It became a symbol of women’s rights and generational change — and, for a time, the focus of a debate over whether it led to declining morals.

The pill was groundbreaking in other ways: Women today have a wide range of effective contraceptive choices, virtually all of them variations on the pill. Concerns about adverse effects linked to the early, high-dose oral contraceptives galvanized feminists and gave rise to the consumer health movement. Americans no longer assume doctors, regulators and drug companies know what’s best for them.

“It’s not that a technology changes everything,” says McGill University historian Andrea Tone, author of Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America. “It’s how people reacted to the technology.” Other forces — political, cultural, religious and medical — shaped how the pill was perceived and used, she says.

Full article: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-05-07-1Apill07_CV_N.htm