The Catholic Mother of the Pill
Once you hear the word the pill you know exactly what we are talking about. It is not some pill that cured cancer, but a pill used for birth control. Historically speaking this story involves a handful but we give the credit to only one person. It was a man who made the pill but we in fact have the mother of the Pill and her name is Margaret Sanger.
Before the era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, there was a time when women used to get abortions in a back-hand alley and would usually die of excessive bleeding. Many women often died because of giving birth to too many kids and only rich had the facility to limit their family size. This tragedy occurred to a young girl named Margaret Sanger whose mother died because she gave birth to eleven kids with seven miscarriages. Young girl Margaret could not stand the fact that her father made her mother birth to so many kids. She lost her mother at a very young age and that’s when the history was about to take a turn.
She grew up in a poor family in a poor environment and always wondered how happy the rich kids were by only having a few siblings. Its because they were secure and stable in their environment. She went to nursing school where she was drawn to gynecology. She by then had three kids and a husband and started advocating for women’s rights by marching and protesting.
Some might say she had her great awakening when she heard about Sigmund Freud’s lectures on how religion was repressing women’s sexuality. This message stuck in her brain so much that in 1914 she founded a newspaper called ‘The Women Rebel’. For the first time in history the world was about to hear about birth control. In June 1914, she Margaret Sanger coined the term birth control.
On June 1914, Margaret Sanger coined the term birth control
You read that right! It sounds surprising to know it was a Catholic woman who come up with the idea, but this started a revolution between the State and the Church. Around the time, information about birth control was hard to find especially to poor women. Only medical professionals could talk about condoms and diaphragms because federal and state government thought it was obscene to publish anything about birth control. Just when things were taking a turn, her newspaper was banned because it seemed indecent. In 1914 there was an arrest warrant for her imprisonment when she fled to England.
The government dropped her case in 1916 after her trial. She opened the first birth control clinic in the US, but it was raided days later. She was then arrested with multiple other women in the clinic and all the documents were confiscated. This got New York State government thinking about broadening the law and taking the risks of pregnancy in consideration which began the process of making contraceptives legal.
There was only one problem with these contraceptives which was the fact that we only had condoms and diaphragms. She had a vision for a safe noninvasive method to make the process of lovemaking more enjoyable. This was about to change history for millions but before that she needed help to fund the research.
And then began the process of making the Pill
MIT’s first female graduate, Katherine McCormick was a wealthy woman because of her husband, Stanley McCormick whose wealth came from the International Harvester company. Soon after their marriage, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and because psychology was considered a fairly new science, Katherine was scared she might pass schizophrenia onto her kids. With intentions of fear she funded Margaret’s research.
Many researchers were then involved trying to find a cheap method for birth control. One of the most important men in the group was Gregory Pincus who was born in a Jewish immigrant family. He tested on fetuses of mammals. Other researchers like Edward Doisy discovered hormones like progesterone and estrogen. This was especially important because researchers realized progesterone could block pregnancy by preventing the eggs from releasing. In 1951 Pincus synthesized progesterone using plants that could transform cholesterol compounds into sex hormones.
Next came another Catholic promoter, John Rock who was a doctor for fertility problems. He was born with a charisma like no other and because of his looks and personality, the man could get away with any argument. He was a liberal man who taught his students how to prescribe contraceptives which lead the Catholic Church call for his excommunication. To get the FDA approval both John Rock and Gregory Pincus decided tested on Puerto Rican women, but the Catholic church and many politicians deemed it obscene and racist. The pill had positive effects and prevented pregnancy far more effectively than condoms. On May 11, 1960, the FDA approved the pill.
The pill liberated and gave control women of their bodies without penalizing or taking them on a guilt trip. Life was more than just being a wife and a mother and women felt that they finally had control over their reproductive life. The pill also reduced the abortion rates to all time low in the past three decades. Even though Pincus was the one who made the pill, we consider Margaret Sanger the mother of the pill. Today many of birth control clinics are still being bombed because of religious reasons but history is being written every day. Let’s not forget that it was the death of her own mother that drove her to work in this area. This gave more power to women and liberated them from the stereotypical roles that are determined of them at birth.
For a deeper insight on the research use the book called medical firsts by Robert E. Adler
“Margaret Sanger and the Pill.” Medical Firsts: from Hippocrates to the Human Genome, by Robert E. Adler, John Wiley & Sons, 2004, pp. 241–257.
