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3000 BCE
The very first 'contraceptive'
The first known contraceptive was thought to be made in 3000 BC. Condom-like items were used as early as this time and were mostly used by the King, King Minos. -
Charles Knowlton
A Massachusetts physician invents a birth control solution to be injected into the uterus by syringe after intercourse. Various recipes for the water-based solution include salt, vinegar, liquid chloride, zinc sulfite, or aluminum potassium sulfite. This method remains popular for the next 40 years. -
Learning how Contraception Works
Scientists learn that contraception occurs in human reproduction when the sperm enters the female egg. Prior to this, it was assumed that men created life and women just provided the home for it. -
1870s
A wide assortment of birth control devices are available in America: such as condoms, sponges, douching syringes, diaphragms, and cervical caps: from catalogs, pharmacists, dry-goods stores, and even rubber vendors. -
Constock Law
Congress passes the Comstock Law, an anti-obscenity act that specifically lists contraceptives as obscene material and outlaws the dissemination of them via the postal service or interstate commerce.
At t the time, the United States is the only western nation to enact laws criminalizing birth control. -
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger is born the sixth child of a poor, working-class, Irish Catholic immigrant family in Corning, New York. -
Challenging the Law
Sangers continues to challenge the Comstock Laws and launches a new publication dedicated to her cause, Birth Control Review.
October 16
Sanger opens the first birth control clinic in America, in Brooklyn, New York. For the first time in American history, women can receive organized instruction in birth control.
10 days later, Sanger's clinic is raided by the vice squad and shut down. The women are arrested and all the condoms and diaphragms at the clinic are confiscated. -
The Crane
The Crane decision, in the case against Sanger's operation of the clinic, is the first legal ruling to allow birth control to be used for therapeutic purposes. -
1923
Margaret Sanger successfully opens the first legal birth control clinic in the U.S. with the stated intent of only using contraceptives for medical purposes, such as the prevention of life-threatening pregnancies, and in accordance with the Crane Decision. -
Breakthrough
Scientists make a crucial breakthrough in reproductive biology. The discovery that the pituitary gland functions as a "remote control system in human reproduction" leads directly to the invention of the first pregnancy test. -
'Feminine Hygiene'
During the Great Depression, companies eager to sell women contraceptives, but not permitted to by law, use the term "feminine hygiene" to market a wide array of over-the-counter products that are believed to have a contraceptive effect. One of the most popular products is the simple cheap "Lysol douche," and scores of women rely solely on this ineffective and dangerous method to prevent pregnancy. -
John Rock
In her dogged pursuit of birth control legalization, Margaret Sanger targets Massachusetts' puritanical laws. A petition is circulated to end the state's anti-birth control law. It is defeated, but Dr. John Rock is one of 15 physicians, and the only Catholic, to sign the petition. -
Teaching Birth Control
While teaching at Harvard Medical School, Dr. John Rock engages in unheard-of and subversive activities, covertly breaking Massachusetts law by teaching medical students about birth control. -
Taste of Success
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America runs 200 birth control clinics. Margaret Sanger has been successful in fighting legal restrictions on contraceptives, and birth control has gained wide acceptance in America. Still, Sanger remains deeply unsatisfied, because women have no better methods for birth control than they did when she first envisioned "the pill" over 40 years earlier. -
Last Effort
Margaret Sanger, now 72 years old, makes one last ditch effort to find someone to invent her "magic pill." At a dinner party in New York City, she is introduced to Gregory Pincus and implores him to take up her quest. To her surg[prise, he tells her that it might be possible with hormones, but that he will need significant funding to proceed. -
The Pill
FDA approves the pill and over 2.3 million American women start using it.
In John Rocks' crusade to make the Pill acceptable to the catholic church, he publishes The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor's Proposal to End the Battle over Birth Control, and becomes the de facto public spokesman fro the Pill. -
Side Effects
An FDA task force looks into the issue of side effects from the Pill, especially the danger of blood clots, cancer, and diabetes. The task force finds no smoking gun but does allow the drug companies to bring lower doses of the pill to market with less red tape. -
Success
The FDA reports that 10.7 million American women are on the Pill. Confidence in the safety of the pill has risen dramatically in years since the Pill hearings.