In a world that exists after the contraceptive pill was created, it is extremely difficult to convey just how radically it changed everything when it came to sexual health in ways that go far beyond the pharmaceutical.
This includes not only the regular 21-day combined pill taken by millions of people but also emergency hormonal contraception, which is widely available through pharmacies, as well as sexual health clinics and GP surgeries without a prescription.
Part of the reason for this is the wide effectiveness, given that the combined pill lowers the risk of pregnancy by over 99 per cent when taken as directed, whilst the emergency contraceptive pill is effective within three or five days (depending on which you take) after unprotected sex or if other contraception fails.
Another part of this was not only what the pill did but also what it meant when it came to healthcare, particularly sexual healthcare.
Whilst forms of birth control had existed for thousands of years, they were typically either dangerous, unreliable, non-reversible or some combination of all three, which would reflect societal attitudes towards sex and gender roles.
The contraceptive pill, initially prescribed in Family Planning Association clinics in 1961 coinciding with a subsidisation programme that later made the pill free to everyone on the NHS by 1974, changed a lot of the conversation and attitudes surrounding sex.
It was not the only catalyst for what has since been dubbed the Sexual Revolution; penicillin reduced the risk of deaths caused by syphilis, the heavy promotion of condoms to prevent both pregnancy and STIs surged in popularity from the 1940s, and the Abortion Act 1967 legalised in spirit (albeit not in letter) termination of a pregnancy should contraceptives fail.
It also coincided with the psychological works of Dr Alfred Kinsey and others, which challenged conventional taboos and assumptions about sexuality that were relics from the Victorian age and earlier.
However, what it changed was the dynamics surrounding bodily autonomy when it came to pregnancy and sexual health more broadly; before the mid-1960s, contraception was discussed primarily in the context of family planning rather than broader sexual health and liberation.
That began to change in the 1960s and 1970s in no small part thanks to the pill. Internal condoms were not invented until Lasse Hessels’ Femidom in 1990, which meant that in heterosexual relationships men had a disproportionate amount of control over sexual health and protection.
By being a discreet contraceptive medicine that women could choose to obtain and take by themselves, it gave them a level of control over their bodily autonomy that had up until that point not been seen before and had a pronounced effect on wider social and cultural liberation movements.
It made pregnancy a choice rather than a risk for the vast majority of people and changed the focus of sexual health away from family planning towards individual healthcare and promoting safe sex practices, on the basis that pregnancy was preventable and the STIs known at the time were highly treatable.
The latter did change somewhat with the discovery of genital herpes and particularly with the spread of HIV, neither of which the pill protects against, but the effects of the pill on healthcare and society are impossibly vast and still felt to this day.