It might seem difficult to believe now, but less than 100 years ago there was very little that was understood about the female reproductive system, not to mention fertility.
But the primary motivation was a desire to separate sex for pleasure from sex for procreation and in the process liberate women from the tyranny of their biology, giving them what Eig describes as “the power to control their own bodies … the chance to become equal partners with men.” “The Birth of the Pill” is Eig’s suspenseful, sometimes rollicking tale of a highly ambitious, iconoclastic yet single-minded ragtag quartet who, from 1950 to 1957, dreamed, plotted, manipulated, agitated, researched, begged, bluffed, boasted and spent its way toward its goal of creating and popularizing an easily administered and highly efficacious contraceptive for women.Įach of the four - millionaire philanthropist Katharine McCormick, wild-haired scientist Gregory Pincus, cautious Roman Catholic OB-GYN John Rock and unpredictable women’s rights activist Margaret Sanger - had various incentives fueling their keen interest in a hormone-based form of female contraception.
The most transformative technology to affect the lives of women in the 20th century might seem an odd subject for Jonathan Eig, the bestselling author known for his books about the lives of notables such as Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig and Al Capone.īut on second glance, Eig’s three-year journey researching and chronicling the dream, the development and, eventually, the distribution of progesterone-based oral contraception for women makes a sort of perfect sense: As the author ably illustrates in this dynamic, highly engrossing narrative, the personalities on display share with Eig’s previous subjects a stubbornness, scrappiness and high tolerance for risk.
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