The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution (54 page)

BOOK: The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution
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CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

244
“Sex before marriage?”
: Sue Dixon, interview conducted by the author, June 2013.
244
“I took her up to Michigan”
: Wes Dixon, interview conducted by the author, June 2013.
246
at heart he was a risk taker
: Sue Dixon, interview conducted by the author, June 2013.
246
a higher percentage of its revenue
: William I. Latourette, “More Wonder Drugs,”
Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly
, April 28, 1958, p. 11.
247
on sales of $26 million in 1955
: “Container Corp. Sets 2 Records,”
New York Times
, February 3, 1956, p. 31.
247
Sue Dixon’s husband, Wes
: “Searle Aide Promoted to Overseas Unit Post,”
New York Times
, January 12, 1956.
247
“Me?”
: Sue Dixon, interview conducted by the author, June 2013.
248
grasped the pill’s “sociological implications”
: Celso-Ramón Garcia, M.D., “The Early History of Oral Contraceptives,” draft of paper to be presented at the John Rock Commemorative Symposium, October 21, 1980, CLM.
248
the cause of population control
: Loretta McLaughlin,
The Pill, John Rock, and the Church
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), p. 135.
248
omit the company’s name
: Al Raymond to Gregory Pincus, October 4, 1957, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

249
“emotional super-activity of Puerto Rican women”
: Annette B. Ramirez de Arellano,
Colonialism, Catholicism, and Contraception
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), p. 116.
250
train a doctor in how to use it
: Ibid., p. 117.
251
“O, doctora, opéreme”
: Transcript of Adaline Satterthwaite interview conducted by James Reed, June 1974, Schlesinger-Rockefeller Oral History Project.
251
she would not sterilize
: Ibid.
251
scarcely room “for a squeezed pedestrian”
: Clarence Gamble to Margaret Sanger, March 13, 1957, Margaret Sanger Papers, SSC.
251
birth control they were using, if any
: Transcript of Adaline Satterthwaite interview conducted by James Reed, June 1974, Schlesinger-Rockefeller Oral History Project.
251
“the cervix looks angry”
: Adaline Satterthwaite to Clarence Gamble, December 2, 1959, Clarence Gamble Papers, CLM.
253
“In the 1,279 cycles”
: Nelly Oudshoorn,
Beyond the Natural Body
(London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 132.
254
the babies that were arriving
: Albert Q. Maisel,
The Hormone Quest
(New York: Random House, 1965), p. 46.
255
f
etch her diaphragm from the bathroom
: Loretta McLaughlin,
The Pill, John Rock, and the Church
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), p. 138.
256
taking control of the supply chain
: Gregory Pincus to Jack Searle, January 29, 1957, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
256
some of its new hormone products
: Remarks by J. G. Searle at Annual Meeting of Stockholders, April 26, 1958, transcript in Worcester Foundation records, UM.
256
Djerassi urged Parke-Davis to fight
: Carl Djerassi,
This Man’s Pill
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 54.
256
“small potatoes”
: Ibid.
256
“absolutely unexplored ground”
: Paul Vaughan,
The Pill on Trial
(New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1970), p. 49.
257
“field of physiological birth control”
: “Contraceptive Pill?”
Time
magazine, May 5, 1957, p. 83.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

258
“Believed to have magical powers”
: Suzanne White Junod and Lara Marks, “Women’s Trials: The Approval of the First Oral Contraceptive in the United States and Great Britain,
” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
57, no. 2 (2002), p. 127.
259

SUGGEST BUTTONING UP
,” it read
: Gregory Pincus to John Rock, June 26, 1957, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
259
“brilliant and painstaking work”
: “New Hope for Childless Women,”
Ladies’ Home Journal
, August 1957, p. 46.
259
nor cooperated with the author
: I. C. Winter to Edward Tyler, August 6, 1957, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
260
only to doctors on the West Coast
: Gregory Pincus to Margaret Sanger, July 22, 1957, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
260
“any physician may prescribe it”
: Ibid.
260
“While we are convinced”
: Ibid.
261
give himself a treat
: Laura Pincus Bernard and Geoff Dutton, interviews with the author, October 2011.
262
“safe for this purpose in short term medication”
: White Junod and Marks, “Women’s Trials,

pp. 117–60.
264
“I beg you please help me if you can”
: Letter to Gregory Pincus, October 31, 1957, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
264
“To save my married daughter”
: Letter to Gregory Pincus, June 21, 1957, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
264
“I absolutely need your help”
: Letter to Gregory Pincus, undated, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
265
“a powerful weapon”
: Hugh Hefner, telephone interview conducted by the author, February 2012.
265
“I don’t remember that”
: Ibid.
265
“It was like a free ad”
: McLaughlin,
The Pill, John Rock, and the Church
, p. 139.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

