Family Planning/Abortion/Birth Control

AuthorJeffrey Wilson
Pages783-786

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Background

Family planning involves decisions made by women and men concerning their reproductive lives and whether, when, and under what circumstances they have children. Family planning most often involves the decisions of whether to engage in sexual activity that could lead to pregnancy, whether to use birth control, and whether to terminate a pregnancy. Individuals faced with these decisions often rely on moral or religious beliefs. Because moral and religious beliefs vary widely in the United States, family planning laws are frequently controversial.

History

During the nineteenth century in the United States, birth rates began to decline, in part due to an increase in scientific information about conception and contraception, or birth control. The average white woman in 1800 gave birth seven times; by 1900, that number dropped to an average of three-and-a-half. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, early stage abortions generally were legal. The use of birth control and abortion, however, declined as growing public opinion considered information about birth control methods to be obscene and abortion to be unsafe.

Birth Control

Birth control is any method used to protect a woman from getting pregnant. Beginning in the 1800s, laws in the United States prohibited birth control, when temperance and anti-vice groups advocated outlawing birth control devices and information about birth control devices. These groups considered birth control information to be obscene, a belief that was popular enough that in 1873, Congress passed the Comstock Act outlawing the dissemination of birth control devices or information through the mail. Most states followed suit by passing their own laws outlawing the advertising, sale, and distribution, of contraception.

The turn of the century brought increasing attention to issues involving women's rights. Margaret Sanger, a strong advocate of birth control, opened the country's first birth control clinic in New York City in 1916 and was prosecuted for violating New York's version of the Comstock Act. She served a 30-day sentence in a workhouse but later established the National Committee for Federal Legislation for Birth Control. Sanger proposed a federal bill that outlined the health and death risks to women who underwent illegal abortions or who completed unwanted pregnancies. The bill sought to reverse the

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federal position prohibiting birth control, but under pressure from religious groups such as the Catholic Church, Congress did not pass Sanger's bill.

Sanger then sought to challenge the Comstock Act by sending contraception through the mail to a doctor. Her actions were prosecuted, but she achieved her goal when a federal district court deemed that the Comstock Act did not prohibit the mailing of contraceptives when such an act could save a life or promote the health of a doctor's patients. Sanger continued to lead a growing national movement advocating more information and access to birth control, and in 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League.

In 1942, the American Birth Control League became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, still in existence today. Planned Parenthood advocates for a range of safe, legal, and accessible birth control options. In the 1950s, Sanger and Planned Parenthood supported the research efforts of Dr. Gregory Pincus that led to the development of the birth control pill. The birth control pill revolutionized family planning, and by the 1960s popular opinion was shifting in favor of making contraception...

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