openculture | In 1951, Carl Djerassi, a chemist working in an obscure lab in Mexico City, created the first progesterone pill.
Little did he know that, a decade later, 1.2 million women would be “on
the Pill” in America, exercising unprecedented control over their
reproductive rights. By 1967, that number would reach 12.5 million women
worldwide. It was fortuitous timing, seeing that the post-war global
population was starting to surge. It took 125 years (1800-1925) for the
global population to move from one billion to two billion (see historical chart), but only 35 years (1925-1960) for that number to reach three billion. Non-profits like the Population Council
were founded to think through emerging population questions, and by the
mid-1960s, they began publishing a peer-reviewed journal called Studies in Family Planning and also working with Walt Disney to produce a 10-minute educational cartoon. You can watch Family Planning above.
