{"id":930,"date":"2026-05-14T14:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T14:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=930"},"modified":"2026-05-14T14:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T14:04:11","slug":"by-changing-womens-lives-the-pill-changed-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=930","title":{"rendered":"By changing women\u2019s lives, the pill changed the nation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<ul><\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>The pill helped give birth to modern America.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Known by one simple word, the revolutionary oral contraceptive \u2014 approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 66 years ago \u2014 didn\u2019t just prevent innumerable pregnancies. It gave women new freedom, changing family life and society forever.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIts introduction in the 1960s afforded U.S. women this unprecedented control over their childbearing and subsequent life trajectories,\u201d says Suzanne Bell of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.<\/p>\n<p>The pill disentangled sex from procreation. Women no longer needed a man\u2019s cooperation to control their fertility.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>The pill\u2019s greatest champion was a woman. Margaret Sanger, who founded the precursor to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, helped spearhead its development with financial support from her friend, philanthropist Katharine Dexter McCormick. Sanger said, \u201cNo woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Biologists Gregory Pincus and Min Chueh Chang and OB-GYN Dr. John Rock were instrumental in the pill\u2019s development. It uses synthetic progesterone and estrogen hormones to prevent pregnancy, mainly by stopping ovulation but also by thickening cervical mucus and making it hard for sperm to enter the uterus. When used perfectly, it prevents pregnancy 99% of the time.<\/p>\n<p>Within two years of its initial distribution, more than a million American women were taking it. Monumental social change followed. Researchers have linked the pill to later marriages and greater educational attainment and labor force participation among women. It also played a part in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and \u201970s.<\/p>\n<p>The pill spurred backlash, too. In the 1960s, Pope Paul VI condemned it and many states outlawed contraceptives. Married women were exempted from state prohibitions in 1965, but the ban for single women persisted in some states for years.<\/p>\n<p>More recently, after the Supreme Court\u2019s decision ending the constitutional right to abortion, some worry the right to use contraception is also under threat.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith any device or procedure that gives women more reproductive or sexual autonomy, there are always groups that resist and push back,\u201d says Bell, pointing to the recent push for women to have more children.<\/p>\n<p>But on the whole, women aren\u2019t heeding that message. U.S. fertility rates have reached a historic low, and the pill remains extremely popular. Today, it\u2019s the most common form of reversible birth control in America, used by more than 8 million people \u2014 and still shaping the lives of individuals and the nation.<\/p>\n<p>The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. This story is part of a recurring series, \u201d American Objects,\u201d marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=915\">Do these four things before buying a hybrid in 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=926\">Corleone crime family returns in a new \u2018Godfather\u2019 novel for 2027 release by Random House<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=928\">Jason Collins, NBA\u2019s first openly gay player, dies at 47 of brain cancer<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The pill helped give birth to modern America. Known by one simple word, the revolutionary oral contraceptive \u2014 approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 66 years ago \u2014 didn\u2019t just prevent innumerable pregnancies. It gave women new freedom, changing family life and society forever. \u201cIts introduction in the 1960s afforded U.S. women this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1101,1133,1134,67,1103,1104],"tags":[1135,1136,1137,1138,1139],"class_list":["post-930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-0-no-apple-publish","category-1gridnation","category-1gridnationandstate","category-nation","category-uncategorized","category-z-other-galley","tag-katharine-dexter-mccormick","tag-margaret-sanger","tag-pope-paul-vi","tag-suzanne-bell","tag-the-pill"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>By changing women\u2019s lives, the pill changed the nation - Denver Moving Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/denvermovingchronicle.com\/?p=930\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"By changing women\u2019s lives, the pill changed the nation - Denver Moving Chronicle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The pill helped give birth to modern America. 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