"The efforts of Sanger and McCormick would have been for naught, however, if it hadn’t been for the medical folk traditions of the descendants of the w:Aztecs. The basic research for the pill became possible when Russell Marker discovered that generations of Mexican women had been eating a certain wild yam ⎯the Barbasco root, also called cabeza de negro⎯for contraception (Chesler, 1992). It was from these yams that Marker was able to extract the progestin that Gregory Pincus combined with estrogen to formulate the first birth control pill (Grimes, 2000). The first pill was far from perfect ⎯but its effectiveness, simplicity, and ease of use extended to millions of women an unheard-of control over reproduction, for the first time allowing them to truly separate vaginal intercourse from procreation (Bullough & Bullough, 1990). Margaret Sanger’s pill made the sexual liberation movement of the ‘60s a lot less risky than the one that occurred after World War I. More than 20years ago, the FDA proclaimed that “...more studies have been done on the pill to look for serious side effects than have been done on any other medicine in history” (Asbell, 1995). That scientific scrutiny has continued to this day. The pill of today, as well as other more recent combined hormone methods —the patch and the ring—offer safety and effectiveness with greatly decreased doses of hormone (Knowles &Ringel, 1998)."