The first half of the 20th century in America was truly an exciting time in history! In the space of just 50 years we have seen wars go from fighting on the ground with massed infantry to decisive campaigns fought in the air. Car ownership was no longer just a luxury of the elite class, but also of the working class. Mass communication could be seen on television, no longer limited to radio. Many deadly diseases have found treatments and cures, all thanks to the rapid advancement of science and technology. Coincidentally, it wasn't just science that changed the face of America, it was the faces of America that changed America. In the same fifty years, American women overcame social restrictions and began to demand an equal place among men in society. In large part, the catalyst for this movement was the fight for and subsequent acceptance of the birth control pill. It seems appropriate, then, that Elaine Tyler May published her book, America and the Pill, A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation, on the semicentennial anniversary of the FDA's approval of the oral contraceptive. in her book to illustrate how valuable the fight to legalize the oral contraceptive (“the pill”) was in creating independence and ownership for women over their lives and bodies. This campaign for women's empowerment should not be confused with those fought during the Feminist Movement, although they occurred at the same time. Margaret Sanger led the fight for the pill, and did so during two world wars and a cold war, in a time of widespread poverty and global overpopulation. The attempt to legalize the pill began as a way to provide women with the ability to have control over the size of their f......middle of paper ......and where it belongs – over men” (Tone, 246). The social landscape at this point in America seems to be in stark contrast to where women were when Sanger and McCormick began their fight. Indeed, Sanger and McCorkmick were adamant that contraception was entirely in the hands of women (May, 109). The aim was to provide women with the ability to decide when and if they wanted to conceive and who should otherwise have safe and effective means of preventing it. Women had come so far in their right to be heard that what the pill had done to liberate them and give them control of their bodies was no longer enough in itself: it should be men who suffer the side effects just as much, if not more than them. It certainly wasn't for lack of effort; a safe, non-permanent male contraceptive has been studied and tested quite extensively, but to no avail.