Read The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution Online
Authors: Jonathan Eig
By 1905, scientists were learning about the body’s endocrine glands, which include the pituitary gland, thyroid gland, pineal gland, parathyroid glands, thymus, pancreas, testicles, ovaries, and adrenal glands. The glands are small capsules of tissue. The biggest of the bunch, the pancreas, weighs less than three ounces. The pineal gland is no bigger than a grain of rice. Endocrine glands produce chemicals that serve as messengers to all the body’s cells, controlling how we digest food, how fast our hearts beat, how we fight illness, when we feel depressed, when we reach puberty, and how we reproduce. The glands do all of this miraculous work by generating chemical compounds called
hormones
, from the Greek word meaning “to incite activity.” Over the course of a woman’s life, she produces barely one-fifth of an ounce of the hormones known as progesterone and estrogen, but that’s enough to guide her reproductive system—and keep the human race in business.
It was the scientist Ernest Henry Starling who speculated in
Lancet
in 1905 that humans might be able to tinker with hormone levels to “acquire an absolute control over the
workings of the human body
.” Soon afterward, scientists (and con men) began transplanting monkey and other testes into men, promising all sorts of rejuvenating effects. In Kansas in the 1920s, Dr. John R. Brinkley ran radio ads boasting that he could make even old men virile again by transplanting goat gonads into their bodies. The procedure had one surefire effect: it made Brinkley a rich man, albeit temporarily. By the 1920s, respectable physiologists and chemists had learned how to extract hormones from animal glands, as well as from bile and urine. They tried using the extracted hormones to compensate for the malfunction of human glands. In diabetics, for example, the pancreas fails to produce enough of the hormone insulin; the body needs insulin to regulate the amount of glucose in the blood. Diabetes almost always led to death until scientists in the 1920s discovered that injections of insulin could effectively treat the disease. After that, a great race was on to discover how other hormones might be harnessed to improve human health.
Three decades would pass before Gregory Pincus considered using hormones to control fertility. But he wasn’t the first. In 1921, an Austrian gynecologist removed the ovaries of pregnant rabbits and guinea pigs and transplanted them into animals that were not pregnant. The animals were rendered temporarily sterile. The gynecologist conducting the experiment noted at the time that the same trick might work for women, although he didn’t try it. In 1937, three scientists at the University of Pennsylvania tested progesterone for contraceptive benefits and found that the hormone put a stop to ovulation in rabbits. But, once again, no one dared try it on humans.
Contraceptive research was too controversial. In many instances it was illegal. As a result, there was little money in it. World War II did not help. It was difficult to make a case for the importance of family planning when mothers were losing sons and every able-bodied scientist was supposed to do the same thing as every able-bodied young man: join the fight for democracy. Scientists did just that. Physicists worked on the atomic bomb. Chemists worked on high-octane fuels that would help fighter jets fly faster. Biologists worked on hormone treatments to reduce stress in combat troops.
In the years after the war, many world leaders became concerned about overpopulation. The human race was growing too rapidly, and the world would run out of resources if something wasn’t done about it. Poverty and hunger would spread rapidly. In the struggle for natural resources, countries could return to war.
In 1948, before going to work as the director of Planned Parenthood, ecologist William Vogt published
The Road to Survival
, warning that civilization might collapse if something were not done to control the population explosion. “In areas like Puerto Rico, where three-quarters of the houses lack running water, current contraceptive techniques cannot possibly be effective,” Vogt wrote.
Hindus, with their $19 annual income, cannot possibly afford contraceptive devices. A cheaper, dependable method that can be easily used by women is indispensable. If the United States had spent two billion dollars developing such a contraceptive, instead of the atomic bomb, it would have contributed far more to our national security while, at the same time, it promoted a
rising standard for the entire world
.
