1960: A Turning Point for Women’s Reproductive Rights

• NPG
• May 17, 2021
• NPG Commentary
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May 17, 2021

1960: A Turning Point for Women’s Reproductive Rights

FDA Approved Oral Contraceptive to Aid Family Planning Nationwide

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved birth-control pill, Enovid-10, 61 years ago, this month.

The History Channel credits the hard work of lifelong women’s reproductive rights advocate Margaret Sanger with the commission of the development of the oral contraceptive – popularly known as “the pill” – and heiress Katherine McCormick for funding. The summary also highlights the work of Gregory Pincus and John Rock, noting: “In the early 1950s, Gregory Pincus, a biochemist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, and John Rock, a gynecologist at Harvard Medical School, began work on a birth-control pill. Clinical tests of the pill, which used synthetic progesterone and estrogen to repress ovulation in women, were initiated in 1954. On May 9, 1960, the FDA approved the pill, granting greater reproductive freedom to American women.”

Since 1972, NPG has promoted concepts such as the “two-child family,” lowered rates of migration to the U.S., and the development of conceptual systems such as the steady state economy. These concepts must continue to build steam and be a force for change in order for us to slow, halt, and eventually reverse population growth.

To read more about NPG’s support of birth control and the “two-child family”, please see the following links:

NPG’s Proposed National Population Policy & Statement on Population

Also, from NPG’s Forum paper series:

The Two Child Family, by Lindsey Grant

Resurgent Pro-Natalism in the Trump Administration, by Tracy Henke

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