The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution (50 page)

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CHAPTER SIX

58
at least one unwanted pregnancy
: Brett Harvey,
The Fifties: A Women’s Oral History
(New York: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 92.
59
“modern as tomorrow”
: Betty Millburn, “A Witty Friend and a Gracious Hostess,”
Tucson Citizen
,
Arizona Daily Star
archives, undated.
59
hobnobbed with the social elite
: Margaret Regan, “Margaret Sanger: Tucson’s Irish Rebel,”
Tucson Weekly
, March 11, 2004, http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/margaret-sanger-tucsons-irish-rebel/Content?oid=1075512 (accessed February 20, 2014).
59
some of the money
: Madeline Gray,
Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control
(New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1979), p. 292.
59
Prescott S. Bush
: “Bush Family Planning,” Margaret Sanger Papers Project newsletter, Winter 2006/2007, no. 44, New York University, http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/newsletter/articles/bush_family_planning.htm (accessed February 20, 2014).
60
in Sanger’s words
: Katharine Dexter McCormick to Margaret Sanger, October 27, 1950, Margaret Sanger Papers, SSC.
60
“Confidential Please”
: Margaret Sanger to Clarence Gamble, dated “Saturday/October 1942,” Gamble Papers, CLM.

CHAPTER SEVEN

62
“Our one duty”
: Pincus diaries, September 19, 1920, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
62
“Greatness is a spiritual condition”
: Pincus diaries, undated entry, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
64
“He was so handsome”
: Leon Speroff, M.D.,
A Good Man: Gregory Goodwin Pincus
(Portland, OR: Arnica Publishing, 2009), p. 48.
64
“How many nights I cried”
: Ibid.
65
Rabbi Stephen Wise’s Free Synagogue
: Alex Pincus, unpublished memoir, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
65
“took him into bed”
: Ibid.
65
“for the same joy in the future”
: Pincus diaries, January 20, 1920, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
65
“the embodiment of all our ideals”
: Pincus diaries, March 7, 1920, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
65
“I have not heretofore strictly practiced”
: Pincus diaries, January 27, 1920, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
65
“the holiest passion on this earth”
: Pincus diaries, January 8, 1920, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
65
“affectionate being”
: Pincus diaries, March 21, 1920, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
66
“Values and standards which have been”
: Gregory Pincus to his mother, undated letter, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
67
washing dishes and waiting tables
: Pincus diaries, March 21, 1920, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
67
his family during vacations
: Ibid.
67
she wrote in a memoir
: Elizabeth Pincus, unpublished memoir, family collection.
68
“clear conscience and a big heart”
: Gregory Pincus to his mother, undated letter, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
68
Philip Morris cigarettes
: Speroff,
A Good Man
, p. 125.
68
“Growing a penis”
: Geoff Dutton, interview conducted by the author, October 2011.
68
“I’m a sexologist”
: Speroff,
A Good Man
, p. 74.
69
“epicenter of American education”
: Richard Norton Smith,
The Harvard Century
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 12.
70
What form of birth control . . . no one knows
: Laura Pincus Bernard, interview conducted by the author, October 2011.
70
“I wanted to take life in my hands”
: Philip J. Pauly,
Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology
(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 102.
71
“a very good probability of failure”
: Gregory Pincus, unpublished manuscript, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
72
“an arrogant bunch of brats
”: Hudson Hoagland, “Change, Chance and Challenge,” unpublished memoir, UM.
72
influential psychologists and behaviorists
: Pauly,
Controlling Life
, p. 191.
72
Pincus’s contract was only barely approved
: Ibid.
73
apply his
in vitro
technique to humans
: Ibid.
73
“At Harvard are two Bokanovskys”
: “The Week in Science,”
New York Times
, May 13, 1934.
74
“the tinkering of a biological Edison”
: Pauly,
Controlling Life
, p. 192.
74
“bound to receive his meed of the praise”
: “B
OTTLES AS
M
OTHERS
,”
New York Times
, April 21, 1935.
75
“
M
ANLESS
W
ORLD
?”
: “Manless World?”
Racine Journal-Times
, April 15, 1936.
75
“Pfluger, 1863”
: Gregory Pincus,
The Eggs of Mammals
(New York: Macmillan, 1936), pp. 8–9.
76
“The social implications of Dr. Pincus’s”
: “Brave New World,”
New York Times
, March 28, 1936.
77
“In the huge Biological Laboratory”
: “No Father to Guide Them,”
Collier’s
, March 20, 1937.
78
Hoagland drove to the drug store
: Enoch Callaway,
Asylum: A Mid-
Century Madhouse and Its Lessons about Our Mentally Ill Today
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007), p. 18.
79
“Knowing his brilliance”
: Hudson Hoagland, “Change, Chance and Challenge,” unpublished memoir, UM.
80
sprawled across the surrounding yard
: Laura Pincus Bernard, telephone interview conducted by the author, December 2012.
80
Hoagland recalled
: “Biology Foundation Spawned in a Barn,”
Worcester Telegram
, June 8, 1952.
80
“The Clark work was reported”
: “Test Tube Ova Demonstrate Tendency of Reproduction,”
Jefferson City Post-Tribune
, April 28, 1939.
80
The AP corrected its error
: “Test Tube Furore is Result of Omitted ‘Not’,”
Ogden Standard-Examiner
(Utah), May 19, 1939.
81
with encouraging preliminary results
: G. Pincus and H. Hoagland, “Effects on Industrial Production of the Administration of Pregnenolone to Factory Workers, I,”
Psychosomatic Medicine
7, no. 6 (1945), pp. 342–46.
81
opening session of the conference
: Transcript of Joseph Gildzieher interview conducted by Leon Speroff, October 2007.
81
the principal of John’s high school
: Laura Pincus Bernard, interview conducted by the author, October 2011.
81
room, board, and clothing
: Ibid.
82
what an ordeal her home life had become
: Ibid.
83
began emitting its contents into the groundwater
: “The Growth and
Future of the Worcester Foundation: A Report to the Trustees,” 1950, UM.
83
how to pay
: Ibid.
83
a portable table, and a keg of nails for a chair
: Transcript of Jackie Foss interview conducted by Leon Speroff, May 2007.
83
“growth was either wise or necessary”
: “The Growth and Future of the Worcester Foundation: A Report to the Trustees,” 1950, UM.
84
always surrounded by towers of books
: Michael Moschos, telephone
interview conducted by the author, June 2013.
84
“It’s like living in a madhouse”
: Alex Pincus, unpublished memoir, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
85
“The Serious Stinkers”
: Laura Pincus Bernard, interview conducted by the author, July 2013.
86
$30,000
: Speroff,
A Good Man
, p. 117.
86
paid for with Worcester Foundation money
: Laura Pincus Bernard, interview conducted by the author, July 2013.
86
J&B or Johnny Walker
: Geoff Dutton, interview conducted by the author, October 2011.
86
Philip Morris cigarette dangling
: Isabelle Chang, interview conducted by the author, July 2013.
86
“You give her a test-tickle”
: Geoff Dutton, interview conducted by the author, October 2011.
86
“she had this sort of demeanor”
: Transcript of Michael Bedford interview conducted by Leon Speroff, undated.
86
until Lizzie relented
: Laura Pincus Bernard, interview conducted by the author, July 2013.
87
“an important factor in Goody’s life history”
: Alex Pincus, unpublished memoir, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
87
refused to get behind the wheel
: Laura Pincus Bernard, interview conducted by the author, July 2013.
87
Mrs. Pincus could be so disagreeable
: Transcript of Jackie Foss interview conducted by Leon Speroff, May 2007.
87
as soon as she woke
: David Halberstam,
The Fifties
(New York: Villard, 1993), p. 289.
88
remembered her father sleeping
: Ibid.
88
“a man who . . . was indestructible”
: Oscar Hechter, “Homage to Gregory Pincus,”
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
11 (Spring 1968),
p. 367.
88
“Nobody dared tell him a lie”
: Isabelle Chang, interview conducted by the author, July 2013.
89
Sheldon Segal
: Sheldon Segal, “Gregory Pincus, Father of the Pill,” Population Reference Bureau, http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/289/GregoryPincusFatherofthePill.aspx (accessed February 18, 2014).
89
“When you went to the Laurentian”
: Ibid.
89
“like an emperor”
: Ibid.

