The History of Birth Control

The Comstock law was enacted in 1873 by Anthony Comstock. This law censored the mailing of any materials seen as lewd, indecent, filthy, or obscene. This not only included many authors works that we hold dearly today (Chaucer, Boccaccio, Oscar Wilde, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and James Joyce) but also anything that related to birth control or abortion. Many women raised up against oppression and social standards to try to put an end to the Comstock Laws that they saw unfair and unfit during the industrial revolution.

Many social events led to the Comstock Laws that allowed Anthony Comstock to persuade the legislation easily (in under an hour) into his belief that a perfect society contained censorship. One of the main events would be that abortion was banned by legislation in 1860 unless it was necessary to save the life of a woman and shortly after in 1869 Pope Pius IX declared that all abortion was murder. However, in 1870 New York Times estimated that there was an estimated number of 200 full-time abortionists working in America at the time-and they would continue to give abortions even if the law stated otherwise.
The religious, social moralists now had a soap box to ban sex for pleasure and spout off their idea that sex should only be used for childbearing causes. This caused passionate and conservative feminists to speak out against Roosevelt and his anti-birth control beliefs. In return, people began associating mobs of angry feminist women against a females primary social duty--motherhood. In a gender behavior controlled society Birth Control was soon to spark a revolution and a division in America.

Legislation passed the Comstock law rather quickly. Congress was rather conservative and all-male; they did not sympathize with the womans suffragette and/or feminist movement. The law simply stated that anyone who shall sellor shall offer to sell, or to lend, or to give away, or in any manner to exhibit anything vulgar or that had an obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, picture, drawing, image, or any drug or medicine ..for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion would be found guilty of a misdemeanor and will be imprisoned in a penitentiary for any amount of time between six months and five years for each offense and/or fined between one hundred and two thousand dollars with the costs of the court. Comstock would later brag to say that he had burned more than 160 tons of literature and brought 3, 750 criminals to justice (though only 10% were ever punished) during his time as U.S. Post Office Inspector.

Margaret Sanger was perhaps Comstocks loudest and most dangerous opponent. Sanger was the eleventh child born in Corning, New York to an Irish-American family. She would later believe that her mothers death was related to giving birth to a surplus amount of children and she grew restless of the ever-going inequality between the sexes. She became a nurse and worked with the Industrial Workers of the World where she became engrossed in feminist rights and started following the ideals of fellow feminist, Emma Goldman. She did not agree with the Comstock laws and often openly violated them.
In 1914 Sanger published issues of her magazine Woman Rebel that encouraged birth control techniques she had learned in France. This was a working womans paper, said Sanger, the first of its kind ever in Americaand claimed that no one of the working womans greatest enslavements was her ignorance of the means to control the size of her family. Sanger knew that politicians now supported large numbered families to fill their factories and farms with children and women because their pay was cheaper.

The Family Limitation which had explicit instructions for contraceptives and coined the term birth control would result in three indictments. Later, she wrote Comstockery in America where she faced the issue of womans censorship and oppression in a free society where she aimed hatred at Anthony Comstock himself. Comstockery must die! Sanger wrote with great enthusiasm-paralleling the word Comstockery with censorship. Sanger later had a warrant for her arrest and she had to flee to England, despite her rather large fan base that spanned the social classes. She returned in 1915 to see the Birth Control movement at its largest and to attend her trial.

The Crane decision was made in January of 1918 by Judge Frederick Crane in People vs. Sanger. It was the first ruling to allow birth control for therapeutic reasons but only to married couples to protect their health. Crane applied a more liberal view to the Comstock law and by 1920 there were twenty-five different birth control leagues educating the people of America on protection and reproductive rights. Sanger was also now freely and legally allowed to provide women with birth control clinics staffed by educated doctors.

Sanger attacked the Comstock law once more in February of 1931 where she testified in front of the National Committee for Federal Legislation. According to Sanger, one and a half million women died each year during childbirth, seven hundred thousand illegal and potentially dangerous abortions were performed each year and fifteen million children died because of poverty or because of their mothers poor health. Nobody took her seriously which eventually lead to desperate measures. Sanger sent a vaginal suppository to Dr. Hannah Stone which was seized under Comstock and Dr. Stone pressed charges.
This leads to the court trial United States vs. One Package, also known as the Doctors Bill, which prevent(s) the importation, sale, or carriage by mail of things which might intelligently be employed by conscientious and competent physicians for the purpose of saving life or promoting the well being of their patients. In 1937 the American Medical Association reported that doctors should receive the newest information about legal birth control and new techniques should be studied.

The near extinguishment of the Comstock Laws provided very helpful for the rest of the reproductive right campaigns. In 1960 the FDA approved the Birth Control Pill. Soon after in 1965 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the birth control limitations as unconstitutional during the Griswold vs. Connecticut. Eighty-six years later and now birth control could finally be used legally in Connecticut causing contraceptive services to become increasingly available to minors as well as adults. Eight years later, Roe vs. Wade, one of the most politically significant Supreme Court Cases in history, makes it legal for women to have abortions until the end of the first trimester.