Complain here.

Before the pill was approved for women in the U.S., it was tested on poor Puerto Rican women.

In the 1950s, researchers ran large scale trials of the first birth control pill on women in Puerto Rico. They were told it would prevent pregnancy.
What they weren’t told?

• The pill was experimental.
• It came with dangerously high doses of hormones.
• There were severe side effects—and three women died, without autopsies.

This is the story of how colonialism and medicine collided, using women’s bodies as experiments.

In this episode of Existential Static, we break down the Puerto Rico birth control trials, the racist and colonial logic behind them, and how these patterns still echo in reproductive health today.

Because history like this doesn’t go away, it repeats.