This paper presents new causal evidence on the "power" of oral contraceptives in shaping women's lives, leveraging the 1970 liberalization of the Pill for minors in the Netherlands and demand- and supply-side religious preferences that affected Pill take-up. We analyze administrative data to...

We investigate how religious beliefs affected the take up of the birth control pill and impacted women’s outcomes using the 1970 liberalization of oral contraceptives in the Netherlands. We first document a massive and immediate drop in fertility among minor women, aged 21 or younger, for whom...