Birth Control
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40 free Birth Control trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Birth control has one of the stranger histories in medicine. For most of recorded time people relied on folk recipes, guesswork and devices that ranged from useless to dangerous, and for long stretches even talking about the subject could land you in court. The reliable methods people take for granted are, in historical terms, very new. This quiz covers both halves of the story. Some questions test how modern methods actually work: what the pill actually does, how long-acting devices and injections differ, which medicines and supplements can interfere, and which common beliefs turn out to be myths. Others follow the campaigners, chemists, court cases and advertising claims that turned contraception from a crime into an everyday prescription. It is written for curious adults, students revising for health class, and anyone who likes trivia with a few surprises. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started. The questions are general knowledge, not medical advice: a doctor, nurse or pharmacist is the right person to ask about your own choices.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which disinfectant, hinted in 1930s ads to prevent pregnancy, was once America's leading douche?
Lysol
Lysol stayed a popular birth control method from the Great Depression through the 1960s, though it never worked. Douching with it does not prevent pregnancy, and some women died from using it.
Q 02Egypt's Kahun Papyrus, from about 1850 BC, describes a contraceptive pessary of which animal's dung?
Crocodile
Crocodile dung is among the oldest written contraceptive recipes, listed beside a honey mixture and gummy pastes meant to cover the 'mouth of the womb'.
Q 03A 2008 Ig Nobel Prize honoured rival studies finding which soft drink both is and is not a spermicide?
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola split the joke prize between one team that reported it was an effective spermicide and another that proved it was not. Sperm swim out of reach of any douche within about 90 seconds anyway.
Q 04Chemist Russell Marker made the progesterone behind the first birth control pills from which Mexican plant?
Yam
Yam species contain diosgenin, which Marker turned into progesterone in a process named Marker degradation. It founded a whole steroid industry in Mexico.
Q 05Which country singer's 1975 single 'The Pill' was refused airplay by a number of radio stations?
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn recorded the song in 1972, but her label held it back for three years. Rural doctors later told her it had done more to spread word of birth control than all their leaflets.
Q 06Rubber condoms relied on vulcanization, patented by which American inventor whose name now sells tires?
Charles Goodyear
Charles Goodyear never founded the tire company that carries his name. His 1844 patent came first, the first rubber condom followed in 1855, and the early ones were reusable.
Q 07Which metal coats the hormone-free IUD, also the most effective emergency contraception within five days?
Copper
Copper ions kill sperm directly, so the device needs no hormones and leaves the timing of the menstrual cycle alone. Chilean doctor Jaime Zipper added the metal to a plastic T that had been failing.
Q 08Which country approved the birth control pill only in 1999, becoming the last UN member state to do so?
Japan
Japan's medical association had kept the pill off the market for nearly 40 years. Approval came only after regulators cleared Viagra in six months and women's groups cried foul.
Q 09In a classic Seinfeld episode, Elaine hoards which contraceptive after it is taken off the market?
The sponge
The sponge really had just left American shelves, which inspired writer Peter Mehlman. Elaine postpones sex until she has vetted whether her boyfriend is 'sponge-worthy'.
Q 10Which nurse was arrested nine days after opening America's first birth control clinic, in Brooklyn?
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger was arrested eight times in all for defying laws against sharing contraceptive advice. Her offence at the clinic was handing a pamphlet to an undercover policewoman.
Q 11Combined birth control pills mainly prevent which process, normally set off by a surge of the hormone LH?
Ovulation
Ovulation is switched off because the pill's steady hormones hold back the signals that tell an ovary to release an egg. With no egg waiting, sperm have nothing to fertilize.
Q 12The contraceptive implant, a rod about the size of a matchstick, sits under the skin of which body part?
Upper arm
Upper arm placement is usually on the inner side of the arm a woman does not write with. Once fitted, the implant is among the most effective methods, with nothing to remember each day.
Q 13Which tubes, cut or blocked during male sterilization, normally carry sperm away from the testicles?
The vas deferens
Q 21After a vasectomy, which test confirms the operation has worked, usually two to four months later?
Semen analysis
Semen analysis is needed because sperm linger beyond the cut for at least two months. Until a lab finds none, men are told to keep using another method of birth control.
Q 22Which activity, done at least every four hours by day, can work as birth control for six months after childbirth?
