Thesis:
The Pill allows the individual to aggressively take control of her body’s natural processes. If the assumption is that the ultimate goal of living is to procreate, then birth control has altered the meaning of human life by allowing individuals to take control and ownership of that process through procreative liberty. In other words, the Pill has fundamentally shifted the attitude towards child rearing and family dynamics, because of the mother's ability to choose when to have children, with momentous economic, political, societal, and technological repercussions. By empowering the individual with procreative liberties, the Pill has had the greatest impact on the family structure since the introduction of the institution of marriage.
background and history:
- 1500s: First spermicides used in the form of a linen-made condom
- 1873: The Comstock Act in the U.S. prohibited advertisement, information, and distribution of birth control and allowed postal service to confiscate birth control
- 1912-1914: Margaret Sanger started dreaming of a “magic pill” that would prevent pregnancy, coining the phrase “birth control”
- 1916: Sanger was arrested for distributing the magazine Woman Rebel and opened the first family-planning clinic in the U.S.
- 1917: Sanger met a wealthy woman, Katherine Dexter McCormick, who wanted to help women who wanted to prevent pregnancies
- 1930-42: With Sanger’s dedication and McCormick’s capital, birth control clinics increased from 55 to 800 in a decade, and Sanger established Planned Parenthood
- 1938: A judge lifted the federal ban on birth control in a case involving Margaret Sanger, and the diaphragm became a popular method of birth control
- 1951: Sanger learns from the work of Gregory Pincus that a certain injection could prevent ovulation •1956: Pincus conducts clinical trials in Puerto Rico
- 1957: “The Pill” was approved for treating “female disorders”
- 1950: Sanger raised $150,000 to finance a research project that would ultimately lead to the first birth control pill
- 1959: Pharmaceutical firm G.D. Searle & Co. applied for FDA approval of “the Pill”, marketed as Enovid
- 1960: On May 9, the FDA approved “the Pill”, thus giving birth to one of the most revolutionary products of the 20th century
- 1960: The first combined oral contraceptive, Enovid (pictured in title page), was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), giving birth to “the Pill”
- 1970: Feminists challenged the safety of “the Pill” which led to improvements
- 1972: The Supreme Court legalized birth control for all citizens in the U.S. irrespective of marital status in the landmark case Baird vs. Eisenstad