Home » People & Society » Family & Relationships » Family » Until the mid-1960s in Britain, pregnancy tests were done by sending a woman’s urine to a lab, where it would be injected into a toad. The toad was checked two hours later and if it had laid eggs, the woman was pregnant.

Until the mid-1960s in Britain, pregnancy tests were done by sending a woman’s urine to a lab, where it would be injected into a toad. The toad was checked two hours later and if it had laid eggs, the woman was pregnant.

Family, Reproductive Health, Women's Health / birth control, British Pregnancy Advisory Service, emergency contraception, Family Planning Association, Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, pregnancy test / / By

Contraception: From fish bladders to home-delivered morning after pills

The morning after pill has never been more accessible.

Women in the UK are now able to order emergency contraception online for home delivery.

It marks a milestone – less than two decades ago, it was not possible to buy it in pharmacies.

Medicine historian Dr Jesse Olszynko-Gryn said there were parallels between the journey of the morning-after pill and home-pregnancy tests, as both have moved from “medically controlled to increasingly available”.

When the first over-the-counter pregnancy test was launched in 1971 – (it involved a test tube in which a woman had to mix her urine and wait two hours) – it was “controversial”, said Dr Olszynko-Gryn, from the University of Strathclyde.

“Conservative doctors wrote to MPs, they… Continue Reading

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47815960

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