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When Friederike * tells of her decision to drop birth control pills, she speaks of a “liberation strike.” At age of 18, young architect had taken drug for first time. She certainly wanted to prevent and reduce her regular pain. At gynecologist she got a metal tins with rose decoration for pill, but she did not get sufficient information about side effects. Four years later she separated from her boyfriend, dropped pill – and found out how hormones had slowed down her lust for sex. Since n Friederike has banished drug from her life.
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Like Friederike, re are many or young women. They see pill as a restriction of ir sexual desire, do not want to accept side effects such as increased risk of thrombosis or depression any longer and not be responsible for contraception alone. Under hashtags like mypillstory y report on ir liberation stories.
Are your stories for a turnaround? The pill is still most popular contraceptive in Germany. According to Federal Centre for Health Education, it takes more than half of women between 20 and 44 years. But sales figures for pill have been declining since 2015, as analyses by Private research institute IQVIA show. Wher this is because women today think differently about pill, or wher number of women of childbearing age has decreased, study does not make any statements.
Katharina Rohmert works as a doctor at Pro Familia, a counselling centre for questions about sexuality, pregnancy or partnership. In her office hours she observes a phenomenon that she calls “pill fatigue”: Women who started taking pill very early will take it off because y want to get to know ir bodies better. While popularity of pill rose to nineties, women today made more thoughts about long-term effects on ir bodies, says Rohmert.
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The pill fatigue also changed wording of pills. The last time that women spoke of a “liberation strike” in connection with pill was 1961 in years following its launch. At that time, however, non-dropouts used term, but feminists like Alice Schwarzer. They celebrated pill as a revolutionary invention.
Regulating blemished body
When young mor and housewife Jutta * 1963 swallowed Pill for first time, it was still far from becoming most popular contraceptive in Germany. Many doctors and church criticized new contraceptive. They invoked encyclical Humanae Vitae of Pope Paul VI. He claimed that pill would lead to “general softening of moral breeding” and promote extramarital sexual intercourse.
Jutta did not care about social opinion and side effects did not play a role for m. More important was her desire not to become pregnant one more time. “At first I wanted to have six children,” she recalls. After third child, she changed her mind and, on suggestion of her gynecologist, she had to prescribe pill. “I had recognized my limits as a mor,” she says. Her decision for only three children instead of six allowed her to imitate Abitur and study political and social sciences.
The author Sabine Kray is herself one of women who became tired of pills, and wrote book Freedom from pill. For change in attitudes towards pill, she sees two main reasons: “On one, we are moving away from looking at female body as a burden,” says Kray. The feminism of seventies and Eighties struggled to negate physical differences between men and women. Many young women did not want to restrict ir lifestyle and career opportunities by a possible pregnancy. “The Pill has always stood for more than just contraception. It also stood for regulation of a body perceived as tainted, “says Kray. Today it is a matter of adopting feminine body as it is. A decision against pill is a decision to accept one’s own body.
