A History of the Birth Control Movement in America
A History of the Birth Control Movement in America

Author: Peter C. Engelman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-04-19

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0313365105

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This narrative history of one of the most far-reaching social movements in the 20th century shows how it defied the law and made the use of contraception an acceptable social practice—and a necessary component of modern healthcare. A History of the Birth Control Movement in America tells the extraordinary story of a group of reformers dedicated to making contraception legal, accessible, and acceptable. The engrossing tale details how Margaret Sanger's campaign beginning in 1914 to challenge anti-obscenity laws criminalizing the distribution of contraceptive information grew into one of the most far-reaching social reform movements in American history. The book opens with a discussion of the history of birth control methods and the criminalization of contraception and abortion in the 19th century. Its core, however, is an exciting narrative of the campaign in the 20th century, vividly recalling the arrests and indictments, banned publications, imprisonments, confiscations, clinic raids, mass meetings, and courtroom dramas that publicized the cause across the nation. Attention is paid to the movement's thorny alliances with medicine and eugenics and especially to its success in precipitating a profound shift in sexual attitudes that turned the use of contraception into an acceptable social and medical practice. Finally, the birth control movement is linked to court-won privacy protections and the present-day movement for reproductive rights.

Woman of Valor
Woman of Valor

Author: Ellen Chesler

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2007-10-16

Total Pages: 710

ISBN-13: 141655369X

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This illuminating biography of Margaret Sanger—the woman who fought for birth control in America—describes her childhood, her private life, her relationships with Emma Goldman and John Reed, her public role, and more. Margaret Sanger went to jail in 1917 for distributing contraceptives to immigrant women in a makeshift clinic in Brooklyn. She died a half-century later, just after the Supreme Court guaranteed constitutional protection for the use of contraceptives. Now, Ellen Chesler provides an authoritative and widely acclaimed biography of this great emancipator, whose lifelong struggle helped women gain control over their own bodies. An idealist who mastered practical politics, Sanger seized on contraception as the key to redistributing power to women in the bedroom, the home, and the community. For fifty years, she battled formidable opponents ranging from the US Government to the Catholic Church. Her crusade was both passionate and paradoxical. She was an advocate of female solidarity who often preferred the company of men; an adoring mother who abandoned her children; a socialist who became a registered Republican; a sexual adventurer who remained an incurable romantic. Her comrades-in-arms included Emma Goldman and John Reed; her lovers, Havelock Ellis and H.G. Wells. Drawing on new information from archives and interviews, Chesler illuminates Sanger’s turbulent personal story as well as the history of the birth control movement. An intimate biography of a visionary rebel, Woman of Valor is also an epic story that extends from the radical movements of pre-World War I to the family planning initiatives of the Great Society. At a time when women’s reproductive and sexual autonomy is once again under attack, this landmark biography is indispensable reading for the generations in debt to Sanger for the freedoms they take for granted.

The Birth Control Movement and American Society
The Birth Control Movement and American Society

Author: James Reed

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2014-07-14

Total Pages: 483

ISBN-13: 1400856590

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This is the first comprehensive history of the struggle to win public acceptance of contraceptive practice. James Reed traces this remarkable story from its beginnings, carefully documenting the roles of the diverse interests that supported birth control, including feminists, eugenicists, and physicians, and providing a unique account of the struggles of such pioneers as Margaret Sanger, Robert Dickinson, and Clarence Gamble to win the support of organized medicine, to change laws, to open birth control clinics, and to improve birth control methods. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

A History of the Birth Control Movement in America
A History of the Birth Control Movement in America

Author: Peter C. Engelman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-04-19

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13:

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This narrative history of one of the most far-reaching social movements in the 20th century shows how it defied the law and made the use of contraception an acceptable social practice—and a necessary component of modern healthcare. A History of the Birth Control Movement in America tells the extraordinary story of a group of reformers dedicated to making contraception legal, accessible, and acceptable. The engrossing tale details how Margaret Sanger's campaign beginning in 1914 to challenge anti-obscenity laws criminalizing the distribution of contraceptive information grew into one of the most far-reaching social reform movements in American history. The book opens with a discussion of the history of birth control methods and the criminalization of contraception and abortion in the 19th century. Its core, however, is an exciting narrative of the campaign in the 20th century, vividly recalling the arrests and indictments, banned publications, imprisonments, confiscations, clinic raids, mass meetings, and courtroom dramas that publicized the cause across the nation. Attention is paid to the movement's thorny alliances with medicine and eugenics and especially to its success in precipitating a profound shift in sexual attitudes that turned the use of contraception into an acceptable social and medical practice. Finally, the birth control movement is linked to court-won privacy protections and the present-day movement for reproductive rights.

