On May 9th women around the world will be celebrating a very special fiftieth anniversary.
This was a memorable date in the annals of feminine liberation; an occasion which marked what the 'Economist' magazine described as the most important scientific advance of the 20th century.
This was the day in 1960 when the US Food and Drug Administration finally approved the contraceptive pill, which is now used by more than one hundred million women around the world.
The advance was damned and praised in fairly equal measures.
Some were sure it would help strengthen marital relationships by easing the burden of unwanted offspring.
Others were equally convinced that it would lead to a wave of unbridled promiscuity.
The heated debate about sexual mores, freedom and choice continues to rage, and invariably generates more heat than light.
Ever since records have been kept, couples have been trying to avoid the burden, and crippling cost, of unwanted pregnancies.
Women in ancient Egyptian made pessaries from crocodile dung and inserted them in their vaginas, hoping this would either block the passage of sperms or deter the unwelcome attention of amorous suitors.
Centuries later, men started covering their virile members with sheaths made from the lining of sheep intestines, a device later attributed to Dr Condom who merely made them more efficient.
About the same time Casanova, not wishing to beget too many bastard children, urged his mistresses to use half a lemon as a cervical cap.
None of these forms of birth control were particularly successful.
In Victorian times, when infant mortality rates dropped as a result of better nutrition and improved hygiene, couples felt a desperate need for family planning.
Many women started taking pills, which were always sold as being formulated to control 'menstrual irregularities' or prevent 'female disorders'.
To make sure their real purpose was clear the bottles often carried a warning notice, which also served as a powerful advertisement: 'not to be used during the early stages of pregnancy or they will bring about a miscarriage.
' Finally came the great breakthrough, when Dr Gregory Pincus developed the first effective contraceptive pill.
His opening came when he began experimenting with progesterone, the female hormone which chemists in Mexico had long been extracting from wild yams and knew could block ovulation.
Despite the availability of effective forms of contraception, countless women around the globe still face the problem of unwanted pregnancies.
Many will seek an abortion, as they have always done in the past.
At the very end of the nineteenth century two enterprising conmen sent letters to several thousand hospital matrons accusing them of carrying out abortions and seeking two guineas 'hush money'.
The police heard of the scam, and intercepted nearly two thousands replies, of which a quarter contained the backhander.
Today there's little call for backstreet abortions, especially as several health care trusts in England are now considering carrying out abortions in family doctors' practices.
These will be performed up to the ninth week of pregnancy using drugs without the need for surgery.
This facility will no doubt be opposed by Pro-life campaigners, who insist that anyone who carries out an abortion is guilty of an act of murder.
Early last year Dr H.
George Tiller was one of only three US doctors brave enough to provide abortions late in pregnancy for women carrying foetuses with severe developmental abnormalities.
His life was threatened by Pro-life activist, who dogged his footsteps wherever he went.
In 1986 his clinic was bombed.
In 1993 he was shot in both arms.
His assassin was caught and served an eleven year prison sentence for attempted murder.
From then onwards Dr Tiller wore a flak jacket and travelled in an armour plated jeep.
Finally, on the 31st May 2009, he was shot and killed by an anti-abortion activist while he was serving as an usher at his church in Wichita, Kansas.
The gunman clearly felt that the life of a deformed foetus was more precious than that of a dedicated gynaecologist who was going about the humane work for which he was trained.
When considering the rights and wrongs of abortion, thought must always be given to the needs of the mother who does not wish to give birth to an unwanted child.
Thought must also be given to the foetus, which may well suffer considerable emotional harm if it's born to unwilling parents.
Historical, and anthropological, studies reveal that women will always find a way of ridding themselves of unwanted children.
In Victorian England infanticide was rife, but often went unpunished because jury members refrained from convicting a local woman of a crime they knew carried the death penalty.
Unwelcome babies would be left on church doorsteps in the depth of winter, given away for adoption or dispatched to foundling homes.
Even today it's estimated that one million children worldwide are killed each year because they're born female.
In India girls are not wanted because of the high cost of their weddings and dowries, and because they generate less income than boys.
In China it's important to have sons, because only they can perpetuate the family name and honour their ancestors.
As a result in some parts of rural China three times as many boys survive as females.
(Ultrasound is illegal in China, so it's impossible to determine the sex of a child before it's born.
) If unwanted babies are conceived, despite the availability of Dr Pincus's wonder working pill, there are times when abortion may be the lesser of two evils.
This is the view expressed by British economist Richard Layard in his recent book 'Happiness: Lessons from a New Science.
' 'There is little worse for children than to be born when neither parent wants them,' he writes.
Such children are often born to single mothers and have a higher than average risk of committing crimes.
Surveys suggest that the introduction of laws permitting early abortions may be the biggest single cause of declining crime in America.
This is no idle guess, because abortion was legalised at varying times in different US states.
In each case, crime rates fell on average fifteen to twenty years after abortion was legalised.
The higher the state's abortion rate, the greater the decline in crime.
So when debating the rights and wrongs of abortion it's vital to take a broad, long-term perspective.
We need to consider the needs of society as a whole, rather than just that of the unborn child.
No one questions a woman's right to accept drugs to rid her body of rogue cancer cells, so why should we object if she chooses to use similar medicaments to divest her womb of an unwanted bundle of aggressively growing foetal cells? Couldn't we all agree to take the long term Pro-life view, and promote life after birth rather than months before?
