Medicalizing Reproduction: The Pill and Home Pregnancy Tests

Abstract

This article explores one chapter in the history of medicalization through a focused study of oral contraceptives and home pregnancy tests. Each commercially successful in developed nations and both decades old (the Food and Drug Administration approved oral contraceptives in 1960 and home pregnancy tests in 1977), these reproductive technologies created the first pharmaceutical mega-market comprised of young, healthy, sexually active, heterosexual women. Examining the discrete, but interconnected, histories of both products, this article explores how the Pill's popularity and profitability medicalized and feminized contraception, encouraging pharmaceutical companies to invest in the development of patented variants of hormonal contraception and creating a means by which the under-used Pap smear could be introduced to a population that had previously resisted it. Home pregnancy tests, too, had unintended consequences. Designed to shield the detection of a pregnancy from a “medical gaze,” the test's widespread use encouraged women to become medical patients at an earlier stage of their pregnancy.

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge, with gratitude, the research assistance of Tess Lanzarotta and helpful comments from Thea Cacchioni, Cynthia Graham, Leonore Tiefer, Judy Segal, Jason Szabo, and Tess Lanzarotta.