History of the Birth Control Movement

The birth control movement began during the women's rights movement in the United States during the 1910s. Leaders of the movement advocated women's rights to control reproduction and lobbied for public education and distribution of contraception, despite stringent anti-obscenity laws. It took more than 50 years until women could obtain contraception legally.

Post-Suffrage Movement

After the suffrage movement resulted in women gaining the right to vote in 1920, the women's rights movement began focusing on obtaining additional equal rights for women. According to the National Women's History Project, the birth control movement began as a way for women to gain freedom over their bodies, sexuality and lifestyle choices. The movement not only focused on public education about birth control methods, it also intended to prove that modern women could choose to live fulfilled lives without becoming mothers.

Comstock Law

According to the National Women's History Museum, the birth control movement was held up by an anti-obscenity law, the Comstock Law. Drafted by politician Anthony Comstock in 1873 as a way to curtail premarital sex and lewdness, the law legally banned contraception and deemed informational pamphlets on birth control as the distribution of obscene materials. During the 1910s, advocates of the birth control movement wrote articles and gave out information on contraception and were continually tried and convicted under the Comstock Law.

Founder

According to the National Women's History Museum, New York nurse Margaret Sanger is considered the leader of the birth control movement. Sanger published articles and pamphlets on birth control in the 1910s and opened a birth control clinic in 1916. It was open only nine days before Sanger was jailed for 30 days for distributing contraception. She founded the American Birth Control League in 1922, and the organization opened the first legal birth control clinic in 1923. It was allowed to distribute condoms and diaphragms only to married couples.

Eugenics

According to PBS's series "The American Experience," the birth control movement joined with the eugenics movement in the 1920s and 30s to gain support for the cause. The eugenics movement in America focused on selective breeding to maintain a perfect society and wanted to limit "unfit" classes, such as minorities and the handicapped, from procreating. Margaret Sanger publicly endorsed the use of birth control for eugenics, though she may have done so only to gain public acceptance of the birth control movement.

Supreme Court

Though the birth control movement began in the 1910s, the Supreme Court didn't make the distribution of contraception information legal until 1936, reports the National Women's History Project. In the United States v. One Package to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, doctors were given the right to inform patients about contraception. Although the first birth control pill was developed in 1960, it wasn't until the 1965 case, Griswold v. Connecticut, that the Supreme Court ruled that the right to use contraception was a constitutional freedom.