Who invented the birthcontrol pill or how we got it and i became curious. It struck me as odd that anybody would have on their agenda in the 1950s a pill for the sexual liberation of women something that would free women to control their fertility. Who did that so thats where the idea came from. When i looked into it i found this incredible story of these outsiders these underdogs who had no enfranchisement no Government Support no university support in setting out to do something that everyone told them was impossible. Host can you sketch out what life was like before the pill . I think people today certainly i took it for granted and many people took it for granted before the 1960s when the pill became commonly used contraception was very limited. Abstinence was your best bet in the absence was harder. You had and some options available for women who went to their doctors that women have to go through men to get access to those and a effective and accessible forms of contraception. The average family size was 3. 7 women in the 1950s and many women had eight or nine children. Women equaled motherhood and a womans person was to be a vessel and options were limited. You didnt see the opportunities to go to college and graduate school and start careers. It was a very different world and even things like as you point out in your book so well marital rape was not illegal. Marital rape was not grounds for divorce. This was really, society was so different in the way women, the opportunities that present women in their ability to control their own body. The pill was one factor in turning that around that went it was an important factor. Host until the 30s disseminating information about Birth Control was illegal. And so even those methods the in the diaphragm were very hard to come by and people didnt know about them. You talk in your book about how women would follow Margaret Sanger and state tell us the secret. Whats the secret . Guest there must be some magical solution and they were felt like they were prevented from getting the information because the government would arrest people. She was arrested for putting these in the mail. Those laws remain on the books. They werent always in force but remained on the books until the 60s in some states. Host in connecticut it wasnt until 1965 that they struck down a law that said Birth Control, the sale and use the Birth Control even by married couples is illegal. Guest in massachusetts as well until the late 60s and that is where they were doing this research on the Birth Control. Even disseminating information about it was illegal. Host you wrote the book in such an interesting way as the story of four people coming together to create it. Could you walk us through who those people were and what their role in the pill was . Guest it really is the human dollar. It is for human dynamic characters. They are all rebels and they knew they were doing something incredibly risky and without any one of them without any one of them at all falls apart. The first is sanger who we mentioned and she has been saying since the 1920s there to be a miracle tablet per term, miracle tablet that allow women to turn off and on their reproductive systems. Shes specific. Its something that women can control make and keep in their purses and men dont necessarily know when they are taking it and shes very specific about this but scientists have this folly that its Science Fiction that it would ever happen. The science is there and its illegal anyway. What universities going to support such research . She keeps asking for years and years and decades. Every site to she meets whos interested in this area, what can we do. Finally in the 1950s she meets a biologist one of the worlds leading experts in the production. He has been fired from harvard because he is too radical and because hes jewish at a time of great antisemitism. In the 1930s he was experimenting with in vitro fertilization in declaring that some of the scientists control the reproductive system. Men might not be necessary at all and that scared people tremendously. He couldnt find work anywhere so these working out of a garage and he starts his own Scientific Foundation going doortodoor in worchester mass asking people for donations. Sanger says i can do a birthcontrol pill. If you have the money i can do a birthcontrol pill. Shes flabbergasted how its possible but he explains how it works. A woman art as a contraceptive in her body called progesterone. She cant get pregnant if shes pregnant because berger just until somebody not to produce more babies and thats the simplest way he explains it to her. What would it take . He says a couple thousand dollars. But then sanger goes out and finds an ally and catherine is the third in the quartet. She agrees to fund the whole project. She is a wealthy heiress whose husband left her hundreds of millions of dollars when he died and she says whatever it takes she will build laboratories and by the animals for testing. She will write blank checks or whatever else you might need. Pincus does need one more thing. He needs a doctor and needs to know how to treat women. Hes a lap guy so he finds a catholic oncologist one of the most respected fertility experts in the country and agreed to work with him. Now you have somebody who brings respectability into this who is also catholic and is willing to challenge the church and say sachs is good for marriage and shouldnt just be for reproduction in these four people on their own with some others involved this core group of four people set out to do something that everybody told him was impossible. Host what is so fascinating i looked at that Catherine Mccormack imported diaphragms from europe by having them sewn into dresses because it was illegal to make them. She was very creative person. She had a very tragic life because her husband was schizophrenic and insane. She spent her life taking care of him in seeing that he was taking care of. It wasnt until he died when she was in her 70s that she was able to embark on this reproductive adventure. One thing that was fascinating was the two