May 9, 2010

The Pill’s 50th Birthday Party

1963 Ortho-Novum ad for the birth control pill via <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/as-the-pill-turns-50-the-little-agent-of-modernity-still-arouses-trouble/article1560994/">the Globe and Mail</a>.

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50 years ago today, the FDA promised to give women a reliable way to control their fertility without resorting to crocodile dung, Lysol douches, or lemon rind diaphragms. Fans of irony will note that the pill’s FDA approval was nudged into being by a fervently Catholic doctor named John Rock, whose attempts to please the Pope also inspired the Pill’s medically pointless 28-day cycle.

[Read Malcolm Gladwell’s fascinating 2000 New Yorker article on Rock and the Pill’s birth here.]

More than a million women were carrying the small circular pill containers in their purses by 1962, medicine masquerading as makeup compacts. As Time‘s Nancy Gibbs writes, “There’s no such thing as the Car or the Shoe or the Laundry Soap. But everyone knows the Pill, whose FDA approval 50 years ago rearranged the furniture of human relations in ways that we’ve argued about ever since.”

Gail Collins has a great column this weekend on what the Pill arguments are about now. Plus, don’t miss Elizabeth Gettelman’s whirlwind history of contraception here.

Happy 50th, Pill!

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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