A Note on Birth Control Development
As with all historical scientific research that used human subjects for trials, the first birth control pill was tested using methods that would not pass the Institutional Review Boards of today. Research leads Gregory Pincus and John Rock first trialed Enovid on groups of women held at the Worcester State Hospital, previously known as the Worcester Lunatic Asylum and the Worcester Insane Asylum, women who were unable to give informed consent for participation in the trials. After a discussion that included Pincus, Rock, Margaret Sanger, and Katharine Dexter McCormick, they moved the trials to Puerto Rico where Enovid was tested on a group of mostly indigent women - a demographic of women who were regularly involuntarily sterilized through hysterectomies after their second child. These women were not given the full details of the health risks they took as trial participants, and were in many cases not told they were even taking a drug that was not yet approved for use.
