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Lysol "feminie hygiene" products were used for douching as a popular birth control method in the 1920s |
With birth control banned under the Comstock Laws (1873), women were left with one birth after another. Traumatize by this reality as a nurse, Margaret Sanger was determined to “advocate the prevention of conception” or “birth control”.
What Birth Control Options did Women Have Before the Pill?CLICK TO ENLARGE
(Pictures courtesy of Virtue, Vice, and Contraband: A History of Contraceptions in America, exhibit by Case Wester Reserve University's Dittrick Medical History Museum; Cleveland Ohio) |
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Dr. Gregory Pincus, biologist and developer of oral contraceptives. He studied and perfected in vitro fertilization in female rabbits as a prelude to the pill. |
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Katherine McCormick, feminist and friend of Sanger from the suffragette days was a graduate from MIT determined to have an effective birth control after her rich husband fell ill. |
Doctor John Rock, a fertility specialist, supervised human trials of the oral contraceptives in the United States. A trial of 50 Boston women reached modest outcomes.
"Rock was a devout Catholic. The father of five and grandfather of fourteen...attended Mass daily and kept a crucifix on the wall above his office desk...a social conservative. He opposed the admission of women to Harvard Medical School...But Rock was also a man who valued conscience over conformity. Nowhere was this more apparent than in his view on birth control." -Tone, Author |
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John Rock |
"It was important for researchers who wanted to promote the pil to be able to say 'looked it looked in Puerto Rico with a population that was uneducated and poor. Therefore if it worked there, it can work anywhere'"
Andrea Tone, on Puerto Rico |
In response to McCormick wish, “[a] cage of ovulating females” for a grander scaled clinical trial for the FDA approval, Pincus chose Puerto Rico in 1956. 17% of 295 women experienced side-effects but Pincus ignored the discouragement.
“Envoid…gives one hundred percent protection against pregnancy in 10-miligram doses taken for twenty days of each month…However, it causes too many side reactions to be acceptable generally” -Dr. Rice-Wray, Administrator of Puerto Rico Pill Trials |
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(New York Times; May 10, 1960) "I knew what was going to happen once we licensed it...I knew that birth control pill would be flying out the window. Everybody and her sister would be taking it...[The Pill] changed the whold economy of the United States."- Pasquale DeFelice, application assessor for the birth control pill |
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The first oral contraceptive pill, by Envoid "It's certainly about time"- Sanger on FDA approval (Source: Dittrick Medical History Museum) |