The birth control pill, also known as an oral contraceptive or simply referred to as The Pill, is hailed as one of the most important innovations in women’s health. Before the advent of the Pill, many women were forced to endure multiple pregnancies because there were no reliable or convenient means of preventing conception. During the twentieth century, two women named Margaret Sanger and Katherine McCormick resolved to change this and funded the work of Gregory Pincus, a doctor who had been studying the role that hormones played in conception. A partnership with the pharmaceutical company Searle later resulted in Enovid, the first birth control pill approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the United States. Five years later, the Comstock Law, which was passed in 1873 deeming contraception as illegal, was repealed, and millions of women began to exercise more control over their wombs. As the decades passed, continuous research and development has been carried out to improve the quality of these birth control pills.
There are currently three different kinds of birth control pills: progestin-only pills (POP), combination pills, and emergency...