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The McCormick Story
Katharine McCormick — The "Mother" of invention…
No less than five men have been heralded by historians as the "father" of the modern birth control pill. In reality, it was two women who had both the foresight and the determination to transform women's sexual lives.
On a wintry night in 1951, at a dinner party on Manhattan's Upper East Side, two women hatched a plan that would forever revolutionise women's sexual and reproductive health. Together, Margaret Sanger and Katharine McCormick set in motion the events that would lead to the discovery of the modern birth control pill. Sanger, an ardent activist for family planning and Katharine McCormick, heiress to the International Harvester fortune, saw what others could not --that women desperately needed and wanted a means to control their fertility.
The pharmaceutical companies back then had no interest in pursuing a contraceptive pill. The men who ran the drug houses could not believe that women would ingest chemicals to prevent pregnancy. After years of failing to persuade the world otherwise, Sanger and McCormick decided to take matters into their own hands. With McCormick's considerable wealth, they literally commissioned a group of eminent scientists to create what they wanted --an oral contraceptive pill that would be safe, effective and easy to use.
Katharine's money helped support the work of Gregory Pincus in his laboratory in Newton Massachusetts. All told, between 1951and 1959, McCormick invested over $2 million, equivalent to investing $30 million in today's dollars, into the development of a safe and effective contraceptive pill.
The needs of our children's generations are no less profound. Today's younger generation is coming of age in an era where a "mistake" can lead not only to unwanted pregnancy but to a fatal disease. Our daughters and sons need a new "mother" of invention who can help dissociate sexuality from disease and death in the same way that the Pill forever liberated sexual pleasure from the fear of unwanted pregnancy.