Meg Crane

Historically women were not the first to know if they were pregnant. Science moved faster than culture – in the late 1920s, pregnancy testing meant injecting a woman’s urine into a rabbit, mouse or frog, a slow and expensive process; by 1960, antibody-based lab tests were faster using just the animal’s blood, and in 1972 researchers reported a more sensitive assay for the hCG hormone, allowing earlier detection.

But every test still ran through a doctor, and results of the test would take weeks to reach a woman.

The social and business climate was just as restrictive. In the 1960s when Meg was working on her prototype many women had no regular family doctor. Unmarried women often got a lecture when visiting the doctor to ask for a pregnancy test, and were not given one without their husband present. And, typically the doctor called her husband with the news. Abortion was still illegal, and in the United States pharmacists were barred from handling bodily fluids, so a drugstore was not an option to facilitate home testing. Meanwhile home health gadgets, such as blood pressure monitors, were just beginning to appear, so the idea of self-testing was in the air.

The industry and Organon saw home pregnancy testing as a threat. Executives worried that women who could test themselves would stop booking doctor visits and lab tests, and labs would lose their doctor business. They also cited religious, ethical and moral repercussions. Because the US would not allow it, Canada became the test market.

In the end Organon never manufactured the first home pregnancy test, Predictor, they sold the right to manufacture to others.

The first versions were slow, fiddly and pricey, and sales were modest at first. The idea outlasted every one of those problems. Today a woman can learn the answer in minutes, privately, from a pharmacy shelf.

For decades, Meg’s part in the story went largely unrecorded. That began to change in the 2010s. After a 2012 New York Times column Who Made That? did not name Meg as the inventor of the home pregnancy test, her friends and family encouraged her to speak out. In 2015 she took her original prototype to auction at Bonhams, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History acquired it, along with an early packaged version of the product. In 2016 the New York Times finally responded to Meg’s request to correct history and published a full page article about her invention, Predictor. And this is when she became recognized and adored.

Many articles, interviews, podcasts and posts have been published and her story has reached the stage and healthcare world. Playwright Jennifer Blackmer wrote Predictor in 2019 which has now been produced at theatres across the country. It made its New York premiere at the AMT Theater in December 2025, with Tony nominee Caitlin Kinnunen as Meg, and audiences have taken part in discussions afterwards. In 2021 the book and exhibit Designing Motherhood featured Meg and Predictor in a collection of designed objects that shape our reproductive experiences – you can see the test on display when visiting the exhibition. In 2026, two short documentaries were released: the healthcare community HLTH featured Meg in its The Shift series and filmmaker Asha Daya produced A Tiny Revolution, currently debuting at US film festivals.

Journalists and historians keep returning to what Meg’s design changed.

Meg still lives in Manhattan. She and Ira Sturtevant lived and worked together in their own design company Ponzi & Weill for 41 years until his death in 2008. Meg takes on selected design projects and makes illustrations and cartoons, and has written and illustrated a humor book, Insanity Claus. She talks about her invention as a matter of timing and information: women need to know their status as early as possible, and they should be the first to know.