Rock was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University Medical School in 1918 and founded his own medical practice a few years later. Rock and his wife raised five children. Rock was a pioneer in in vitro fertilization and sperm freezing. He helped many of his patients achieve pregnancy and became known as a "ground-breaking infertility specialist." As his career progressed, Rock also became known for his acceptance of birth control. In the 1930s, he founded a clinic to teach the rhythm method, the only birth control conditionally regarded as moral by the Catholic Church at the time. In 1931, Rock was the only Catholic physician to sign a petition to legalize birth control. In the 1940s, he taught at Harvard Medical School—and included birth control methods in his curriculum. Rock also coauthored a birth control guide for the general reader, titled Voluntary Parenthood and published in 1949.
Pill development and promotion
In 1951 and 1952, Margaret Sanger arranged for funding for Gregory Pincus's research of hormonal contraception. In 1952, John Rock was recruited to investigate clinical use of progesterone to prevent ovulation. In 1955, the team announced successful clinical use of progestins to prevent ovulation. Enovid, the brand name of the first pill, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and put onthe market in 1957 as a menstrual regulator. In 1960, Enovid gained approval from the FDA for contraceptive use. Rock was 70 years old when Enovid was approved for contraceptive use. Over the next eight years, Rock campaigned vigorously for Roman Catholic approval of the pill. He published a book, The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor's Proposals to End the Battle over Birth Control, and was subsequently featured in Time Magazine and Newsweek, and gave a one-hour interview to NBC. In 1958, Pope Pius XII declared that use of the pill to treat menstrual disorders was not contrary to Catholic morals. Rock believed it was only a matter of time before the Catholic Church approved its use as a contraceptive. In 1968 the papal encyclicalHumanae Vitae laid out definitively Catholic opposition to hormonal and all other artificial means of contraception. Rock was profoundly disappointed. Consequently, he withdrew from the church that he loved so much. Although it has been claimed by some journalists that Rock was to blame for adding "unnecessary" breaks in use of the pill, Jane Dickson of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare of RCOG stated in an interview that there were many more reasons for a placebo period, including as a recovery period from the then high dosage of hormones from the pill, and as reassurance that in having menstrual flow one was not pregnant.
