THE BIRTH OF THE PILL
Side-effects were sensationalized in early versions of contraception, which contained 100 times the amount of hormones in today's product
Before Planned Parenthood, there was the American Birth Control League, which was a lot less intense and a lot more groundbreaking than it sounds. It was founded by an incredibly accomplished woman and activist named Margaret Sanger, who we might as well dub the mother of the birth control pill.
When Sanger met endocrinologist Gregory Pincus — who, at the time, was mocked for being a kind of Frankenstein after he created a test tube rabbit — at a dinner party in 1951, she boldly approached him and persuaded him to get to work on a birth control pill. At the time, most women resorted to condoms and diaphragms — if they could afford them.
After Sanger was able to get Pincus a research grant through Planned Parenthood (the ABCL's new name as of 1942), he, alongside Chinese-American reproductive biologist Min Chueh Chang, learned that progesterone could function as an oral contraceptive after testing it on rats.
By then, there were a few heads in the game, including gynecologist John Rock, who was already testing chemical contraception in women, and Frank Colton, chief chemist at the pharmaceutical company Searle, who also independently developed synthetic progesterone.
Then came another key figure: Katharine McCormick, a close friend of Sanger's. As PBS puts it, “If Sanger is the activist behind the pill and Pincus the scientist, Katharine McCormick — biologist, women's rights activist and heiress to a great fortune — is the money.”
That's because she was able to write Pincus a $40,000 check to continue his research. In all, she would end up contributing the majority of the money that backed their work, totalling US$2 million (equivalent to more than US$18 million in today's dollars).
In 1954, Pincus put the money to good use and teamed up with Rock to successfully conduct the first human trials on 50 women in Massachusetts, followed by larger scale clinical trials in Puerto Rico. These were incredibly controversial, as the women in Massachusetts were patients at the Worcester State Psychiatric Hospital, and those in Puerto Rico were poor and/or illiterate.
At first, the FDA only approved the pill for severe menstrual disorders. Then, suddenly, 500,000 women claimed to be suffering from those exact disorders. In 1960, the FDA finally approved the pill for contraceptive use — to great popularity, despite being illegal in eight states. The first pill was called Enovid and was manufactured by G.D. Searle and Company. A few years later, just a wee bit in America's footsteps, birth control leagues began appearing in major Canadian cities, including Toronto and Vancouver. They eventually became Planned Parenthood clinics.
According to Planned Parenthood, 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 on it and, by 1984, that number would reach 50 to 80 million. Today, it looks more like 100 million. Its beginnings led right into the sexual revolution of the 1960s likely to the relief of many, the publication of 1968's Birth Control Handbook — a how-to guide by McGill University students in Montreal — and the legalization of contraception in Canada in 1969.
Still, the pill received a fair share of backlash throughout its development, from everyone including the Catholic Church to conservative activists. The criticism really made a dent a year later, when a woman named Barbara Seaman published The Doctor's Case Against the Pill, which listed its many side effects, including the risk of blood clots, heart attack, stroke, depression, weight gain and loss of libido. Seaman's accounts of women experiencing these risks were incredibly sensationalized, and she demonized Planned Parenthood in her crusade.
But Seaman wasn't entirely wrong. While the pill's risks didn't include cancer or sterility as she claimed, they did include potential blood clots and strokes, and that was due to the amount of hormones in the pill, which was 100 times what's found in it today.
The controversy led to a series of congressional hearings on the safety of the pill, which women's rights activists protested against as women were not even asked to speak about their experience using the pill. The outcome, however, was a good one: the hearings pushed the FDA to add an insert to the packaging of the pill with information about the side effects and risks. This was made a legal requirement in 1978 by the FDA. During this time, Planned Parenthood also developed its own medical standards and guidelines keeping women in the know about what they were putting into their bodies, and what options they might have when it comes to making their own choices about their bodies.
Today, if the pill is used as directed, only three out of 1,000 women will become pregnant in the first year of use, while common side effects include breast tenderness, headaches and irregular bleeding. Rare, but more serious risks include blood clots, heart attack, stroke, and increased blood pressure. There are other benefits, though, including reduced acne, reduced iron deficiency and reduced risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers, among other things. The pill is also now used for reasons other than contraception, including for those experiencing anemia, ovarian cysts, and heavy or infrequent periods.
That's a long way from where birth control humbly began.