women in the story are both in their 70s and are playing such a major role. I actually wonder if you kind of slanted them in favor of pincus and rock who you spent more time on because that was kind of the last decade of Margaret Sangers career. By the end of this the 50s she was beginning to show senile dementia. She had been such an amazing force in the 20th century. Everyone said she was one of the most important people of the 20th century. I wonder, you describe her as an old woman who loved sachs but actually she was a major thinker and theoretician of womens liberation in the 20th century. She writes a definitive novel women of valor and people should read that too along with your book. Allen tressler said she was up there with Mary Wollstonecraft and Jon Stewart Mao and Elizabeth Cady stanton and theorizing the independence of women, that women are not here to reproduce children. They are not here to serve men and be subsumed in mans identity is was pretty much universal and still occurs. And she was very serious person and the pleasure of sachs was a part of that. I agree with that completely. I agree with chesler and her book is terrific but sanger sees the pill can be this tool that opens up all of these possibilities not just bring women to have sachs but to become equals of men. She believes this is something that if it gets out the genie gets out of the bottle that will change everything and shes right. Her vision is absolutely correct. From a storytelling standpoint the only reason i think pincus and rock ended up stealing the spotlight is one she opens that door once she gets them working on it these are the guys who are doing the work to understand the process to build sangers bright idea to approval by the government at a time when Birth Control is illegal you have to see these guys who are testing the pill on women who in many ways are their lab rats. You have to see the process by which they can get Drug Companies to agree to make this. She is in the labs keeping in the labs keeping ni on these men making sure that they dont in any way take this process over and turn it into a drug it meant. From a storytelling standpoint once sanger gets this idea pinkos and rock are the ones that carry the ball. Host you make it so exciting and how you describe pincus as he had the iq of an einstein and the nerves of a card shark. Among the other things he was thinking of inventing was a cure for baldness. Its sort of like i want to be doing some science here. Rock was also fascinating because he started out as a very conservative catholic. In fact you said he confessed so many sins to his priest when he was a teenager that the priest family said you dont have to be so scrupulous. Its not bothering me every time he thinks about kissing a girl. He was extremely conservative and saw sachs as being primarily if not entirely for reproducti reproduction. He changes. Talk about that. Guest what fascinated me was he goes to work as a doctor and chooses a gynecologist is a specialty and becomes exposed women in a way that most catholic men dont and becomes exposed to fertility issues that most men. Matt would not. He has great empathy for these women. Poor women are coming to his clinics with their children and begging him what to do to stop this . The only option is hysterectomy which he is reluctant to do and only in severe cases where he considers it a medical emergency. He has such great sympathy for these women that i think he changes his view. He also begins to see that sachs is something that should be part of a marriage and brings couples closer together. Maybe its from talking to these women but as a result of that he begins to question and he remains a faithful classic catholic but wonders if it turned churchs teachings in this area are wrong instead of wrestling with that inwardly he decides to see what he can do about it. Its very unusual and makes them a real hero. He goes and meets with the vatican and tries to convince them that they should embrace the birthcontrol pill before its approved. Host yet the idea that the way the Birth Control worked made is sort of like the rhythm method, that the pope had approved of in 1930. That kind of opened the door a little bit to the idea but it didnt work out get it . Guest it was interesting philosophical idea. Host tell us how did he see the pill in the rhythm method . Guest he tried to argue that that it was a way of improving on the rhythm method. You knew when it was safe to have sachs which was pretty much all the time. In presenting that the church which all of this hormonal stuff is new to everybody and we are learning how it controls the body and how artificial hormones in the form of a pill can change the bodys functions. He argues to the vatican that this is an improvement on the rhythm method because its very similar in philosophy. A woman is able to never save period. If you know its safe know its safe you should build that have sachs for pleasure and the Committee Votes to endorse this idea but the pope says no and it didnt go over. Host there was tremendous opposition on the part of the church. They are still doing it but not as intensely. I have a quote from archbishop hays of new york and i believe the 1930s that contraception is worse than abortion because its true abortion destroys a life but contraception plays with gods plan to create a life and that is satanic. Its very hard to work your mind around that because now many people who are opposed to legal abortion will say Birth Control, not the church and not the real diaphragm. The organizations tend to oppose contraception too but its really interesting to go back and see how strong the opposition wasnt also the sense too that you give of a lot of people think the i the Birth Control pill we already have. Why do we need Birth Control . That is kind of amazing. Singer said the key to Birth Control is control and that was the key to the birthcontrol pill putting women in control. At that point you could say its great but the women had no control over so that was a big difference for her. As far as the church goes it was