The birth-control pill. The only drug known so well that it can go by the name “the Pill.” The prescription that has been taken by more people than any other prescription in the world. The first medication designed for social reasons. These little tablets brought the country to its knees—perhaps to many interesting positions—and literally changed life as we know it. Let’s start at the beginning.

Scientists didn’t discover the ovum, the female egg, until 1827. Which is a hell of a long time (about 220 years) after the microscope was invented, so they must have not been looking in the right place. Or not looking at all. Before 1827, all scientists really only knew that conception relied on semen entering the female body. They knew not of the egg, so they assumed men created life and women just provided the house for it.

The Pill was not the first birth control on the market. In fact, once Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber, condoms and diaphragms became readily available. But the holdup with contraception was never scientific understanding or rubber technology, it was obscenity! Anthony Comstock, creator of Comstock Law, single-handedly outlawed birth control on the basis that it was in direct violation of the anti-obscenity laws. According to Comstock Law (still found on the books), contraception was obscene and even married couples could be arrested for using it.

Along came Katharine McCormick and Margaret Sanger, two brilliant, pro-contraception women. McCormick was the first woman to graduate from MIT; Sanger was a nurse who dreamed of a “magic contraception pill.” Together they worked to educate women about birth control.

By the time the 1950s hit, Americans were spending nearly $200 million dollars every year on condoms (in spite of the Catholic Church). Yet Sanger, over 70 years old by then, still dreamed of a magical pill, so she sweet-talked some scientists into investigating it. Gregory Pincus, who met Sanger at a dinner party, went on to discover that progesterone works as an anti-ovulent—but he didn’t have the money to continue his research. But wait—ever since McCormick’s husband had met his maker, she had been rolling in inheritance. So she agreed to fund the research.

1960s. The birth of many revolutions, including the startling idea that woman could—gasp—enjoy sex as much as men. Though many states remained legally opposed to oral contraceptives, the newly developed Pill bloomed at a rate unmatched until then: 1.2 American women were taking it in 1962, 2.3 million in 1963, 12.5 million in 1967.

As the Pill became less hormonally severe, its popularity soared. (The first prescriptions held 10 milligrams of progesterone and .15 milligrams of estrogen while today’s Pill contains as little as 1 milligram of progesterone and 20 micrograms of estrogen.) Today, 70 to 100 million women are on the Pill.