Apparently there's a bit of atheist lore going around that "the Pope" is to blame for the way that birth control pills have been prescribed for the last 60 years considering that there have been 6 Popes in those 60 years, none of whom I'm aware having any control over how birth control pills have been prescribed, bull shit.
Apparently the lore comes from a Brit - big surprise, huh? -
Professor John Guillebaud, emeritus professor of family planning and reproductive health, rejected the “sub-optimal” way the combined hormone contraceptive pill has traditionally been taken for 60 years.
“The gynaecologist John Rock devised [the break] because he hoped that the Pope would accept the pill and make it acceptable for Catholics to use,” Professor Guillebaud told The Telegraph.
“Rock thought if it did imitate the natural cycle then the Pope would accept it. When his campaign to get the pill accepted by the Pope failed, he just simply stopped being a Catholic, having been a committed one for his entire life.”
He added: “How could it be that for 60 years we have been taking the pill in a sub-optimal way because of this desire to please the Pope?”
To which I say again, bull shit. If "the Pope" had any say in the matter OR ANY ABILITY TO MAKE ANY DECISION OF THAT KIND they wouldn't have ever been approved for sale. I doubt Dr. Rock would have been stupid enough to believe that such a break would have gotten Catholic policy on artificial birth control changed or that any such stupidly adopted hope would have survived Pope Paul VI's issuance of his encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, fifty years back in that 60 years.
Apparently I'm not the only one skeptical of this bit of Brit-based anti-Catholic lore. Corissa Hollenbeck researched the issue for VICE:
I wanted to know why it took over 50 years for this guidance to be scrapped and, of course, if the rule had anything to do with the Pope. To find out, I spoke to Jane Dickson, Vice President of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare.
VICE: What led to this revelation about the "Pope Rule"?
Jane Dickson: Can we start off by not calling it a "Pope Rule"? Essentially, the background to the seven-day break with the pill is actually multi-factorial. There were many reasons, historically, why the pill had a seven-day break, not just because one of the inventors himself was a Catholic and wanted to appease the Catholic church – so I think that’s really important. It wasn’t just about appeasing the Catholic Church. I think there has been a lot taken out of context and sensationalised in the press; I need to clarify that first.
So: there were many reasons why there was a break when the pill was introduced. One of the most important reasons is that the pill that was used 60 years ago, some of the hormones that were in that pill were 100 times greater in dose than the pills we have now. Quite often, women actually felt quite dreadful when they took it. Part of the reason for the seven-day break was just a break from the massive amount of hormones. Also, it led to a period, even though we know now that that’s not a proper period, that’s just a withdrawal bleed. Because contraception was new at the time, there was a lot of anxiety about how it affected your body. One of the other reasons for the break was to reassure women that they weren’t pregnant.
You can read more about it at the link, above.
RMJ posted an excellent piece yesterday that touched on the use of anti-Catholic invective in allegedly educated peoples' folk lore which goes nicely with this story. And there aren't any bigger suckers for that kind of tripe than those who want to be taken as sophisticated and in the know and not someone with cooties. The conceit of the educated class that they've got some enormous qualitative advantage over those they love to think they're better than is hilarious when you fact check their firmly held beliefs.
None of this will stop the anti-Catholics, especially the online atheists, repeating this story as fervently as Trumpzis will repeat their preferred lines of crap. It will become common received wisdom before the month is out and will be endlessly repeated as something everyone knows. Fact checking so much of what people with university and college credentials firmly believe and even include in their alleged intellectual work it's shocking how much of that doesn't stand up at all. I guess I should have never been so naive as I was.
Update: I should have added this part of the VICE interview:
Thanks for clearing up the Pope stuff. Why is it that everyone is misinterpreting this information to think that the Pope’s the main cause?
Basically, one of the inventors of the pill was a Catholic. He was concerned about how the Catholic church would respond to contraception. There is a theory that one of the reasons for the pill-free interval was to make it more acceptable to the Catholic church, because it mimicked the natural cycle. But as I told you, there were lots of other reasons for that break, other than just the Catholic church.
Why do you think it’s such a popular theory?
I think it’s a sensationalised story, because contraception isn’t very sexy. So, some sensationalising every now and then doesn’t go amiss. But, really, we view this as a positive change. It puts women at the centre of their care, to give them more power over their bodies.
What’s the main message here?
There’s all sorts of ways that we can empower women to take control over their hormones. That’s the far more important message than anything about the Catholic church. It’s about women having more reproductive control, [and] that there’s potential for it to be more reliable, less pill failures and health benefits, in terms of better control of conditions like endometriosis and PMT. I suppose we’re just trying to challenge the held belief that you have to have a period. It is just a withdrawal bleed.
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