ALL ABOUT SEX: BIRTH CONTROL
It wasn’t until 1965 that married women and men won the right to use birth control everywhere in the United States. It was another six years before unmarried couples won that right. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, America’s family planning movement has been in the forefront of the battle for women’s sexual equality. During this time, women firmly established their right to make and carry out their own decisions about when or whether to bear children. This liberty is so fundamental; it is hard to believe that only a short time ago those who fought for reproductive freedom went to jail.
By gaining the right to control their fertility, women also vastly improved their own health conditions and those of their children. Death rates for mothers and infants have plummeted since birth control was legalized. The quality of family life has also improved. When women can limit their family size, they can give more attention, love, patience, and guidance to the children they have. They are happier, and their children are healthier.
The desire for family planning began with the dawn of human history, when women attempted to prevent pregnancy with amulets and incantations. Before the discovery and distribution of modern contraceptives, women and men tried all sorts of remedies to prevent unintended pregnancy.
In colonial America, sexuality was about reproduction. Women and men were expected to enjoy sex, but the primary function of sex was to produce children. Women were expected to marry and bear children. That was their exclusive role for many generations.
Men learned “self-control” as a birth control method. They were to go without, or reserve, ejaculation in order to decrease the chance of pregnancy. This method was called by its Latin name, coitus reservatus. Self-control could also mean abstaining from sexual intercourse entirely. These methods were suggested in health books and pamphlets for married couples in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. It is hard to say how many couples actually used them.
Women also used herbal treatments before and after intercourse to prevent pregnancy. They also placed pessaries made of various ingredients in their vaginas to keep sperm from moving into the uterus.
Recipes for the methods that seemed to be effective were handed down, generation to generation.
Between the 1830s and the 1870s, information about contraceptive methods was widely circulated in the United States. The most commonly used method was probably coitus interruptus, which required a man to withdraw his penis from the vagina to ejaculate outside the woman’s body. This method is now called withdrawal. “Female syringes” were available for women. They were used to douche the vagina with chemicals such as alum or sulfates of zinc or iron.
Cervical caps and condoms made of animal membranes were also available, but they were expensive. The first diaphragm, “the Wife’s Protector,” was patented in 1846. It was made of wood, sponge, and cotton.
Diaphragms and condoms could be made more cheaply after the invention of the vulcanization of rubber in 1844. By 1870, the prices of contraceptives had dropped, and most people could afford them. Contraceptives had become so popular that various groups of people, including many doctors, began to protest their use.
Many feared that the use of contraception would make women promiscuous and “lower” them to the status of prostitutes. Many also feared that birth control would lower the rate of population growth among white people and lead to social domination by people of color.
In 1873, anti-family planning crusaders won a major victory when the U.S. Congress passed the first Comstock Act, named after Anthony Comstock, the man who wrote it. This law prohibited the distribution of contraceptive information or devices through the U.S. mail.
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