Today is an important one for women. On this day in 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of a birth control pill. Margaret Sanger had campaigned for more than 40 years for a contraceptive that would be inexpensive and widely available. She raised $3 million from her friend Katherine McCormick to fund the research of doctors John Rock and Gregory Pincus, who began working together on the project in 1952.
The first oral contraceptive pill was called Enovid-10 and was a 10-mg combination of synthetic hormones norethynodrel and mestranol. It was approved first in 1957 for treating menstrual disorders. Then, on this day, the FDA announced that it would approve the pill for the use of birth control. The pill prevents pregnancy because its synthetic hormones block the ovaries from releasing eggs that can be fertilized.It wasn't until Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, however, that the pill became available in all states to married women. With Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972, the pill became available as well to unmarried women in all states. In 2000, more than 16 million American women were taking the pill.
When the pill was first introduced, it was very strong, and a woman could only take it for a relatively short time; with time this also improved.
6 comments:
I wonder what the world would be like if someone hadn't invented BC....weird.
Wow! We have come a long way. I have 4 children, and they were "planned", I wonder where I would be if we didn't have birth control?!
I had no idea. It's hard to imagine a world without it. Thank you for sharing this info!
God bless Margaret Sanger. I owe her a lot.
I took it for granted when I took it. Didn't realize how new it really was. So glad we have it!
I hated it. It made me sick.
I didn't realize it wasn't available in all states when I was taking it.
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