Broadcasting Birth Control
Broadcasting Birth Control

Author: Manon Parry

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2013-08-23

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0813561531

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Traditionally, the history of the birth control movement has been told through the accounts of the leaders, organizations, and legislation that shaped the campaign. Recently, historians have begun examining the cultural work of printed media, including newspapers, magazines, and even novels in fostering support for the cause. Broadcasting Birth Control builds on this new scholarship to explore the films and radio and television broadcasts developed by twentieth-century birth control advocates to promote family planning at home in the United States, and in the expanding international arena of population control. Mass media, Manon Parry contends, was critical to the birth control movement’s attempts to build support and later to publicize the idea of fertility control and the availability of contraceptive services in the United States and around the world. Though these public efforts in advertising and education were undertaken initially by leading advocates, including Margaret Sanger, increasingly a growing class of public communications experts took on the role, mimicking the efforts of commercial advertisers to promote health and contraception in short plays, cartoons, films, and soap operas. In this way, they made a private subject—fertility control—appropriate for public discussion. Parry examines these trends to shed light on the contested nature of the motivations of birth control advocates. Acknowledging that supporters of contraception were not always motivated by the best interests of individual women, Parry concludes that family planning advocates were nonetheless convinced of women’s desire for contraception and highly aware of the ethical issues involved in the use of the media to inform and persuade.

Any Friend of the Movement
Any Friend of the Movement

Author: Jimmy Elaine Wilkinson Meyer

Publisher: Ohio State University Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0814209548

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"In the 1920s, a few Cleveland women perceived a need for reliable birth control. They believed that health and social service professionals denied women, especially poor and working-class women, critical health care information. Any Friend of the Movement tells the story of these women, their actions, and the organization they created - the direct forerunner of a modern Planned Parenthood affiliate. The disparate threads of this particular tale include the suicide of a pregnant woman, the gift of a bereaved inventor, smuggling contraceptive supplies across state lines, and sponsoring ice skating galas to fund the work." "Any Friend of the Movement breaks new ground in the history of birth control activism in North America. Meyer argues that private philanthropy and voluntary action on the part of clinics like the Maternal Health Association (MHA) and their clients vitalized the larger movement at its roots and pushed it forward."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

International Intercourse
International Intercourse

Author: Julie L. Thomas

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 542

ISBN-13:

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American birth control advocate Margaret Sanger (1884-1966) was instrumental in the development of an international birth control movement. This occurred, not after World War II as is commonly thought, but in the interwar era. Building upon existing medical exchanges of information and materials in the global arena, she established a social movement for birth control. While Sanger was not the only interwar era figure involved in the endeavor, she was among the most active in pursuing an international agenda. A number of discursive themes emerge in the study of Sanger's interwar activities for the global provision of contraception: it would provide economic benefit to (individual) families and (collective) nations; family limitation would help avert the next war; and gendered ideas about contraceptive methods and its role in improving women's status. These themes are explored through an interrogation of Sanger's interactions with cohorts (travel and correspondence) in seven key nations in Europe, Asia and Southeast Asia, her role as founder and editor of the Birth Control Review, and lastly, as the organizer of three international birth control conferences (1925, 1927, 1930). The preoccupations established in these venues laid the foundation for the post-World War II international family planning movement. This dissertation project also challenges a prevailing assumption about the provision of birth control in the Soviet Union in the interwar ear - that abortion was the only method available. An analysis of Soviet medical literature of the period reveals the existence of clinical and laboratory research on a range of contraceptive methods, and research on experimental methods. Curiously, medical advocates for birth control, and not Sanger, were the most active in efforts to exchange information with Soviet researchers. The explanation for this apparent anomaly underscores Sanger's goals and objectives as a social advocate for birth control in the global arena.

The Pivot of Civilization
The Pivot of Civilization

Author: Margaret Sanger

Publisher: DigiCat

Published: 2022-09-15

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13:

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The Pivot of Civilization is one of Margaret Sanger's several insightful books in the 1920s which had a nationwide impact in promoting the cause of birth control. Contents: "A New Truth Emerges CHAPTER II: Conscripted Motherhood CHAPTER III: "Children Troop Down From Heaven...." CHAPTER IV: The Fertility of the Feeble-Minded CHAPTER V: The Cruelty of Charity CHAPTER VI: Neglected Factors of the World Problem CHAPTER VII: Is Revolution the Remedy? CHAPTER VIII: Dangers of Cradle Competition CHAPTER IX: A Moral Necessity."

The World Health Organization
The World Health Organization

Author: Marcos Cueto

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-04-11

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 1108483577

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A history of the World Health Organization, covering major achievements in its seventy years while also highlighting the organization's internal tensions. This account by three leading historians of medicine examines how well the organization has pursued its aim of everyone, everywhere attaining the highest possible level of health.