birth control and its dark origins

Birth control has been around for a while it seems. It is accessible to most people in the United States and around 70% of those people use methods that are non permanent, such as the pill. The name can contradict itself, as there are plenty of people who use birth control as a method to control hormones and relieve the effects of endometriosis. There are also plenty of women who take birth control to prevent any unwanted pregnancies. Birth control is very important but no one really thinks about its invention and how it became so important for many women in the United States.

With medicine, there has to be plenty of trials and errors. There is no pill out here that just worked magically. Birth control is the same. In order for the pill to be approved by the FDA in the 1960's, trials had to be run. In the U.S, only rabbits and rodents were tested on but eventually humans were necessary to test the effectiveness of a birth control pill. Gregory Pincus was a scientist at Harvard who was working on these pill trails and decided the perfect spot to do these trials was in Puerto Rico. He chose Puerto Rico for its accessibility and its laws on family planning.

In 1955, Puerto Rican women were the subject of unethical experiments. Poor and uneducated women were the target of these pill trials. They were not informed of any risks and this pill was advertised to them as 100% safe. Back then, the pill was also given in high doses. All the side effects these women went through were completely dismissed. These side effects included blood clots, nausea, and vomiting. Three women died and their deaths were never investigated so it is unknown if the trials were a direct result but again, there death were never investigated and there were no autopsies conducted.

When I heard about how the pill was approved in the 1960's, I was already on birth control. It was 100% my choice to start birth control It is horrifying to think how these women were exploited and were not given a real choice of whether they wanted to participate in the experiment or not. It was unfair and while in the 1950's the laws that protect people from unethical clinical trials were not in place, there is no doubt that what these women went through was horrific in many ways.

Read this quote: "After months of enduring vaginal smears and more invasive procedures, most of the participants were left high and dry––denied both compensation and the drug they had helped create" You read that right. Again no investigations and no compensations for these women. Birth control's origin is very dark and these women went through a lot only to be erased from history. They deserved more and they deserved protections. I will always be grateful for they way these women paved the way to make birth control safe and I will never forget the unnecessary sacrifices to get to where we are in 2019.