What if: No Pill

What if the birth control pill was not invented? Would there still be the same rise in feminism? Would there population issues in the first world?
 
No, birth rates would be somewhat higher, but I highly doubt you'd see much population growth as compared to OTL. When children have ceased to be an economic asset and have interfered with adult leisure, birth rates have declined in societies well before the advent of the pill.

What you would see is a more socially conservative society. But remember there are still condoms and etc., so you may not see revolutionary differences from OTL.
 
There would actually likely be much lower STD infection rates. Japan basically only allows condoms and their STD infection rate is quite low. The main issue is getting birth control that women have control of. IUDs might become quite a bit more popular stateside, which is a good thing, in my view.
However, I think the pill would be discovered eventually. It's too useful and easy not to. Or you can drastically change human biochemistry, but that's not an advisable POD.
 
I think long-term survival might be a little more important than playing around with expensive toys. After all, the point in offspring is to have part of yourself to continue on after the whole of you dies.

'Cause with seven billion of us and growing, the biggest problem facing humanity is that there aren't enough of us :rolleyes:.

Knee-jerk pro-natalism is as silly as knee-jerk anti-natalism.
 
I've always been kinda amused at the disconnect between the availability of birth control in the USA and whether people actually use it. Condoms have been around for a long time, and the pill became widely available in the 60s, and yet... what happened in the 80s? A massive surge in teen and single mom pregnancies that never really slowed down until after 2000.
 
I think long-term survival might be a little more important than playing around with expensive toys. After all, the point in offspring is to have part of yourself to continue on after the whole of you dies.

Those are just the facts, chief. I'm a knee-jerk pro-natalist, but so what? From time to time before the advent of the Pill, societies, particularly the upper classes, have suffered from voluntary nihilistic low birth-rates.
 
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