Happy The Pill Day!!!

"On this day in 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of a birth control pill. Margaret Sanger had campaigned for more than 40 years for a contraceptive that would be inexpensive and widely available. She raised $3 million from her friend Katherine McCormick to fund the research of doctors John Rock and Gregory Pincus, who began working together on the project in 1952.

The first oral contraceptive pill was called Enovid-10 and was a 10-mg combination of synthetic hormones norethynodrel and mestranol. It was approved first in 1957 for treating menstrual disorders. Then, on this day, the FDA announced that it would approve the pill for the use of birth control. The pill prevents pregnancy because its synthetic hormones block the ovaries from releasing eggs that can be fertilized.

It wasn't until Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, however, that the pill became available in all states to married women. With Eisenstadt v. Baird in 1972, the pill became available as well to unmarried women in all states. In 2000, more than 16 million American women were taking the pill."

---Courtesy of The Writer's Almanac, 5/9/08