when did over the counter pregnancy tests become available
Pregnancy test A pregnancy test attempts to determine whether a woman is pregnant. Markers that indicate are found in urine and blood, and pregnancy tests require sampling one of these substances. The first of these markers to be discovered, human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), was discovered in 1930 to be produced by the syncytiotrophoblast cells of the fertilised ova (eggs). While hCG is a reliable marker of pregnancy, it cannot be detected until after implantation:[1] this results in false negatives if the test is performed during the very early stages of pregnancy. HCG can be detected via blood 8 days after fertilization of the egg, and in the urine 10 days after. Obstetric ultrasonography may also be used to detect pregnancy. Obstetric ultrasonography was first practiced in the 1960s; the first home test kit for hCG was invented in 1968.[2] The kits went on the market in the United States and Europe in the mid-1970s.
Birth control In 1909, Richard Richter developed the first intrauterine device made from silkworm gut, which was further developed and marketed in Germany by Ernst Gräfenberg in the late 1920s.[152] In 1951, a chemist, named Carl Djerassi from Mexico City made the hormones in progesterone pills using Mexican yams.[153] Djerassi had chemically created the pill but was not equipped to distribute it to patients. Meanwhile, Gregory Pincus and John Rock with help from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America developed the first birth control pills in the 1950s, such as mestranol/noretynodrel, which became publicly available in the 1960s through the Food and Drug Administration under the name Enovid.[146][154] Medical abortion became an alternative to surgical abortion with the availability of prostaglandin analogs in the 1970s and mifepristone in the 1980s.[155]