CHAPTER EIGHT

90
“Mrs. Stanley”
: Katharine Dexter McCormick to Margaret Sanger, October 27, 1950, Margaret Sanger Papers, SSC.
93
masturbated publicly
: Armond Fields,
Katharine Dexter McCormick: Pioneer for Women’s Rights
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), p. 150.
94
plotting their attack
: Ibid., p. 177.
95
including three large trunks
: Ibid., p. 181.
95
which was putting it mildly
: Ibid., p. 213.
96
cost another $108,000 a year
: Obituary,
Santa Barbara News-Press
, January 20, 1947.
96
“executrix of the estate”
: Fields,
Katharine Dexter McCormick
, p. 252.
96
almost thirty-two thousand shares
: Ibid.
96
her husband having died in 1943
: Ellen Chesler,
Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), p. 399.
97
long ago been transferred to her name
: Ibid.

CHAPTER NINE

98
“feeling pretty desperate”
: Katharine Dexter McCormick to Margaret Sanger, January 22, 1952, Armond Fields Collection, USC.
99
try more progesterone compounds
: “Report of Progress to: Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc.,” January, 24, 1952, LOC.
99
“to those who may help support it”
: William Vogt to Gregory Pincus, April 21, 1952, LOC.
99
“evidently not been sold”
: James Reed,
From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830
(New York: Basic Books, 1978), p. 341.
99
on other business
: Katharine Dexter McCormick to Margaret Sanger, June 20, 1952, Margaret Sanger Papers, SSC.
100
“As scientists and individuals”
: “General Summary and Results,” Arden House Colloquium on Human Fertility, September 13–14, 1952, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
100
“I am rather surprised”
: Katharine Dexter McCormick to Margaret Sanger, October 1, 1952, Armond Fields Collection, USC.
101
“It is pretty trying”
: Katharine Dexter McCormick to Margaret Sanger, March 15, 1953, Armond Fields Collection, USC.
101
“we can go see Dr. Pincus”
: Margaret Sanger to Katharine Dexter
McCormick, March 27, 1953, Armond Fields Collection, USC.

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