266
“Good evening”
: Transcript of Margaret Sanger interview conducted by Mike Wallace in Esther Katz, ed.,
The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger,
Vol. 3 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010), p. 423.
266
unusually warm and humid day
: “Weather Man Slips Up on Ice Skating in City,”
New York Times
, September 22, 1957.
266
“nosy, irreverent, often confrontational”
: Mike Wallace,
Between You and Me
(New York: Hyperion, 2005), p. 2.
266
“an intrepid gadfly who had the temerity”
: Ibid., p. 136.
267
“May I ask you this?”
: Transcript of Margaret Sanger interview conducted by Mike Wallace in Katz, ed.,
Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger
, Vol. 3, p. 432.
268
“It is just too bad”
: Letter to Margaret Sanger, September 21, 1957, Margaret Sanger Papers, SSC.
268
But she did read an editorial
: Madeline Gray,
Margaret Sanger: A
Biography of the Champion of Birth Control
(New York: Richard Marek Publishers, 1979), p. 435.
269
“lust and animalistic mating”
: Ibid.
269
“R.C. Church is getting more defiant”
: Ibid.
270
“If a woman takes this medicine”
: John T. Noonan,
Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 461.
271
“perfect health or perfect vision”
: Ibid., p. 463.

CHAPTER THIRTY

272
“I thought it was so strange”
: Laura Pincus Bernard, interview conducted by the author, July 2013.
272
“La señora de las pastillas”
: Ibid.
273
“Many of them were never actually married”
: Ibid.
274
medical team in Puerto Rico couldn’t handle
: Transcript of Adaline Satterthwaite interview conducted by James Reed, June 1974, Schlesinger-Rockefeller Oral History Project.
274
Haitian women to follow directions
: Laura V. Marks,
Sexual Chemistry
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 104.
275
diaphragms and jellies representing the next largest
: Robert Sheehan, “The Birth Control ‘Pill’,”
Fortune
, April 1958, p. 222.
275
“It is no news”
: I. C. Winter to Gregory Pincus, December 29, 1958, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

276
“use any drug, medicinal article, or instrument”:
J. C. Ruppenthal,
Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology
, Vol. 10, August 1919, p. 53.
276
“exhibit, sell, prescribe, provide”
: Fred Kaplan,
1959: The Year Everything Changed
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), p. 226.
278
“I don’t know if you will approve”
: Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner,
The Fertility Doctor: John Rock and the Reproductive Revolution
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), pp. 213–14
.
278
“Enovid is an artificially made hormone”
: Ibid., p. 214.
279
“pill might be the theological way out”
: Bernard Asbell,
The Pill: A Biography of the Drug That Changed the World
(New York: Random House, 1995), p. 154.
279
“after a Chicago vice squad”
: Gay Talese,
Thy Neighbor’s Wife
(New York: Doubleday, 1980), p. 126.
280
a prescription for Enovid
: Katharine Dexter McCormick to Gregory Pincus, August 3, 1959, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
280
they might catch heat
: Paul Vaughan,
The Pill on Trial
(New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1970), p. 50.
281
“numbers of Indians, Chinese,
et al.

: Robert Coughlan, “World Birth Control Challenge,”
Life
magazine, November 23, 1959, p. 170.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

283
or maintain their professional education
: Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations, Hearing on False and Misleading Advertising (Prescription Tranquilizing Drugs) 85 Cong. 2d (Washington, D.C., 1958), pp. 150, 226.
283
father of ten children
: Loretta McLaughlin,
The Pill, John Rock, and the Church
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), p. 144.
284
“everybody and her sister would be taking it”
: Ibid., pp. 143–44.
285
“communist political and economic domination”
: President’s Committee to Study the United States Military Assistance Program,
Letter to the President of the United States from the President’s Committee to Study the United States Military Assistance Program and the Committee’s Final Report
(Washington, D.C.), August 17, 1959, pp. 94–98.
285
“I cannot imagine anything more emphatically”
: Matthew Connelly,
Fatal Misconception
(Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 187.
286
couldn’t prove that it
didn’t
help arthritis
: McLaughlin,
The Pill, John Rock, and the Church
, p. 141.
286
“We were in no hurry”
: Ibid., p. 142.
287
“incomplete and inadequate”
: Pasquale DeFelice to William Crosson, September 25, 1959, John Rock Papers, CLM.
287
“clearly outlined in our N.D.A.”
: Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner,
The Fertility Doctor: John Rock and the Reproductive Revolution
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), p. 219.
288
“the light of the obstetrical world”
: McLaughlin,
The Pill, John Rock, and the Church
, p. 143.
288
“training you’ve had in female cancer”
: Ibid., p. 142.
288
question seemed reasonable and important
: Ibid., p. 143.
289
“I’ve only met about three doctors”
: Ibid.
289
sixty-one obstetrician-gynecologists
: FDA memo, May 11, 1960, Gregory Pincus Papers, LOC.
290
among his sixty-one experts
: Marsh and Ronner,
The Fertility Doctor
, p. 220.
290
former joke writer for Groucho Marx
: Paul Vaughan,
The Pill on Trial
(New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1970), p. 52.
291
adhesions of the labia and hypertrophy of the clitoris
: Ibid.

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