"America and the Pill" traces the pill's influence on women

Margaret Sanger is one of the heroes of America and the Pill, a new cultural history of the birth control pill written by Elaine Tyler May. From its inception the pill was shrouded in controversy and in some senses doomed to fail. May argues succinctly that expectations for it were too high. "When the oral contraceptive arrived on the market, its champions claimed that the tiny pill promised to end human misery and eradicate the causes of war by controlling population." This ambition led to the messy business of separating humanitarians who were truly concerned about world poverty from politicians and corporations (and, shamefully, Sanger herself to an extent) who wanted to use eugenics to weed out "undesirables." Washington Post