The pill helped give birth to modern America.Known by one simple word, the revolutionary oral contraceptive — approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 66 years ago — didn’t just prevent innumerable pregnancies. It gave women new freedom, changing family life and society forever.“Its introduction in the 1960s afforded U.S. women this unprecedented control over their childbearing and subsequent life trajectories,” says Suzanne Bell of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.The pill disentangled sex from procreation. Women no longer needed a man’s cooperation to control their fertility.
The pill’s greatest champion was a woman. Margaret Sanger, who founded the precursor to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, helped spearhead its development with financial support from her friend, philanthropist Katharine Dexter McCormick. Sanger said, “No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”
FILE - In this March 1, 1934 file photo, renowned birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger appeals before a Senate committee for federal birth-control legislation in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/File)
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Biologists Gregory Pincus and Min Chueh Chang and OB-GYN Dr. John Rock were instrumental in the pill’s development. It uses synthetic progesterone and estrogen hormones to prevent pregnancy, mainly by stopping ovulation but also by thickening cervical mucus and making it hard for sperm to enter the uterus. When used perfectly, it prevents pregnancy 99% of the time.
