Callie's Reviews > Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution

Wow. I was initially interested in this book because I have been against hormonal birth control for it's abortifacient effects since I found out how the Pill works a few years ago. Ever since I went off the Pill I have been more aware of the negative effects that the Pill, and the sexual revolution of the 60's, have had on our society, so this book caught my eye. Unfortunately the societal effects of the pill are not something that is obvious unless you have been sensitized to it, or unless someone points it out - and Eberstadt did that brilliantly in this book.

I won't say that the raw data was anything that I haven't heard before, but I was just floored by the author's insights in this book. I would never have connected some of these dots, but once she pointed them out I could see them so plainly. She has an incredible amount of historical evidence and research to back her points.

One of the things that really surprised me and made me think was her portrayal of food as the new sex, and porn as the new tobacco - i.e. the way we treat those things has reversed over the last 60 years. I would have thought this was a bit of a useless observation until she started talking about HOW our views of tobacco have changed, and what triggered it - and that gave me hope that there is potential for our views to change again, that people may see the truth when it comes to the harmful effects of porn and "junk sex", as she termed it.

The above viewpoint was the one that I had honestly never even considered before, but I've also given a lot of thought to the effects of the Pill - if you haven't, I think each chapter in this book would be just as revolutionary for you. I could write a paragraph on each chapter, but I won't - I'll just say that she presents the evidence of how the sexual revolution has effected women, men, children, and young adults in very negative ways - and how nothing will get better until we give up our "will to disbelieve" what the evidence is clearly showing us.

She wraps it all up on a chapter about the one official hold-out on artificial contraception, which is the Catholic Church's position on it in the Humanae Vitae. I am not Catholic, and I don't agree with some major Catholic doctrines, but it was just eerie how Paul VI's predictions in that document have all come to pass. I was also not aware that Protestant denominations okayed artificial birth control only in the 1930's, in contradiction to the hundreds of years of Christian tradition on the issue of birth control before that - and that switch on this issue historically led to many not-great results, including the sexual revolution. So yes, wow. It all gave me a lot to think about.

I HIGHLY recommend this one. The issues addressed in this book are too important, and the risks of choosing wrong are too high, for us to bury our heads in the sand.