Courtney Martin on birth control’s effect:
This year — the year I turned 30 — the birth-control pill is turning 50. As Elaine Tyler May points out in her new book, America and the Pill, that little technology promised a whole lot of change — feminist liberation, angst-free sex, world peace — that it hasn’t quite delivered. Another thing that the pill didn’t do was eradicate the modern woman’s wrestle with those tricky twins: time and fertility.
I’ve recently left my 20s behind and people have started asking me if I’m going to procreate. I don’t blame them. I’m acutely aware of the fact that time is already not on my side. Most studies indicate that fertility takes a downturn for most women in their 30s; most studies also indicate that men’s sperm become less hearty as well.