In June 1963, Alfred A. Knopf published a curious and controversial work—The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor’s Proposals to End the Battle Over Birth Control. The author, Dr. John Rock, was an unlikely candidate to have devoted himself to the development of the first hormonal contraceptive: he attended daily Mass, displayed a crucifix in his office, and declared to advocates at a 1948 birth control conference that he was “very much against teaching young people the disadvantage of having babies.”
However, Rock’s conversion to the population control movement eventually superseded his defense of family life, and he entered into partnership with Margaret Sanger, a fallen-away Catholic whose initial distrust of the researcher eventually gave way to profound admiration as Rock threw himself wholeheartedly into the quest for a Vatican-approved form of contraception. In his controversial book, Rock rationalized that the new drug, Enovid, could be morally used by Catholic women to extend their infertile periods, attesting that it was compounded of substances mirroring the same natural hormones that powered the female endocrine system.
In 2019, Dr. Sarah Hill, an evolutionary psychologist teaching at Texas Christian University, summarily smashed Rock’s flawed assertion. Ironically, Hill is no conservative Christian pundit; she avers that the Pill has done an “amazing” job in opening up career advancement opportunities for women. However, in This is Your Brain on Birth Control: The Surprising Science of Women, Hormones, and the Law of Unintended Consequences, Hill draws a sharp distinction between the progestins synthesized from testosterone which are used in some hormonal birth control, and their natural counterparts, which function quite differently. It’s only one of many alarming observations that make this book required reading for those who blithely believe that popping a pill for its “targeted” effect of pregnancy prevention will leave other body systems wholly unaffected.
Dr. Hill, who has appeared on numerous podcasts since the publication of her book, is just the latest secular scientist to provide empirical support for the natural-law case against contraception, continuing a trend noted nearly ten years ago by Catholic writer Mary Eberstadt in her Foreword marking the fiftieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae. which was published on July 25, 1968. “The most unfashionable, unwanted, and ubiquitously deplored moral teaching on earth,” said Eberstadt, “is also the most thoroughly vindicated by the accumulation of secular, empirical, post-revolutionary fact.”
It is hard to say what is more astonishing about Hill’s book—her fascinating supply of facts drawn from a colorful collection of scientific studies or her willingness to incur the wrath of her readers by sometimes employing a refreshing spritz of logic that has become unacceptable in a considerable number of academic institutions. For instance, on the subject of sex differentiation, Hill says:
If you have a limited supply of large, calorically expensive gametes, you are a female and we call your sex cells “eggs.” If you have an unlimited supply of small, metabolically inexpensive gametes, you are a male and we call your sex cells “sperm.” And although this designation may sound overly simplistic (and potentially even a little crass), it’s at the very heart of almost all reliably occurring sex differences observed in creatures great and small, including human beings.
Hill elaborates on this point by describing the impact of male vs. female body design on the sexual behavior of men and women going back to caveman days. Given the low-risk, high-reward potential for a male engaged in sex, she says, we would expect a prehistoric man to be very comfortable pursuing opportunistic intercourse with as many females as possible, distributing copies of his genetic code far and wide.
However, a promiscuous existence would not prove as beneficial for the prehistoric woman. Carrying a child in her womb would inevitably present her with a new set of problems. How would she feed her offspring? And who would defend her against the unexpected onslaught of a voracious saber-toothed tiger? To optimize the chances of survival for herself and her children, she would have to select a mate who could provide adequate protection and food. A prehistoric mom-to-be would have had her eye out for a man who exuded strength, health, and social dominance. This attraction to “the other” might have also provided an advantage to potential offspring, granting them the increased immunity that comes from genetic variation.
Hill highlights a number of studies which demonstrate that modern women retain powerful vestiges of this biological urge. These scenarios show that in the follicular (fertile) portion of their cycles, women who are not on birth control show a preference for traditional testosterone markers—typically masculine faces, voices, and behavior. During this time, exposure to masculine faces stimulates the reward center of a woman’s brain.
However, in the luteal (infertile) phase of the cycle, which carries with it the possibility of pregnancy, the woman’s preferences change. At this point she is likely to exhibit an attraction to less masculinized faces. Hill theorizes that this variation is driven by a woman’s need for safety, security, and nurturing during pregnancy, particularly by close family (represented by those with more similar faces).
But here is where the picture gets a little blurry. What happens when you introduce into the woman’s body a combination of chemicals which are intended to short-circuit the estrogen spike which can jumpstart the process of conception? In one study cited by Hill, researchers asked participants to manipulate images in a computer program to make them look like their ideal male face.
Three months later, the women were instructed to repeat the drawing. One group of women produced results that were virtually identical to their previous work. Another set of participants completed drawings that were very different from the square-jawed, muscular images that they had made initially. What was the difference? Simply this–in the intervening days, the second group of women had started on the birth control pill.
The story gets more complex when we consider the cases of women who choose their partners while taking the birth control pill and then eventually decide to stop using it. The research suggests that during their newly-regained fertile phase, these women will once again exhibit a preference for men with more pronounced testosterone markers. Dr. Hill relates two examples of women in this situation who, when freed from the haze of synthetic hormones, found themselves looking at their mates with diminished attraction. This possibility is especially alarming when you consider the numbers of adolescent girls who are placed on hormonal contraception almost from the moment that they start their period. If a young woman whose brain is still in the early stages of development becomes attuned to personality changes that might be just the “contraception talking,” how can she possibly expect to know herself and ultimately find a spouse with whom she is well matched?
It is also not too bizarre to wonder whether the widespread accusations of “toxic masculinity” that have gripped our culture may not have their root, at least in part, in the overwhelming number of women who have adopted hormonal birth control as an easy and effective daily ritual to assume control of their own lives. If women are overwhelmingly drawn to men who are compliant, gentle, and nurturing, they may be tempted to view more “manly men” as brash, threatening, and potentially violent…when in fact, their non-Pill-taking selves would feel quite different about it!
When concerns about the warping of a woman’s identity are added to the significant body of scientific evidence against the Pill, it seems as if women should be motivated in drones to dump their contraceptives and reclaim their fertility. However, despite greater acknowledgement that hormonal contraception might not be as harmless as everyone once thought, it does not seem that most women are prepared to give it up.
During a lengthy interview with women’s wellness host Maddie Miles, after detailing the battery of unpleasant physical and emotional changes experienced by contracepting women, Dr. Sarah Hill joined in Ms. Miles’s conclusion that what women, (and, in particular, young women lacking the impulse control to abstain from sex), desperately needed was a better range of birth control options without so many deleterious side effects. The reality is that no synthetic cocktail will ever be able to come close to imitating the natural functions of a woman’s body. Women don’t need better drugs—they need to stop imitating the “opportunistic sex” paradigm of the caveman, reclaim their roles as the gatekeepers of sexual morality and hold men to the standards Richard Kiley sang about in Man of La Mancha. It is a shame that despite insisting that “A woman’s body isn’t broken and doesn’t need to be fixed,” our society continues to try to do just that.
