Cybill Shepherd on going on The Pill

"... I became sexually active as a teenager. One day, my mom took me to my family doctor. He wrote something on a prescription pad and said, ‘Take one of these every day, and all your periods will be regular.’ What a thrill! He didn’t even tell me it was birth control.”

It's a thrill to have your doctor lie to you?  Really?

Shouldn't she be completely offended at the sexist attitude of her doctor, whose behavior suggests that he believed women (especially young ones) can't handle a simple explanation of what medications actually do?

I know I'm offended as much by her attitude toward herself, as by his attitude toward women.


Shepherd's comments are cited in a New York Magazine article entitled "Waking Up from the Pill".  Interesting reading, as it shows that some people in secular culture are questioning the cost of such technological interventions in a woman's fertility, even if they are not yet ready to admit that they may have overestimated their value.


----------------------------------------

Update: Ms. Shepherd also made similar remarks about her first birth control pills in an interview with Larry King:

KING: You've always been pro-choice, right?

SHEPHERD: Always been pro-choice.

KING: Even growing up in an area where pro-life would have been sacrosanct?

SHEPHERD: I was very lucky. Very close family friend in 1966, a doctor, prescribed me birth control pills without telling my mother and without telling me. Just went for my first gynecological appointment, and he said, "Do you have a boyfriend?" I said yes. He said, "Do you love him?" I said, "Yes, we're going to get married?"

He said: "Well, you know, your periods have been a little irregular here. I'm going to give you a prescription of something that's going to make your periods real regular."

I was very fortunate, and that is why I feel compelled to stand up for the young women in this country now who are not allowed to control their own fertility, their bodily fertility. People keep wanting to take away from women our right to control our pleasure and our bodies and our reproductive health. And for this, I will always continue to fight wherever it is. 

KING: Are you Catholic?

SHEPHERD: No, I'm not. I was raised Episcopal.

I still cannot understand how a "pro-choice" woman could be so excited about this, since her doctor made the choice for her.