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Combined oral contraceptive pill

A woman holds a birth control pill at her home in Nice, France.

The inside, not-always-ethical story of how ‘The Pill’ was made

Health

Birth control was a major leap forward for gender equality, but developing the pill wasn’t easy at a time when even discussing it was illegal in some states. So Margaret Sanger and the team that created the first birth control pill had to get sneaky to test it out and make sure it was safe.

The World

The pill: fifty years later

Arts, Culture & Media

Obama administration drops objection to Plan B ruling

Conflict & Justice

Pediatrician group advises doctors pre-write prescriptions for emergency contraception

Health & Medicine

New York schools piloting program to offer Plan B, birth control pills to students

Health & Medicine

FDA panel recommends approval of prophylactic use of HIV prevention drug

Health & Medicine

Truvada, long used to treat people already infected with HIV, may soon be available as another means of preventing initial HIV infection. That was the recommendation of an FDA advisory panel that has been looking into the idea.

Tracing the journey of AIDS drugs

Health & Medicine

The challenge of delivering AIDS drugs in Africa — the journey of a bottle of pills from an Indian factory to a patient in Ivory Coast.

Health Secretary Overturns Plan B Decision

Heath and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius  rejected a decision  by the Food and Drug Administration to make the “morning after” birth control pill widely available over the counter on Wednesday. The emergency contraceptive, called Plan B One-Step, was available to women over 17, but would have been available to women 16 and under had the decision […]

Gender-Bending Fish

There’s something fishy about Colorado’s South Platte River. Researchers there have found increasing numbers of mutant fish  ? male fish with female attributes. And they suspect wastewater carrying estrogenic compounds like birth control pills might be the source of the mutations. Host Steve Curwood talks with head researcher David Norris, of the University of Colorado, […]