The Pill that Persuades

In the spirit of the “War on Women” and the recent election, I want to discuss the public relation tactics and strategies that were used to put things like birth control at the fingertips of women all over America in the first place.

Margaret Sanger, the mother of birth control, was a birth control activist, sex educator, and a nurse from the 20s to the 60s. She came from a family where her mother was pregnant 18 times, with 7 miscarriages, and died at age 50 from tuberculosis and cervical cancer when Sanger was 20 years old. And in the years following, the birth control movement became evermore prominent.

The tactics employed for this movement began with finding people to support Sanger’s cause and could reach ALL audiences. A good public relations campaign is one that can be effective in the eyes of even those who oppose you. In this particular case, Catholics were the biggest enemies of birth control. A Catholic doctor by the name of John Rock was very excited to help out with the movement and was convinced that he was the answer to getting the Vatican to change its position on birth control.

After the backing of John Rock, marketing was the next step. As I have said in previous posts, marketing and public relations need to work together to be effective. The pill was marketed as something called Enovid, a pill for menstrual disorders. Marketing and public relations had to work together to loosen the Catholic Church’s stance on birth control. Because the church said it was okay to have sex during the “safe period” of your cycle, so why is a pill that ensures a longer safe period so bad? But Pope Paul IV said no, in fact he said “Absolutely not.” And John Rock was devastated; he could not believe that his church would not allow this pill to help women everywhere. But women of the Catholic faith were defiant and soon they were half of the birth control market.

However, the pill took a turn for the worst. Women were beginning to die from the pill. But women wanted to believe so much that it couldn’t be the pill. A public relations campaign was not even necessary to save face and to keep women from buying the pill. It was literally handed out like candy. So women took upon themselves to flood hearings, got in front of every camera possible, protesting in the streets, anything to promote their cause. Their tactics and strategies were heard. Changing the way women were being viewed in the streets, in the government, and in the bedroom. The pill prompted one of the most successful public relations campaigns in the history of women’s liberation.