This was a memorable date in the annals of feminine liberation; an occasion which marked what the 'Economist' magazine described as the most important scientific advance of the 20th century.
This was the day in 1960 when the US Food and Drug Administration finally approved the contraceptive pill, which is now used by more than one hundred million women around the world.
The advance was damned and praised in fairly equal measures.
Some were sure it would help strengthen marital relationships by easing the burden of unwanted offspring.
Others were equally convinced that it would lead to a wave of unbridled promiscuity.
The heated debate about sexual mores, freedom and choice continues to rage, and invariably generates more heat than light.
Ever since records have been kept, couples have been trying to avoid the burden, and crippling cost, of unwanted pregnancies.
Women in ancient Egyptian made pessaries from crocodile dung and inserted them in their vaginas, hoping this would either block the passage of sperms or deter the unwelcome attention of amorous suitors.
Centuries later, men started covering their virile members with sheaths made from the lining of sheep intestines, a device later attributed to Dr Condom who merely made them more efficient.
About the same time Casanova, not wishing to beget too many bastard children, urged his mistresses to use half a lemon as a cervical cap.
None of these forms of birth control were particularly successful.
In Victorian times, when infant mortality rates dropped as a result of better nutrition and improved hygiene, couples felt a desperate need for family planning.
Many women started taking pills, which were always sold as being formulated to control 'menstrual irregularities' or prevent 'female disorders'.
To make sure their real purpose was clear the bottles often carried a warning notice, which also served as a powerful advertisement: 'not to be used during the early stages of pregnancy or they will bring about a miscarriage.
' Finally came the great breakthrough, when Dr Gregory Pincus developed the first effective contraceptive pill.
His opening came when he began experimenting with progesterone, the female hormone which chemists in Mexico had long been extracting from wild yams and knew could block ovulation.
Despite the availability of effective forms of contraception, countless women around the globe still face the problem of unwanted pregnancies.
Many will seek an abortion, as they have always done in the past.
At the very end of the nineteenth century two enterprising conmen sent letters to several thousand hospital matrons accusing them of carrying out abortions and seeking two guineas 'hush money'.
The police heard of the scam, and intercepted nearly two thousands replies, of which a quarter contained the backhander.
Today there's little call for backstreet abortions, especially as several health care trusts in England are now considering carrying out abortions in family doctors' practices.
These will be performed up to the ninth week of pregnancy using drugs without the need for surgery.
This facility will no doubt be opposed by Pro-life campaigners, who insist that anyone who carries out an abortion is guilty of an act of murder.
Early last year Dr H.
George Tiller was one of only three US doctors brave enough to provide abortions late in pregnancy for women carrying foetuses with severe developmental abnormalities.
His life was threatened by Pro-life activist, who dogged his footsteps wherever he went.
In 1986 his clinic was bombed.
In 1993 he was shot in both arms.
His assassin was caught and served an eleven year prison sentence for attempted murder.
From then onwards Dr Tiller wore a flak jacket and travelled in an armour plated jeep.
Finally, on the 31st May 2009, he was shot and killed by an anti-abortion activist while he was serving as an usher at his church in Wichita, Kansas.
The gunman clearly felt that the life of a deformed foetus was more precious than that of a dedicated gynaecologist who was going about the humane work for which he was trained.
When considering the rights and wrongs of abortion, thought must always be given to the needs of the mother who does not wish to give birth to an unwanted child.
Thought must also be given to the foetus, which may well suffer considerable emotional harm if it's born to unwilling parents.
Historical, and anthropological, studies reveal that women will always find a way of ridding themselves of unwanted children.
In Victorian England infanticide was rife, but often went unpunished because jury members refrained from convicting a local woman of a crime they knew carried the death penalty.
Unwelcome babies would be left on church doorsteps in the depth of winter, given away for adoption or dispatched to foundling homes.
Even today it's estimated that one million children worldwide are killed each year because they're born female.
In India girls are not wanted because of the high cost of their weddings and dowries, and because they generate less income than boys.
In China it's important to have sons, because only they can perpetuate the family name and honour their ancestors.
As a result in some parts of rural China three times as many boys survive as females.
(Ultrasound is illegal in China, so it's impossible to determine the sex of a child before it's born.
) If unwanted babies are conceived, despite the availability of Dr Pincus's wonder working pill, there are times when abortion may be the lesser of two evils.
This is the view expressed by British economist Richard Layard in his recent book 'Happiness: Lessons from a New Science.
' 'There is little worse for children than to be born when neither parent wants them,' he writes.
Such children are often born to single mothers and have a higher than average risk of committing crimes.
Surveys suggest that the introduction of laws permitting early abortions may be the biggest single cause of declining crime in America.
This is no idle guess, because abortion was legalised at varying times in different US states.
In each case, crime rates fell on average fifteen to twenty years after abortion was legalised.
The higher the state's abortion rate, the greater the decline in crime.
So when debating the rights and wrongs of abortion it's vital to take a broad, long-term perspective.
We need to consider the needs of society as a whole, rather than just that of the unborn child.
No one questions a woman's right to accept drugs to rid her body of rogue cancer cells, so why should we object if she chooses to use similar medicaments to divest her womb of an unwanted bundle of aggressively growing foetal cells? Couldn't we all agree to take the long term Pro-life view, and promote life after birth rather than months before?
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