| John Rock | |
|---|---|
 John Rock
|
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| Born | 24 March 1890 |
| Died | 4 December 1984 |
| Known for | Combined oral contraceptive pill |
John Rock (24 March 1890 - 4 December 1984) was an American obstetrician and gynecologist. He is best known for the major role he played in the development of the first hormonal contraceptive, colloquially called "the pill".
Early life and career
Rock was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard medical school in 1918 and founded his own medical practice a few years later.[1] Rock and his wife raised five children.[2]
Rock was a pioneer in in vitro fertilization and sperm freezing.[3] He helped many of his patients achieve pregnancy and became known as a "ground-breaking infertility specialist."[1]
As his career progressed, Rock also became known for his acceptance of birth control. (Birth control was illegal in Massachusetts until the 1965 Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut.) In the 1930s, he founded a clinic to teach the rhythm method, the only birth control accepted by the Catholic Church. In 1931, Rock was the only Catholic doctor to sign a petition to legalize birth control. In the 1940s, he taught at Harvard Medical School - and included birth control methods in his curriculum. Rock also coauthored a birth control guide for the general reader, titled Voluntary Parenthood and published in 1949.[1]
Pill development and promotion
In 1951 and 1952, Margaret Sanger arranged for funding for Gregory Pincus's research of hormonal contraception. In 1952, John Rock was recruited to lead the clinical trials of the new contraceptive pill. In 1955, the team announced successful clinical trials of the first birth control pill.[2]
Rock was 70 years old when the birth control pill was approved. Biographies note that he could have retired even before Pincus approached him to help develop the pill.[1][2] But over the next eight years, Rock campaigned vigorously for Roman Catholic approval of the pill. He published a book (The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor's Proposals to End the Battle over Birth Control), was featured in Time Magazine and in Newsweek, and gave a one-hour interview to NBC.[2] In 1958, Pope Pius XII had approved use of the pill to treat menstrual disorders. Rock believed it was only a matter of time before the Catholic Church approved its use as a contraceptive.[3]
In 1968 the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae entrenched Catholic opposition to hormonal contraception. Rock was profoundly disappointed. For the first time in his life, he stopped attending mass.[2]
References
- ^ a b c d American Experience (2001). "People & Events: Dr. John Rock". The Pill. PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/peopleevents/p_rock.html. Retrieved 29 November 2009.
- ^ a b c d e "Birth control pioneer born". Mass Moments. 2009. http://massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=92. Retrieved 29 November 2009., which cites:
- McLaughlin, Loretta (1982). The pill, John Rock, and the church: the biography of a revolution. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-56095-2.
- ^ a b Gladwell, Malcolm (2000-03-10). "John Rock's Error". The New Yorker. http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_03_10_a_rock.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-17.
- ^ Junod SW, Marks L (2002). "Women's trials: the approval of the first oral contraceptive pill in the United States and Great Britain" (PDF). J Hist Med Allied Sci 57: 117–60. doi:. PMID 11995593. http://jhmas.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/57/2/117.pdf.
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