FDA approves the pill
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves the worlds first commercially produced birth-control billEnovid-10 made by the G.D.Searle Company of Chicago Illinois.Development of the pill as it became popularly known was initially commissioned by birth-control pioneer Margaret Sanger and funded by heiress Katherine McCormick.Sanger who opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States in 1916 hoped to encourage the development of a more practical and effective alternative to contraceptives that were in use at the time.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.
