If you have been prescribed hormonal birth control, were you told it was completely safe?
The pill was the first medicine made for healthy people, and on top of that, it was made to take every day.
The first human trials of the pill began in Boston in 1954, but these trials were stopped because research subjects were experiencing negative side effects and refused to continue.
Physicians monitoring side effects in Puerto Rico noted that there were too many side effects for the pill to be acceptable, such as cardiac events, strokes, and at least 1 woman died.
Despite this, about 1 year later, the FDA approved the combined oral contraceptive pill and by 1963, 2.3 million people in the US were taking the pill.
People were still experiencing side effects, and in 1970, the senate had hearings on the dangers of the pill such as blood clots, strokes, depression, and heart attacks, which lead to warning inserts being included in pill packaging.