The oral contraceptive pill is approved by the FDA in 1957. Griswold v. Connecticut, which declares state laws against it unconstitutional is decided in 1965. Since we are already having a conversation about women's bodies, the fact that (according to http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html, whose veracity I know nothing about) 16% of women aged 15-44 use daily hormone pills is probably relevant to a discussion of their bodies' tendency to retain adipose tissue.
To be clear against uncharitable interpretation: I think the ability to decide when/if you get pregnant and have kids is fantastic.
Do you think that hormonal birth control makes it impossible to maintain a healthy bodyweight? The article very clearly points to an increase in daily caloric intake.
Those two claims aren't incompatible. If birth control pills increased appetite, people would gain weight on them VIA an increase in daily caloric intake.
(A third option is that being fatter makes people hungrier, so fatter people eat more...but starting down the path of getting fatter might have any random cause at all - that people are eating more doesn't give us much insight into why.)
"...I think the ability to decide when/if you get pregnant and have kids is fantastic..."
Typical scenario: she lies to him she is (still) on the pill, gets pregnant - he has no say on abortion, gives a birth - he has to pay or he goes to jail.
Both parties should have a say on whether a child gets born.
"typical"? I don't think so. If "he" is worried about this, "he" has options of his own - surgery is reversible, and physical methods are widely available at every drug store.
To be clear against uncharitable interpretation: I think the ability to decide when/if you get pregnant and have kids is fantastic.