The birth of the Pill
As one half of a DINK (dual income, no kids) household, I’d like to take a moment to recognize the Pill. Clap for the people in the back, y’all. Some 20th-century inventions, like shoulder pads or an AOL account, have thankfully seen their relevance wane. Others, like cell phones (the world, in your pocket!) have only strengthened in their cultural impact and globalized influence.
Yet, I’ll argue that the Pill (with a capital “p”) stands out among the rest. It’s portable, solves for millions of women’s problems like spotty skin, painful periods, unwanted or unneeded pregnancies, and you’re fucking taming nature in the process. You are the owner of your body, you Viking warrior princess you.
But results may vary. And boy, how they have varied — women have had blood clots, strokes, even died in the pursuit of exercising more control over their bodies. Let’s take a look now at the history of the pill — the good, bad, and ugly.
Back in the day
When looking into how women have managed their reproductive health across history, we should all hug ourselves a little tighter in appreciation of modern solutions. Because damn, Gentle Readers, it sucked to prevent pregnancy back in the day. These are just a few items women have used as birth control in the past:
Honey (benign enough)
Silphium seeds (when in Rome, right?)
Pomegranate seeds (Persephone knew what was up)
Animal dung, of both the crocodile and elephant variety (yeah… no)
Condoms made from animal intestines (how was that not a boner killer?)
Weasel testicles, for women to wear around their thighs (it’s gauche to wear on your neck, obvs)
A cocktail of lead and mercury (both poisonous and generally unwise to come in contact with skin)
There had to be a better way.
Paving the way
It didn’t come easy. In the United States, there were anti-contraception laws in place long before the Pill was introduced. The Comstock Act of 1873 prohibited the distribution of information pertaining to or advocating for contraception and abortion.
Pushing back against these laws was nurse, sex educator, and fierce advocate: Margaret Sanger. She popularized the term “birth control” and founded the first birth control clinic in America (1916) and the American Birth Control League.
In 1912, Sanger had given up her nursing career to advocate on behalf of birth control and sex education by publishing a series of articles including one for The Call, the infamous “What Every Girl Should Know”. She was arrested for her efforts. Sanger is certainly a complicated figure in reproductive rights history, but her efforts as a pioneering family planner stand.
Sanger wasn’t alone. Wealthy heiress, feminist, suffragette, and 1904 MIT graduate Katharine Dexter McCormick was so keen on promoting birth control, she would vacation in Europe and bring back (illegal) contraceptives to (illegally) distribute. A family planning pirate, perhaps?
These women believed in every woman’s right to avoid unwanted pregnancies and devoted themselves to removing legal barriers to even talking about contraception -- let alone using it. Sanger herself was jailed again for distributing an early form of the diaphragm and, thanks to that case, the federal ban on birth control came to an end in 1936.
Sex, sex, sex
And people in the US were starting to understand that a lot more people were having a lot more sex: In 1948, Indiana professor Alfred Kinsey published a study called “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” followed in 1953 by the report on “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female”. These studies revealed a lot about the private lives of Americans — frankly, that people were much freer with sex than previously known or admitted.
“The Pill (with a capital “p”) stands out among the rest. It’s portable, solves for millions of women’s problems like spotty skin, painful periods, unwanted or unneeded pregnancies, and you’re fucking taming nature in the process. You are the owner of your body, you Viking warrior princess you. ”
The research begins — with consequences good and bad
McCormick and Sanger’s largesse also fueled research. In the 1950s, Drs. Gregory Pincus and John Rock went to work developing an early form of what we now know as the Pill. Mid-century America presented these scientists with a few problems: birth control of any kind was heavily regulated by the states making it difficult to research or distribute what they were trying to create. And the female reproductive system remained largely a mystery.
When the clinical trials began in April 1956, Pincus and Rock tested their medication in Puerto Rico where there were no laws against contraception, birth control clinics were readily available, and the doctors had access to the subjects they wanted to experiment on: poor and poorly-educated women. Informed consent wasn’t exactly a part of the process, so you have to wonder how desperate these women were to control their cycles and prevent pregnancy to just take a pill they knew nothing about.
With the first versions of the Pill having a metric shit-ton more hormones (10,000 micrograms of progestin and 150 micrograms of estrogen) than today’s option (50-150 micrograms of progestin and 35-50 micrograms of estrogen), women experienced a laundry list of side effects including nausea, dizziness, headaches, blood clots, strokes — even death. Sound familiar? And it was expensive — many of the participants in the original study being priced out of the pill when it was released in the market.
In 1960, Enovid, the first oral contraceptive for women, was approved by the FDA. Physicians dismissed those side effects as largely a by-product of our natural hysteria (the medical equivalent of bitches be trippin’).
Women had to protest to get their voices heard. Among the most vocal critics of the Pill was Barbara Seaman, who published The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill in 1969. She claimed was dangerous for all women with adverse events that other docs didn’t see as related to the Pill at all -- blood clots and strokes. This, among other things, led to Senate hearings about the safety of the medication: no women were asked to speak about their experience with the Pill.
“This, among other things, led to Senate hearings about the safety of the medication: no women were asked to speak about their experience with the Pill.”
It took five years and a Supreme Court ruling in 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut to tell states that, yes, married couples should have legal access to contraceptives. Then another seven years came and went before birth control for everyone became legal, irrespective of marital status. Even so, women across the country began asking their doctors about the Pill.
How popular was it? By 1965, one out of every four married women in America under 45 had used the Pill. By 1967, nearly 13 million women in the world were using it. And, by 1984, that number would reach 50 - 80 million. Heck, it even inspired Loretta Lynn to sing about it. The Pill meant freedom and control for women. All in one little plastic-dial package.
Options today
Blessed be the 21st century. We’ve got many options for birth control (and cycle control). Be it hormonal pills, condoms (for males and females), intrauterine devices, implants, injections, rhythm methods, abstinence, we’ve got the luxury of choice. For now.
ERIN ELLISON
While most at home close to the water (having been born among the Great Lakes), Erin Ellison is currently a writer living and working in land-locked Atlanta.
KARA RAJAPAKSE
Kara's perfect day is an amalgam of delights such as binge watching Peep Show, starting (but not finishing) a novel, and browsing aviation forums — all thoughtfully interspersed between long naps. A military brat with the unrealized dream of having a "last move," she's a big believer that people are essentially the same everywhere you go. Kara is Atlanta-adjacent, with a high-school sweetheart husband and cantankerous little dog.