their families when it comes to reproductive health.

At the end of the day, Planned Parenthood Arizona is here to help you have a safe, but enjoyable holiday season! Here are some simple steps to stay healthy and protect your reproductive health this holiday season:

  • Use condoms. You can get condoms at any Planned Parenthood Arizona health center.
  • Back up your birth control with emergency contraception. Get Plan B now, just in case your Plan A doesn’t work out like you expected. Yep, we have Plan B too.
  • Start off the New Year healthy by making an appointment to get your annual check up, including an STD screening, at your local Planned Parenthood Arizona health center.

There are 13 Planned Parenthood Arizona health centers throughout Arizona. Be sure to check and see if you have one near you at www.ppaz.org and call 602-277-PLAN (7526) in Phoenix, 520-408-PLAN (7526) in Tucson, or toll-free 855-207-PLAN (7526) from anywhere else in the state to make an appointment today.

So, does the holiday season really correlate with an uptick in passion? The jury is still out on that rumor. But it sure is something more exciting than holiday socks to look forward to each year!