World War II took some of the stigma out of birth control in another way: The U.S. Army had spent millions of dollars supplying soldiers with latex condoms to reduce the spread of venereal disease, and American soldiers were often encouraged to think of their time in Europe as a great erotic adventure, stirring up what the historian Mary Louise Roberts called a “
tsunami of male lust
.” Many of them returned to the United States eager to continue the fun, whether with wives, girlfriends, prostitutes, or some combination of the three. By the 1950s, Americans were spending about two hundred million dollars a year on contraceptives, mostly on condoms. The vast majority of doctors approved of birth control for the good of families, although many of them were afraid to say so publicly.
On the surface, the early 1950s seemed like a period of calm in America. Kids wore Davy Crockett hats in imitation of the TV actor Fess Parker. Men wore Bermuda shorts and drank highballs (often mixed for them by their aproned wives). Pop music was still slow and sweet, although young musicians such as Elvis Presley were beginning to experiment with sexy dance moves and a throbbing rhythm-and-blues beat. Inflation was low. Politicians were actually believed to be telling the truth. New interstates allowed drivers to move faster than ever. Democracy seemed secure, which allowed world leaders the luxury of turning to long-range concerns such as overpopulation. But beneath that placid landscape, seeds of rebellion had been planted. Men were returning from the battlefields and adjusting to the fact they were no longer gallant warriors and makers of history; they were working stiffs with lawns to mow and gutters to clean. Marriage rates exploded. And women, with their husbands home from overseas but now at work all day, sometimes found themselves bored with household chores. World War II had shown them they could do more than tend house, but now there were fewer jobs available to women. Were they supposed to stay home and iron shirts, dust the blinds, and prepare dinner? Was there nothing else for them to do? Their boredom and frustration would eventually fuel a fight for women’s liberation, but for now it contributed to a very different social movement. In 1950, 3.6 million babies were born in America, compared to 2.6 million a decade earlier. The
median age for marriage in the 1950s was 20.1
, and the median age for a woman to have her first child was 21.4. Birth rates were rising for every racial, ethnic, and religious group in the country.
Although no one had yet named it, the Baby Boom was beginning.
Sex was bubbling to the surface of American life. It was becoming more casual, not to mention more profitable. In 1948, when the Popular Library reissued its 1925 bestseller
The Private Life of Helen of Troy
, the cover image of Helen showed her clad in a sheer dress, her nipples erect, with a Trojan horse seemingly aimed at her pelvis. “
HER LUST CAUSED THE TROJAN WAR
,” read the banner headline atop the book. Pulp paperbacks became huge sellers, with even classic books such as
All Quiet on the Western Front
repackaged with images of half-naked women to suggest they were really stories of yearning and sexual perversion.
Confidential
, the scandal magazine, told its salivating readers that Frank Sinatra ate Wheaties between sex acts, Errol Flynn had a two-way mirror in his bedroom, and Liberace liked boys. Even comic books turned kinky, at least according to the best-selling book called
Seduction of the Innocent
, published in 1954, which claimed that Batman and Robin promoted homosexuality, Wonder Woman encouraged women to become lesbians, and Catwoman was a whip-wielding dominatrix.
“F
ILTH ON THE
N
EWSSTANDS
,” proclaimed a headline in
Reader’s Digest
in 1952. But filth sold. The rules of dating were changing, too, allowing men and women to spend more time in each other’s company. There was a growing sense that women were not the passionless creatures that Victorian-era advice books had made them out to be. That image began to change in the 1920s, when flappers wore short skirts and smoked and drank alcohol in public, and it changed even more dramatically during World War II, when women took up jobs formerly held by men and acquired some of the power and confidence that came from earning their own money. After the war, America seemed to enter a socially conservative era with traditional gender roles back in place but women did not settle easily into their old, subjugated roles. Romance in the 1950s became a sexual negotiation, even a competition. A casual date might end in necking (kissing), but petting (deep kissing and touching), heavy petting (deep kissing with touching below the waist), or petting under the clothes was generally reserved for steady dates. Intercourse was supposed to be reserved for married couples, but those rules were changing too, and for the most part women set the limits. They were the ones risking pregnancy. They were the ones whose reputations would be damaged if they became known for sleeping around. Inevitably, this led to tension.
