the Female Body GOVERNING

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though their grades were apparently based on their participation in the
study. No meaningful data were collected. Although the mental patient
group could be more successfully monitored daily, female contraceptive
effect was diffi cult to gauge in a population that was presumed not to
be heterosexually active. These studies, then, offered little except the
general information that these steroidal compounds posed no immediately
appreciable systemic danger to users. However, they once again
raised the issue of side effects; as with Rock’s infertile patients, several
complained of dizziness, nausea, headache, and menstrual irregularities
(McLaughlin, 1982; Marks, 1998; Oudshoorn, 1994; Ramírez de
Arellano & Seipp,1983; Vaughan, 1970; Pincus, 1958).
Researchers also followed another lead in this series of cases: steroids
had previously been documented to cause male infertility, too. Among
the psychotic men in Massachusetts, urine samples and biopsied testicular
tissue showed—albeit inconclusively—that the steroidal compound they
tested stopped sperm production (Pincus, 1957). The implications of
this were never pursued; no effort was made to develop or further test
the Pill as a contraceptive for men. Something about giving steroidal
compounds to men was less appealing than controlling women’s fertility.
This choice was probably overdetermined; several explanations come to
mind: McCormick and Sanger, as funders, were interested specifi cally
in a female-controlled method and the discourse of overpopulation
targeted women. However, another issue was noted that probably also
contributed: one of the male mental patients was described by a nurse
as acting “effeminate” during treatment. Although no physiologic effects
such as breast development were reported, the suggestion that these
steroids could make men act like women, or like homosexuals, was
apparently enough. What behavior a psychotic man who was unable
to cooperate with researchers could have exhibited to make him seem
“feminine” to the nursing staff is diffi cult to imagine. But such possible
side effects dovetailed with the perception of hormones as powerfully
the “essence” of maleness or femaleness and seem to have been suffi cient
to deter further such research.
The next round of testing in 1956 involved a much larger series of
cases, and these, too, were organized in Puerto Rico. Two groups of
women, one residents of a housing project in Río Piedras, and another,
patients of Ryder Hospital (usually, women turned down for sterilization
because they had fewer than the three children required (Satterthwaite
& Gamble, 1962) were enrolled in an effort to understand whether the
Pill prevented pregnancy, and whether it was acceptable and could be
used effectively by those who “most needed” contraception, specifi cally
working-class women living in “overpopulated” and “underdeveloped”