Early pregnancy tests involved injecting rabbits with the expectant mothers’ urine, KILLING it!

Nowadays pregnancy tests are very simple, and can be bought in any convenience store. Women can find out in a matter of minutes. Few ever remember how complicated the earliest pregnancy test are. The original process involved the death of some poor, unfortunate rabbits. 

In the original pregnancy tests, rabbits were injected with the urine of the woman who expected that she might be pregnant. If the women was pregnant, the urine would contain hCG. The hCG would cause a female rabbits’ ovaries to change. 

The medical worker would then kill the rabbit, and dissect it to see if there was any change to the rabbit’s ovaries. A change would signal that the woman was, in fact, pregnant.

Out of these tests came the misperception that a dead rabbit meant that you were pregnant. It even became common to say the rabbit died to say that someone was pregnant.

 What people didn’t realize was that the rabbit would die either way. Modern home tests still use urine tests to see if there is hCG, but doctors now use blood tests because they are more accurate. And, best of all, no more dead rabbits. 

(Source)