On college campuses, panty raids became one sign of the growing sexual conflict. At the University of Wisconsin, five thousand students charged women’s dorms, bugles blaring, in an attempt to steal bras and panties. In Missouri the governor was forced to call in the National Guard to stop a mob of two thousand men who battered down doors and broke windows to gain access to women’s dormitories. “
All animals play around
,” said Alfred Kinsey, laughing off the panty raids. But university and government officials took them as a serious threat to authority and a brazen expression of sexuality. Students were beginning to challenge authority and question the rules of sexual behavior.
It did not yet qualify as a revolution, but young people were seeking more independence, getting more involved in politics, and asking why they should adhere to the same moral standards as their parents. Instead of yearning for more responsibility as they grew up, they yearned for more freedom.
P
INCUS WAS PART
jazz musician, part entrepreneur, part scientific genius, making things up as he went along. He had a little bit of money to play with from Planned Parenthood. He had progesterone, which worked relatively well on rabbits and rats. And he had John Rock, who had used progesterone on some of his patients. Rock’s patients were infertile women, so his work proved only so much. But it was a start.
In a progress report to Planned Parenthood dated January 23, 1953, Pincus made no mention of testing hormones on women. The “most useful method of contraception,” he wrote, would be a pill that inhibited ovulation, fertilization, and implantation of the egg. It would have to be non-toxic and completely reversible, he continued. He asked for $3,600 a year for two more years of animal testing. For Pincus, it was a remarkably modest request, perhaps suggesting that he did not have
high hopes for a dramatic outcome
.
Paul Henshaw, the director of research for Planned Parenthood, noticed a few omissions in Pincus’s progress report and responded with several pointed questions. Were there any signs of side effects in the lab animals? he asked. Was Pincus thinking about human trials any time soon? Finally, there was the matter of patents. If contraceptive research funded by Planned Parenthood led to “
patentable discoveries
,” Henshaw wrote, patent rights should be assigned to the Dickinson Research Memorial fund, which was part of Planned Parenthood. Henshaw, unlike many of the others who worked at Planned Parenthood, was a highly qualified scientist—a biologist who had worked on the Manhattan Project and had visions of creating a full-blown institute for the study of fertility under the Planned Parenthood umbrella—although he was already getting frustrated. Like Sanger, he found Planned Parenthood’s leaders unwilling “to accept or tolerate the
forward thinking required by research
.” Henshaw also recognized that Pincus’s work might be profitable as well as patentable, and he went on record saying the organization wanted a share of any money generated by Pincus’s research. “I should like to know whether you
would agree to such a provision
,” he wrote.
No lawyers were involved in the discussion, only scientists.
Pincus did agree, with some caveats. He noted first of all that the contraceptives being tested might not be patentable because the chemical compounds under investigation came from various drug companies that had probably already submitted patent applications. But if research did produce a patentable birth-control pill, he continued, “a sharing of the patent rights seems to be the just and equitable procedure,” given that the Worcester Foundation had spent some of its own money and money from other grants on the same research. “I admit this is
a knotty question
,” he said.
In reply to Henshaw’s other questions, Pincus said he had seen no evidence of side effects in animals receiving progesterone. Finally, he said he was indeed ready to begin human trials, but he was waiting to hear if Planned Parenthood intended to fund his continued research before making plans.
Two weeks later, Henshaw approved Pincus’s request for two years of funding at $3,600 a year. When, he asked,
can the human testing begin
?
Pincus thanked Henshaw for the money and noted that he was beginning to develop a plan for testing the birth-control pill on large numbers of humans. “Most of this work is bound to be rather slow and laborious so that I do not anticipate any definitive results for at least a year,” he wrote. Unless, of course, he added, Planned Parenthood could provide additional money. In that case, “one might get things going
a little faster. . . .
”