After World War II, the birth control movement had achieved the goal of legalizing birth control, and advocacy for reproductive rights focused on abortion, public funding, and insurance coverage. [28] It took single women a little longer to gain widespread access to the pill and other forms of contraception: Linda Gordon, 80, a historian at New York University, recalls the stigma surrounding single women and contraception at the time. People have long tried many methods to prevent pregnancy. However, these efforts have often been hampered by governments, religious institutions, health professionals and others who have attempted to control reproduction by blocking access to contraceptives and/or forcibly imposing them on certain populations. Before reliable modern methods of birth control, people relied on periodic withdrawal or abstinence. These methods have often failed. Comstock and his allies also targeted the libertarians and utopians who formed the free love movement—an initiative to promote sexual freedom, women`s equality, and the abolition of marriage. [24] The proponents of free love were the only group that actively opposed the Comstock laws in the 19th century and set the stage for the birth control movement. [25] 1960 The first oral contraceptive, Enovid, a mixture of the hormones progesterone and estrogen, is approved by the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It quickly became known simply as “the pill”. In the early 1950s, Gregory Pincus, a biochemist at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, and John Rock, a gynecologist at Harvard Medical School, began work on a birth control pill. Clinical trials of the pill, which used synthetic progesterone and estrogen to suppress ovulation in women, began in 1954. On May 9, 1960, the FDA approved the pill and granted American women greater reproductive freedom. The efforts of the free love movement were unsuccessful, and in the early 20th century, federal and state governments began enforcing Comstock laws more strictly. [25] In response, contraception went underground, but it was not extinguished. The number of publications on the subject decreased, and advertisements, where appropriate, used euphemisms such as “marital helpers” or “hygiene articles”. Pharmacies continued to sell condoms as “rubber items” and cervical caps as “uterine carriers.” [26] Many different states have different birth control regulations. Some states do not allow insurance to cover birth control. Most contraceptives are covered by insurance to ensure that women take birth control when needed.
Fifty years ago, on June 7, 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision on contraception that would have a profound impact on women`s lives. The birth control pill had hit the market in 1960, but in much of the United States it was illegal to promote contraception. The Connecticut law even completely criminalized the use of contraceptives. When Estelle Griswold, then executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, and Dr. C. Lee Buxton, then chairman of the Department of Obstetrics at Yale University School of Medicine, opened a birth control clinic, they were sued — and both appealed, all the way to the Supreme Court. With the availability of drugs for many conditions in the 20th century, people began craving a pill that would effectively prevent unplanned pregnancies. 1965 The U.S. Agency for International Development`s Population and Reproductive Health program begins with the goal of reducing birth rates in developing countries. In 1965, the U.S.
Supreme Court won a major victory for birth control advocates in Griswold v. Connecticut. The court declared unconstitutional a Connecticut law banning the use of contraceptives by a couple because it violates the right to privacy enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Justice Douglas analyzed Griswold against the 14th Amendment doctrine, recognized that the fundamental right to privacy was binding on states, and found state law unconstitutional after rigorous review. However, Griswolds Holding did not go beyond married couples and only dealt with the use, not the sale or manufacture of contraceptives. 1918 In People v. Sanger, the New York State Court of Appeals overturned Margaret Sanger`s criminal conviction and ruled that New York`s restrictions on the distribution of birth control were unconstitutional because they violated women`s freedoms by forcing them to have more children than they wanted. Birth control practices were generally adopted earlier in Europe than in the United States.
Knowlton`s book was reprinted in England in 1877 by Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant,[12] in an effort to challenge British obscenity laws. [13] They were arrested (and later acquitted), but the public at their trial helped create the Malthusian League in 1877 – the world`s first birth control advocacy group – which sought to limit population growth to avoid Thomas Malthus` gloomy predictions of exponential population growth that would lead to global poverty and famine. [14] The first birth control clinic in the United States was opened in 1917 by Margaret Sanger, which was against the law at the time. [15] By 1930, similar societies had been established in almost all European countries, and birth control began to be accepted in most Western European countries, with the exception of Catholic Ireland, Spain, and France. [16] As birth control societies spread across Europe, so did birth control clinics.