Reflections on the 50th anniversary of the birth control pill.

摘要

The story of the development of "The Pill" really begins with Margaret Sanger, whom I like to call "Mother One" of the Pill. She was a social worker in New York City in the 1930s and was constantly dealing with poor immigrant families who would have ten or more children with no access to family planning due to the Comstock Laws that had been established by Congress in 1873. This Law made the advertising, the sale, or the procurement of contraceptive devices, a federal crime. In fact, it was not repealed in the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut until 1965, five years after The Pill was approved by the FDA as a contraceptive for women.