Today is the American Life League’s (ALL) third annual The Pill Kills Day, which focuses on the various harmful effects of the birth control pill. All focus this year is on the Pill’s harmful effects on the environment.
But it turns out, just as Feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti wrote in a May 30 Washington Post op ed that one cannot be a feminist without supporting abortion, neither, apparently, can one be an environmentalist without supporting the right toxins.
Attacking Sarah Palin’s brand of feminism, Valenti wrote:
But, of course, Palin isn’t a feminist — not in the slightest. What she calls “the emerging conservative feminist identity” isn’t the product of a political movement or a fight for social justice.
It isn’t a structural analysis of patriarchal norms, power dynamics or systemic inequities. It’s an empty rallying call to women who are disdainful of or apathetic to women’s rights, who want to make abortion and emergency contraception illegal…..
Now comes Carol King at the Ms. magazine blog, who’s “amused” by the pro-life side’s “antics” to draw attention to the fact that waste estrogen from the birth control pill is harming the environment, a point which, King writes, “sent me into howls of laughter.”
King goes on to downplay estrogen’s impact on the environment because, she erroneously claims, it is confined to certain waterways, as if that matters anyway.
In a transparently opportunistic move, the American Life League and 26 other anti-choice groups announced their latest action, “Protest the Pill Day 2010: The Pill Kills the Environment.” They cite the presence of “intersex” fish (male fish with both male and female sex organs) in various areas of the world as evidence that birth control pills are killing our environment….
Of course they fail to mention other chemicals-called endocrine disruptors-that exist in these same waters, such as human and veterinary drugs (including antibiotics), non-prescription drugs, caffeine, detergents, disinfectants, plasticizers, fire retardants, insect repellants and antioxidants. They also fail to mention that these chemicals are found downstream of wastewater treatment plants.
This is indeed a partial truth. According to Time magazine on April 1:
[In] the 1990s… pharmaceutical estrogens, principally from birth control pills, began showing up in the water too, leading to male fish with androgynous sex organs. Scarily, it did not take much estrogen to affect the fish – just 5 or 6 nanograms, or billionths of a gram, per liter of lake water.
So “real” feminists don’t care about hermaphrodite fish. That’s fine.
But King is ignoring or is ignorant of the fact that waste estrogen from the Pill is also leaching into human drinking water. A 2008 Associated Press investigation found estrogen among a “vast array of pharmaceuticals” in “the drinking water supplies of 24 major metropolitan areas – from Southern California to Northern New Jersey, from Detroit to Louisville,” affecting “at least 41 million Americans.”
If waste estrogen morphs male fish into females, what does it do to men? According to Wikipedia, sourcing a study published in the January 2008 International Journal of Environmental Analytical Chemistry:
When [estrogen] makes its way into the environment it can cause severe male reproductive dysfunction to both humans and wildlife.
Whatever. Amanda Marcotte at RH Reality Check writes there are more important environmental toxins to worry about:
Believe me, as a real environmentalist, and not a fair weather one who only worries about pollution as a tool in the war against sex, I can tell you that real environmentalists think reliable contraception is the greatest technological invention to save our planet since basically ever….
Not that estrogen mimickers in the water don’t worry environmentalists, but the reality-based concerns have to do with chemicals that ALL doesn’t care one whit about—pesticides and industrial by-products that far out-swamp women peeing out both real and synthetic estrogen.
Really? Because we’re discussing the sacred birth control pill, Amanda shows herself as another feminist willing to forego its environmental harm, which may be pretty catastrophic to women, as it turns out. According to the DailyGreen.com on June 9, 2009:
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that human breast cancer cells grew twice as fast when exposed to estrogen taken from catfish caught near untreated sewage overflows. “There is the potential for an increased risk for those people who are prone to estrogenic cancer,” said Conrad Volz, lead researcher on the study.
But even if The Pill is an environmental hazard, pro-lifers have no right to care according to “Kyle“ at People for the American Way:
When a large group of anti-choice organizations and activists band together in order to protest the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, you assume it is because they are the sorts of people who tend to consider all contraception immoral and a form of abortion.
But no! They really just care deeply about the environment…
Who ever would have guessed that right-wing anti-choice activists were such committed environmentalists?
Perhaps Kyle doesn’t care if his voice rises an octave and he becomes impotent. It’s still hard to believe feminists would find breast cancer and sterilization worth their elusive attempt to have sex without consequences – although I’m sure the prospect of androgynous, femininized males is certainly another plus.
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