The University of Toronto Health Service, Oral Contraception, and Student Demand for Birth Control, 1960-1970

Abstract

The birth control pill is routinely associated with the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s. Yet this case study of the impact of the pill on the University of Toronto reveals that young, single, white, middle-class women students were not always able to access this prescription contraceptive at the campus Health Service. The refusal or reluctance of the Health Service to prescribe the pill to single women students resulted in heightened male and female student pressure on the Health Service to do so. The development of and changes to the Health Service's policy on the provision of oral contraceptives to single women students reflected the often contradictory moral, legal and administrative positionalities of that Service. The result was a complex dynamic marked by conflict and collusion.