Putting the pill to work.

This year marked the 50th anniversary of the FDA approval of the birth control pill, and with that milestone came numerous stories about the sexual liberation of women. While the pill deserves much credit for revolutionizing our sexual culture, it merits even more for transforming our workforce. Providers have long known the individual and public health benefits of family planning, but the medical community may not be fully aware of the economic stability contraception brings to their patients' lives and to society overall. Last year, women became half of all payroll employees in the United States for the first time in our history [1]. They could not have reached this watershed moment without widespread access to modern contraception. Family planning services not only give couples the ability to begin and grow their families when and if they are ready to do so, they also give women the opportunity to develop their education and careers, participate fully in our economy and build economic security for themselves and their families. As a highly effective and convenient contraceptive method, the pill gave women the certainty they needed to invest in their careers and education and to delay marriage and childbearing, according to Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz [2]. Moreover, because the pill made marriage delay acceptable for all women, it indirectly encouraged career investments even for women not using it. These benefits have made the act of contracepting a nearly universal experience. In a National Center for Health Statistics study, 98% of women who have had sex with a man reported using at least one contraceptive method during their reproductive years, with the pill listed as the leading method [3]. Women's need to be able to plan their pregnancies is perhaps more important than ever before. By the end of 2009, men had lost seven out of 10 jobs in the Great Recession [4]. Indeed, in the first part of that year, 2 million working wives had an unemployed husband [5], making women's income even more critical to a family's economic well-being. The evidence is incontrovertible that those who were thinking about starting or increasing their families have put