Are Young Women Totally Over The Pill?

Lately, I’ve felt like I’m the last millennial still on the Pill.

- Julie Vadnal

For as long as I can remember, my girlfriends have set daily alarms to remind themselves to pop their tiny tablets. In high school, it seemed like everyone was taking it—for acne, bad cramps, and ya know, to avoid pregnancy. In college, when more of us were actually having sex on the reg, the trusty BC Pill achieved true BFF status. But these days, well, we’re kind of growing apart. One of my pals blames it for her blood clots; another told me that taking it from age 13 to 34 was enough. One ditched it because she suspected the hormones were messing with her metabolism. I’m still swallowing it, for now…but my Pill pack has started to seem kinda like a Discman in a Spotify world…and not in a hip, ironic way.

It may be hard to imagine, but when the Pill debuted in 1960, it was bigger than God. Soon almost one-third of American women were using it (in place of condoms and diaphragms, mostly). By 1967, nearly 13 million women in the world were. “Suddenly, women were in this position of having more contraception options other than to not have sex,” says ob-gyn Lauren Streicher, MD, director of the Northwestern Medicine Center for Sexual Medicine and Menopause.

By the 1980s, up to 80 million women were users - and enjoying the newfound freedom that came with the Pill’s 91 percent effectiveness (99 percent when used perfectly). Since it hit the market, the number of U.S. women in the workforce has more than tripled. Just try to name another pharmaceutical that has done so much for womankind (no, not Viagra). R-E-S-P-E-C-T. So why all the sudden ungratefulness?