Who is Carl Djerassi?
While his name probably doesn’t ring a bell, odds are you or someone you know has benefited from his work. Djerassi, who died January 30 at the age of 91, was one of the chemists responsible for creating the key ingredient for the birth control pill.
Djerassi, often referred to as the “father of the pill,” paved the way for women to realize their reproductive rights, and not be held back by an inability to plan childbearing. His discovery was one of many breakthroughs that led to the pill’s development and approval in the 1960s.
We’ve come a long way since then, as the video above from TIME shows. Before the pill and other forms of reliable birth control were legal and widespread, women went to rather extreme lengths to try and prevent pregnancy on their own. And believe it or not, we still live in a world where 225 million women who want to prevent pregnancy lack modern contraception.
Carl Djerassi helped give the pill its start. Let’s honor him by helping to expand its reach.