interesting if the church approved the Birth Control pill and held the line on abortion. It mightve made a big difference in terms of how the flock would stay with them on these issues. What happens is most women begin to follow john rock. I have this one area that i dont observe or agree with and rock turns out to have been the advanced troops. Women start following him. Hes a scout and women start following his approach and start leaving the church behind. Host and then too. It was the beginning of the catholic cafeteria catholicism. You take what you want. I got a letter from someone who said well i am a catholic so i oppose abortion so i decided i had to use Birth Control very faithfully. Wait a minute here. You are missing something. So, did you have any idea going into this about the very Strong Political feelings attached to the pill even today . Guest oh sure. You cant miss it if you read the newspapers and that was a big incentive for me and wanted to tell the story. I thought it would be great for people to understand how we got here and what it looked like before we have these options. We are still fighting over these things that sanger thought would be done with. She saw once the pill was out there everybody would see that it worked and change the world and gave women more opportunities and made women healthier and reduced abortion. She thought the argument would be over in the fact that it was not over shows how strong people feel about this issue. I dont think its fair to keep fighting over the issues and where they come from. Host what do you think is the thing that bothers most people . Most people who are bothered about contraception would you think is the reason . Guest i would like to get your opinion but i think its deeplyrooted in sexism to be honest. People are uncomfortable with women approaching sachs the same way that they do. Its okay for men to have sachs for pleasure but not women. If you look at the roots of why its converse controversial its a thousandyearold bias. Host i agree with you and theres also this idea as women as the gatekeepers of sachs that they are responsible for restraining men. But if women can have sachs whenever they want like men have sachs whenever they want then all hell breaks loose. Everything falls apart. And we see that playing out now. In the abstinence education thing that is like oh my god if a teenager has sachs or girls have sachs thats really terrible. Most of it is about how they are not virgins. Guest all the talk is about girls and women controlling access to sachs. I was amazed by the ads and i try to imagine that if there were ads for Birth Control for women that look like ads for man people would go crazy. It would be writes in the streets. You cant talk about sex that way because there are women involved but from an its okay. Host maybe you can answer the question what is the story of the two people that separate bathtubs . What are they doing . Guest you want to get into the same bathtub, thats the key. I dont know. Host i assumed they were in the two tubs because they had already had sex. Guest if you want to get into that other tub you have to have. Host isnt a very good ad if that is clear. Lets see, the ethics of experimentation, lets talk about that, how the pill was perfected quote unquote and brought to the market. I was very interested in how different the efforts of experimentation and testin testg drugs on women or on anybody was in the 1950s like a freeforall. Guest we talk about what they did to test the pill. It sounds crazy and it sounds like it you could never get away with it today it is true but they were fairly within the standards. I mentioned earlier that they have this problem. Have you test something thats illegal so they tested it on women seeking treatment for infertility. Dr. John rock stations said lets see if it shuts down. That was a little sneaky that women were told that this was something that might help them get pregnant when in fact it was something that would strongly believed would help them prevent pregnancy. They were tested in the sanest items i went to the sums of puerto rico and thats where they found hundreds of women who were able to sign up. The ethics were definitely questionable at times. Host it was interesting the first thing they tried to do was kind of really make female medical students take the pill and if they didnt they would get that but then they seemed to say hey women really want Birth Control. Women were following them around in the streets saying it may have this thing. I have children and my husband wont use a. My husband thinks its fine to have as many children and they were using sterilization a lot. Women were begging for sterilization. We remember the history, that history mostly as the history of forced sterilization and there was a big racist component. And the same with testing the pill in puerto rico and less successful in haiti. There was this other side of this tremendous demand. Guest thats right is complicated because women were offered free sterilization after every childbirth in puerto rico. They werent forced but they were offered it and the society was paying for most of those sterilizations. The average family after woman had seven children in 1950s when they heard there was this pill available, it was an experimental product or not didnt matter. They began begging for it and clamoring for it in lining up the clinics. The preachers would say we have heard there is this new contraceptive. Remember the church does not allow this in the lines of the longer because it was advertising. There was definitely a demand and when they tried to force it on the female nursing students they wouldnt go for it because the side effects were so severe. They couldnt put up with the terrible side effects. Those were much higher than they needed to be that women with seven or eight children were willing to put up with more side effects than the nurses were. Host 78 children is a pretty big side effects. When the pill was first marketed it wasnt marketed for Birth Control. It was marketed as regulation. Can you talk a lit