France, Oct. 4 -- "What seemed to us to be a tremendous liberation - and which was a tremendous liberation - is clearly no longer seen in the same light."

At 79, gynaecologist Danielle Hassoun remembers a generation that started having sex at a time when abortion was still illegal. "So we didn't weigh up the same factors," she says.

Fully legalised in France in 1967, for decades the pill symbolised a major advance in women's health: the ability to separate sexuality from motherhood, and to choose when or whether to have a child.

For many women it became the norm, as part of an established contraceptive pathway: condoms at the start of one's sex life, the pill once in a stable relationship and then an intrauterine device (IUD) - more co...