In this episode we set the stage for our exploration of birth control:

✦ What did birth control look like before the pill?

✦ Why the conversation of is the pill good or bad, safe or toxic, is incomplete. It’s ultimately about the system in which it’s embedded, and how that system uses and mis-uses it

✦ How contraception in general is essential for reproductive autonomy — the key is what form that contraception takes, what risks it does or does not come with, and how freely it is chosen

✦ Why Roe was never enough & how birth control criticism gets weaponized by the right

✦ How reproductive choices aren’t made in a vacuum, and how certain political forces shape women’s birth control decisions

✦ Why increasing access to contraception is not a viable alternative to abortion (shout out to Dr. Krystale Littlejohn)

✦ The difference between being critical of the ways in which certain contraceptive methods have been harmful to women’s health and autonomy, and opposing contraception in general

✦ What body literacy and reproductive justice are, and how they are both vital for creating a reproductive future which is liberatory for all

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In this episode we dive into the complicated, dark history of the birth control movement, and the effects that legacy still has today:

✦ The origins of obstetrics and gynecology, and how white physicians who wanted to professionalize medicine worked to take over the field from midwives, who were primarily Black, Indigenous, and immigrant women

✦ How the Victorian era changed mainstream understandings of sex and reproduction and forced a lot of birth control knowledge underground

✦ The Voluntary Motherhood movement and the ongoing pattern of white women turning towards white supremacy for perceived safety and power, at the expense of other women (and often, at the expense of themselves)

✦ The Comstock laws (very relevant to this week’s Supreme Court hearings on the abortion pill) and the history of abortion restrictions in the United States

✦ How Margaret Sanger’s alliance with the eugenics movement helped shape many of our contemporary reproductive policies

✦ How contraception has been used as a tool of population control, and the legacy of state-sanctioned reproductive violence in the United States

✦ What a better birth control movement might look like

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In this episode, we zoom in on the birth of the oral contraceptive pill – and the science, social backdrop, and exploitation of women that made it all possible.

We dive into:

✦ The major players in birth control’s origin story, from Katherine McCormick, wealthy heiress and second woman to graduate from MIT, to mad scientist Gregory Pincus, to catholic doctor John Rock

✦ The women subjected to nonconsensual medical experimentation in Puerto Rico, Haiti, and poor communities in the US — and how they were exploited and then disregarded after the trials ended

✦ How the birth control pill came to be seen as a “magic bullet” against communism and the “population bomb” that threatened to undermine American imperialism

✦ Why overpopulation is a myth, and how that myth gets weaponized against women of color, immigrant women, and poor women

✦ The relationship between the pill and the sexual revolution

✦ Why Playboy Magazine and the Beat poets disagreed about the pill and masculinity

✦ The consequential Nelson Pill Hearings, and how the info sheets included alongside all prescription medications are a result of a women’s health group protesting those hearings

✦ The legacy of the radical women’s health movements of the ‘70s, and how the far right and their “war on abortion” partially caused feminist skepticism of the pill to become a reluctance to say anything bad about hormonal birth control

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In this episode we explore the reproductive violence done under the guise of progress and humanitarian aid, through the lens of three different long-acting contraceptive technologies: The Dalkon Shield IUD, the Norplant Implant, and the Depo-Provera injection.

We go into:

✦ The history of the IUD, and how at least 18 women died and thousands of others suffered life-threatening infections, miscarriages, chronic pain, and even sterilization from the Dalkon Shield IUD due to corporate greed and negligence

✦ How the Norplant implant was touted as the solution to poverty — and the hundreds of thousands of women that idea harmed

✦ How the topic of welfare became increasingly racialized — despite that fact that the welfare system, has always benefitted white Americans more, and that it actually excluded Black Americans for much of its history

✦ How anxieties around welfare and crime led to create a moral panic that worked to propel coercive birth control policies

✦ Why the idea that women didn’t work before the mid 1900s is incomplete and leaves out the majority of women

✦ Depo-Provera’s legacy of harm as “humanitarian aid” in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia

✦ How Depo was given to hundreds of thousands of women in the US – primarily poor, Black and Indigenous women – through government-funded programs, BEFORE it was ever approved by the FDA

✦ Why the FDA finally approved Depo after 3 failed attempts, just months after they called it “pervasively carcinogenic”

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In this episode, we dive into menstrual suppression. We explore the ways in which women’s bodies and health have been and continue to be disregarded by the medical system, how pharmaceutical companies have co-opted feminist language in order to market new contraceptives, and the shifting social and political landscape in which criticism of the pill was increasingly seen as a conservative thing.

