Use of a contraceptive pill among French women in 2018
The contraceptive pill
Invented in 1956 in the United States (US), by Dr Gregory Pincus, the contraceptive pill was first sold in the early 60's in Australia, West Germany, in the United Kingdom and in the US. But French women had to wait a little bit longer due to a law passed in 1920.
After the massive losses during World War I, pro-birth discourses began to spread, calling for the "repopulation of France". On July 1920, the French parliament passed a law prohibiting pro-contraception propaganda and the sale of "anti-conceptional" devices.
Years after, on December 1967, after a massive mobilization of women in France and the French Family Planning Movement, deputy Lucien Neuwirth convinced the Assemblée Nationale to pass a law legalizing birth control and authorizing the commercialization of the contraceptive pill.
Today French women, as other women in the world, tend to leave oral contraception for alternative methods after the "pill scare" crisis, which happened in 2012.