Breastfeeding
Breastfeeding only works this way if the baby gets nothing but breast milk, including a feed every six hours at night. Even then, about 2 in 100 mothers relying on it become pregnant.
Q 23Which contraceptive is given as an injection about every three months instead of a daily pill?
Depo-Provera
The vas deferens gives the vasectomy its name. Once each tube is cut or blocked, sperm can no longer leave the body and cause a pregnancy.
Q 14Which reading, charted on waking in fertility awareness, rises slightly once an egg is released?
Body temperature
Body temperature climbs by about four-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit once the egg is released. It has to be taken before getting out of bed, and days count as safe only after the rise has held for three days.
Q 15Combined birth control pills slightly raise the risk of which condition, affecting up to 1 in 1,000 users?
Blood clots
Blood clots are rare but serious, because one can lodge in a leg or lung or cause a heart attack or stroke. That is why the combined pill may be ruled out for smokers aged 35 or over.
Q 16A diaphragm, a silicone cup used with spermicide, blocks sperm by covering which part of the body?
Cervix
Cervix cover is the diaphragm's whole job: a barrier that keeps sperm from joining an egg. The saucer-shaped cup is bent in half to be inserted.
Q 17Which state's ban on using contraceptives fell in 1965 after Estelle Griswold opened a birth control clinic there?
Connecticut
Connecticut's law dated from 1879 and bound even married couples until the Supreme Court struck it down 7–2 on privacy grounds. Griswold's group had been helping women travel out of state by bus.
Q 18Which 18th-century adventurer wrote in his memoirs of inflating condoms to check them for holes?
Giacomo Casanova
Giacomo Casanova's test is the first recorded inspection of condom quality. He knew the sheaths as 'assurance caps' and used them to avoid impregnating his mistresses.
Q 19Which condom brand, launched in London in 1929, went on to introduce the first lubricated condom in 1957?
Durex
Durex is a contraction of 'durability, reliability and excellence'. Its maker, the London Rubber Company, became Europe's first manufacturer of latex condoms in 1932.
Q 20Which herbal remedy, long used for low mood, can make birth control pills less effective?
St John's wort
St John's wort speeds up the way the body breaks down many medicines, the pill's hormones among them. Breakthrough bleeding is another reported effect of mixing the two.
Depo-Provera can linger: it may take up to 10 months after the last shot wears off before pregnancy is possible again. Reduced bone density is another known drawback.
Q 24Which drug is the active ingredient in Plan B One-Step, the morning-after pill taken within 72 hours?
Levonorgestrel
Levonorgestrel works by delaying the release of an egg, so it does nothing once the egg is out and cannot stop a fertilized egg implanting. Europe's regulators changed its label in 2013 to say so.
Q 25On which Caribbean island did the first large-scale trials of the birth control pill begin in 1956?
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico was picked partly because it had a network of birth control clinics and liberal laws on family planning advice. Physician Edris Rice-Wray headed the trials.
Q 26Which pope's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae restated Catholic opposition to artificial contraception?
Paul VI
Paul VI set aside the conclusions of a birth control commission that his predecessor had created and he himself had expanded. Humanae Vitae was the last of his seven encyclicals.
Q 27Which postal inspector and anti-vice crusader gave his name to an 1873 US law against mailing contraceptives?
Anthony Comstock
Anthony Comstock's censorship drive gave English the word 'comstockery'. The law he pushed through Congress treated birth control sent by mail as obscene material.
Q 28Feminists aboard the 1971 'Contraceptive Train' carried banned condoms past customs in which country?
Ireland
Ireland had outlawed contraception since 1935, so the women shopped in Belfast. Unable to get the pill there without a prescription, some swallowed aspirin at customs instead, pretending it was the pill.
Q 29Which arts and crafts chain won a 2014 Supreme Court case over covering contraceptives in staff health plans?
Hobby Lobby
Hobby Lobby's owners, the evangelical Green family, objected on religious grounds to four contraceptive methods. The court ruled 5–4 that privately held companies could be exempt from covering them.
Q 30Which brand became the first daily oral contraceptive the FDA approved for sale without a prescription?
Opill
Opill's ingredient, norgestrel, was first cleared for prescription use back in 1973. Half a century passed before the FDA's 2023 decision put the same pill on the open shelf.