避孕药通过六十周年 / 开普饭

As a young woman growing up in a poor farming community in Virginia in the 1940 and '50s, with little information about sex or contraception, sexuality was a frightening thing for Carole Cato and her female friends.

对于这名成长在20世纪四 50年代的弗吉尼亚州贫困社区的年轻女子来说，因为性和避孕知识的贫乏，对于卡罗尔·卡托和他的女性朋友们来说，性行为是一件可怕的事情。

"We lived in constant fear, I mean all of us," she said.

“我们一直生活在恐惧当中，我们所有人都是。”她说。

"It was like a tightrope. always wondering, is this going to be the time [I get pregnant]?"

“就跟走钢丝一样，你永远都在想这回会中招（怀孕）吗？”

Cato, 78, now lives in Columbia, S.C.

今年78岁的卡托如今住在哥伦比亚特区。

She grew up in the years before the birth control pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, on May 9, 1960.

她长大的那个时代美国食品和药物管理局还没有通过避孕药的审批，最后通过是在1960年的5月9日。

She said teenage girls in her community were told very little about how their bodies worked.

她说，那时候他们社区里的年轻女孩们并不会接触到很多关于自己身体的知识。

"I was very fortunate; I did not get pregnant, but a lot of my friends did. And of course, they just got married and went into their little farmhouses," she said.

“我算是很幸运的，没有怀孕，但我有很多女性朋友怀上了，当然她们不得不结婚，然后在农场上开始了新生活。”她说。

"But I just felt I just had to get out."

“但我总在想我必须要走出这里。”

At 23, Cato married a widower who already had seven children.

23岁时，卡托嫁给了一名鳏夫，他已经有七个孩子。

They decided seven was enough.

他们觉得七个已经够多了。

By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to avoid having more babies — and she eventually was able to go on to college.

卡托说，那时候这种药可以让夫妇们不用生更多的孩子，她也终于可以去上大学了。

"It was just like going from night to day, as far as the freedom of it," Cato said.

“它带来的自由，像使人们从黑夜进入了，白天一样。

"And to know that I had control, that I had choice, that I controlled my body. It gave me a whole new lease on life."

Loretta Ross, an activist and visiting women's studies professor at Smith College, was among the first generation of young women to have access to the birth control pill throughout their reproductive years.

Ross, now 66, said by the time she came of age around 1970, the pill was giving young women more control over their fertility than previous generations had enjoyed.

"We could talk about having sex – not without consequences, because there were still STDS ... but at the same time, with more freedom than our foremothers had," Ross said. "So it changed the world."

For all it's done for women, Ross said that the pill has a complex and controversial history; it was first tested on low-income women in Puerto Rico. Ross said the pill also has limitations; she'd like to see it made available over the counter, as it is in some countries – not to mention, a pill for men.

When the pill was approved in 1960, women had few relatively few contraceptive options, and the pill offered more reliability and convenience than methods like condoms or diaphragms, said Dr. Eve Espey, chair of the Department of Ob/Gyn and Family Planning at the University of New Mexico.

"There was a huge, pent-up desire for a truly effective form of contraception, which had been lacking up to that point," Espey said.

By 1965, she said, 40% of young married women were on the pill.

For Pat Fishback, now 80 and living in Richmond, Va., the newly-available pill allowed her to delay having children in her early 20s until she'd been married for a couple of years.

"It also made having children a positive experience," Fishback said. "Because we had actually, emotionally and intellectually, gotten to the point where we really desired to have children."

It took a bit longer for unmarried women to gain widespread access to the pill and other forms of contraception: Linda Gordon, 80, a historian at New York University, remembers the stigma around single women and contraception at the time.

"When I was in college, a number of women had a wedding ring – a gold ring –that we would pass around and use when we wanted to go see a doctor to get fitted for a diaphragm," Gordon said. "In other words, there were people finding their way to do that, even then."

The pill also gave rise to a variety of other forms of hormonal contraception, many of which are popular today, Gordon said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 13% of American women of reproductive age use the pill — making it the second most popular form of contraception, after female sterilization.

Gordon said that 60 years after the pill's approval, contraception remains a contentious political issue.

Just this week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving the birth control mandate in the Affordable Care Act. A decision on whether some institutions with religious or moral objections can deny contraceptive coverage to their employees is expected in the months to come.

By that time, Cato said, the pill allowed the couple to avoid having more babies — and she eventually was able to go on to college.

那时候，卡托说，这种药使得夫妇们可以不用生更多的孩子，她也终于可以去上大学了。

"It was just like going from night to day, as far as the freedom of it," Cato said.

“它给人们带来的自由，就好像让人从黑夜进入了白天一样，”卡托说道。