We go into:

✦ How the side effects of the pill increasingly became the main effects

✦ The origins of the pro-life movement in the United States

✦ How the rise of the far right and their war on abortion made birth control an increasingly polarized issue and pushed some feminists towards the side of the pharmaceutical companies

✦ How pharmaceutical companies co-opted third-wave feminist language in order to sell new contraceptives

✦ The rise in neoliberalism, any hoe neoliberal choice feminism fueled menstrual suppression

✦ The idea of contraception as harm reduction

✦ How contraceptives are used as stopgaps in a system that can’t be bothered to take women’s wellbeing seriously and find real solutions

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In this episode we dive deeply into period stigma and the pathologization of periods, as well as the epidemic of severe menstrual pain and how our current system fails women. We also explore the importance of ovulation, and what we lose when we consider periods to be optional.

We go into:

✦ Period stigma and how it’s rooted in a lack of respect for the female body

✦ How to navigate period pain in a medical landscape full of gaslighting and menstrual suppression

✦ The importance of ovulation, and why the function of ovulation is far from just getting pregnant

✦ How your period is a vital sign and the implications of getting rid of that valuable marker of health

✦ The idea of epistemic injustice, and how knowledge of our bodies and cycles is intentionally obscured to maintain social control

✦ How a lack of full and accurate information about our bodies has serious consequences for our health and wellbeing, as well as for our ability to make autonomous reproductive choices and navigate this increasingly hostile reproductive environment

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In this episode, we explore the crucial question: what are we getting wrong when it comes to our conversations around hormonal birth control post Roe – and are we even having the right conversations?

First, we take a look at the idea of choice, a cornerstone of the modern reproductive rights movement. We’re asking, what are the limitations of focusing on choice in conversations around reproductive rights – and what are the alternatives?

Then we take a look at how women are socialized into using certain forms of contraception, and the social pressures that women face when trying to opt for non-hormonal methods.

Finally, we get into one of our key questions: why is it so hard to critique the pill, and what do we lose when we lump genuine criticism of certain birth control methods in with conservative misinformation?

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In all the conversation about birth control, you’ve likely heard at least one person mention the fertility awareness method, or the idea that you can track your menstrual cycle as a form of contraception.

And, you’ve likely heard more than one person deride this as unreliable or dangerous pseudoscience.

But what exactly is the fertility awareness method, and where did it come from?

Is it an actually viable method of contraception, or is nothing more than misinformation and wellness industry nonsense? 

In this episode, we’re diving into all of that.

We explore the science, the history, the politics, and the many misconceptions surrounding fertility awareness.

We also looking at the idea of expertise – from who we consider to be experts, to the role of influencers in the women’s health space.

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In this episode, we explore the idea of body literacy as reproductive resistance in post-Roe America. 

Though the interviews were done and the bulk of episode was written months ago, this week it became all the more relevant.

It was recorded two days after Donald Trump was elected president for the second time.

As we talked about in earlier episodes, after he was elected in 2016 there was a documented spike in women getting IUDs, implants, and hysterectomies as a precautionary measure against reproductive care restrictions.

Now, facing a second Trump presidency, and with Roe V Wade overturned, many are feeling similar or intensified anxieties about their ability to access birth control and abortion in this country.

Amidst all this anxiety and uncertainty, can body literacy offer a guiding light for navigating our reproductive autonomy in the face of reproductive oppression?

n our final episode of the series, we’re looking to the future 🔮

We look back at some of the central questions we set out to answer in this series, before answering the most important question of all: what do we do next?

You’ll hear once again from several of our guests on their ideal vision for the future.

✨ Sociologist Dr. Krystale Littlejohn shares what a reproductively just approach to birth control looks like

🩸 Philanthropist Chelsea VonChaz shares about the importance of menstrual education

🌀 Body literacy educators Sarah Bly and Nicole share their visions for comprehensive body literacy education that can take us from menarche to menopause

Together, their wisdom charts a course towards a future which is supportive, empowering, & liberatory for all.

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