After Country Stations Banned Loretta Lynn’s ‘The Pill’, It Becomes Her Biggest Pop Hit

On June 23, 1960, the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive used to prevent pregnancy, forever changing women’s lives and choices. It quickly became popular. According to Planned Parenthood, just five years later, a quarter of all married women under the age of 45 reported taking the pill.

The Birth Control Bill created a historic shift in women’s sexual and reproductive freedoms. However, openly talking about the pill is still taboo in many places, and women outside the city center are often unaware that it exists.

Enter Loretta Lynn, the vocal country singer who has denied her claim to be a feminist throughout her six-decade career, while singing bravely about everyday injustices in the lives of married women (think of promiscuous husbands, husbands who make progress after all-night drinking is unwelcome, and women who are scorned for work while their husbands are on the run) and sings about women’s empowerment (like overworked wives who decide to shed the labor shackles of the family… and wives who threaten arrest) women flirt with their men to “Fist City”).