Brian Coppola :: Late 19th/Early-to-Mid 20th C cartoonists & illustrators

"The Pill” (02/03/1970) By Charles Phillip Bissell

Artist: Phillip Bissell (All)

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The Pill” (02/03/1970) By Charles Phillip Bissell Comic Art

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Artwork Details

Title:	"The Pill” (02/03/1970) By Charles Phillip Bissell
Artist:	Phillip Bissell (All)
Media Type:	Pen and Ink
Art Type:	Illustration
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	623
Likes on CAF:	1 2
Comments:	0
Added to Site:	8/23/2019
Comic Art Archive:

Description

"The Pill” (02/03/1970)
By Charles Phillip Bissell (1926 - )
9.5 x 11.5, ink and wash on board

In 1960, Boston Globe cartoonist Phil Bissell, working for $25 a day, was handed an assignment that would change his life—and the lives of fans of the brand-new AFL football team coming to Boston. “Sports editor Jerry Nason came to me and he said, ‘They’ve decided to call the team the Boston Patriots. You better have a cartoon ready for tomorrow’s edition.’” Bissel’s “Pat Patriot” cartoon was the Patriot’s logo from 1961-1992.

Legal changes by states lowered the age of majority and expanded the rights of minors in the late 1960s and early 1970s and, by doing so, facilitated the diffusion of the pill among young, single women.

As a fraction of B.A.’s, female entrants to law and medical schools began a steep climb around 1970. Throughout the 1960s the ratio of women to all students was around 0.1 in medicine, 0.04 in law, 0.01 in dentistry, and 0.03 in business administration. By 1980 it was 0.3 in medicine, 0.36 in law, 0.19 in dentistry, and 0.28 in business.

The birth control pill arrived in the midst of the great counter-culture movement of the late 1960s, and college campuses were a focal point for so much of what was happening. The November 28, 1969 issue of Time magazine had an article titled “The Pill at Stanford,” which followed up on a Newsweek (October 11, 1965) report “The Pill on Campus.”

In 1969 concerns came to a head with the publication of The Doctor's Case Against the Pill. In this controversial book, medical journalist Barbara Seaman combined the testimony of physicians, medical researchers, and women who had used oral contraceptives to build a case against the safety of the Pill and to indict the medical-pharmaceutical establishment that had marketed it.

Shortly after publication, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson read Seaman's book. Nelson was in the midst of conducting hearings on the pharmaceutical industry, investigating abuses in the use of antibiotics, barbiturates and tranquilizers. After finishing Seaman's book, he decided to take on the birth control pill as well.

In January 1970 experts assembled in the stately Senate chamber and began giving their testimony on the hazards of the Pill.

Glamour ran an article in its February 1970 issue, asking “Should Campuses Set Up Birth-Control Clinics?”

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	Brian Coppola Premium Gallery Owner
Joined:	March 2009
Last Login:	September 2025
Country:	UNITED STATES
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