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TIME: 80 Days That Changed the World, May 9, 1960: The
Pill That Unleashed Sex
ORTHO/MCNEIL PHARMACEUTICAL,
INC.
May 9, 1960
The Pill That Unleashed Sex
By Cathy Booth Thomas
Margaret Sanger, totally unaware that her lifelong dream had become
reality, spent the day at her home outside Tucson, Ariz. Since 1914 she
had battled ridicule and rigid laws, even gone to jail, all in pursuit
of a simple, inexpensive contraceptive that would change women's
lives—and save some as well. Now she was 80 and retired from her
globe-trotting efforts.
Many women cannot tolerate the
incidental effects—nausea, cramps, weight gain ... But before [the
pills] become a matter of widespread practical concern the industry
would have to do something about production and prices. The pills are in
short supply and cost about 55 each.
—April 11, 1960
No one from G.D. Searle & Co., the drug firm, thought to call the woman
who had pioneered and pushed for funding to develop the world's first
birth-control pill, called Enovid-10, a synthetic combination of
hormones that suppresses the release of eggs from a woman's ovaries. Nor
did she hear from John Rock and Gregory Pincus, the doctors who
developed the oral contraceptive with $3 million that Sanger had raised
from her friend Katherine McCormick, the International Harvester
heiress.
Sanger got the news the next morning when her son Stuart and
granddaughter Margaret read the newspaper. There they found a
five-paragraph story announcing the Food and Drug Administration's
approval of the pill as safe for birth control. The two, who lived next
door, ran across the yard and opened the sliding glass door to Sanger's
bedroom. It was 7 a.m., and she was eating breakfast in bed. Without the
least bit of elation, just a sigh of relief, Sanger said, "It's
certainly about time." Then perking up, she added, "Perhaps this calls
for champagne." Her son, a doctor who had patients waiting, and her
granddaughter, due for class at nursing school, begged off. So Margaret
Sanger, who had made a lifelong crusade of birth control after seeing
her mother die at age 50, worn out by 18 pregnancies and 11 children,
celebrated her victory alone—but triumphant.
TIME Cover
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