Birth Control

Logan Rogers

January 23, 2015

US History

Progressivism

Birth Control and How It Affected the US during the Progressive Era

Birth control is a widely used device in modern day society whether it is used to protect one from getting STD’s or not having a child. People buy this on a regular basis and most don’t think about whether or not it is immoral to do so. During the Progressive Era, contraceptives were illegal. So if someone had sex and didn’t want a kid their pull out game better be strong or else they have themselves a baby. During this time of progressivism, there were many factors to determine if things of such nature were immoral or not and Margaret Sanger did exactly this herself.

Margaret Sanger

In 1914 Sanger left for Europe to study the movement of the legality of birth control. These travels were the result of her challenging the government for the legalization of birth control. Sanger went to England and studied the birth and death rates in Europe and found Holland to stand out to her. In January 1915 Sanger visited Dr. Rutgers and he suggested that she look into the mensinga pessary. This was not the only contraceptive used, while there she found over 15 devices used in contraception. Rutgers trained other nurses in hygienic methods of family limitation. They did this so they could open other clinics in places other than The Hague, the location for the government in Holland. Sanger mentioned in her paper that “I would wander about the city looking into shops where supplies were sold, which at that time carried window displays.” She spent hours studying in the Central Bureau of Statistics. She had gotten the data of Holland for things such as birth and death rates, infant mortality, true or false fertility, child labor, and wages. During her research there, she found that the contraceptives were benefiting the society in a positive way. While most people would use contraceptives, Holland tried to teach the family

Dr. Aletta Jacobs

limitation practice in places of poverty or disease. Sanger tried talking to Dr. Aletta Jacobs, the first woman doctor in Holland. Sanger sent a letter to interview Dr. Jacobs but she was denied because jacobs didn’t want part in her laymen studies and thought that it was only for doctors and “only professional men and women should take it up”.

Typical sized Irish family

        Sanger’s main goal was to find the one contraceptive to keep women from having to deal with the pain from constant and unwanted pregnancies. She started this movement because of the loss of her mother. Her mother died of TB at the age of 50 years old. Sanger was one of eleven children from an Irish catholic family. She was at her mother’s funeral in front of her coffin next to her dad when she yelled at her dad with “you caused this. Mother is dead from having too many children.” Sanger didn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps so she fled north to become a nurse and eventually found a job in NYC as a visiting nurse. That is
when she saw that her mother’s tragedy was completely real and most among the poor immigrants. Most women there who were having unwanted pregnancies would resort to “back alley five dollar abortions” (PBS). After she worked with that, she decided to change from nursing to a researcher to legalize contraceptives so she could stop all of the mental degradation and physical instability from these abortions for unwanted babies.

        The eugenics movement had a lot to do with people and their traits/genetics and whether or not their offspring would be smart or intelligent enough in the future. This was rather controllable until people immigrated to the US. They were immigrants in which we didn’t know their history or backgrounds as well as we knew our own. With this problem, we found out that the quality of the person went down because we had a language barrier, skill set barrier, and people also had a problem with the immigrants and their children looking different than them. An extensive study including Senator William P. Dillingham of Vermont determined that the new immigrants were not as well suited as the earlier immigrants were. They weren’t suited in the sense that they were not smart enough, strong enough, or didn’t meet the correct specifications for jobs. They figured the immigration was “contributing to the multiplication of the unfit” (586, Brinkley). Some people realized they needed to do something about it and so they created different types of contraceptives.

Different sized cervical caps

        The two main types of contraception besides the condom and before the pill was invented were the diaphragm and the cervical cap.  The diaphragm is a dome made of soft and thin rubber. This does a very good job at keeping the sperm out, however the female must use a spermicide with it aswell. A cervical cap is pretty much the same except that they have to be able to find their cervix without a problem because the caps fits like a soda can koozie rather than the looser fitting diaphragm. These methods of contraception were not highly used because they, to correctly protect the individual, needed to be sized and most people couldn’t afford doctors to do so since it was illegall . If a woman were to try and use one of these methods, they were more than likely to fail back then because they were unskilled when putting it in.  These methods were very useful as a contraceptive, but most people did not know how to use these devices correctly so it would fail them. This would lead to unwanted pregnancies and then abortions.  They realized that this wouldn’t work for them so they later created the, now highly protective and useful, condom. Despite their importance to society they were still illegal and appropriate actions had to be taken for such things even if it was just the spreading of the news for these new contraceptives.

Anthony Comstock

         The Comstock law was a law that made it illegal to send unsightly objects through the mail systems. This law includes the sending of information contraceptives also. Since the news about these news devices had to be shared, it had to be sent out to the people. People would read about the different types of contraceptives through literature in the mail. This was unlawful. According to The Christian Record,  a man was “arrested here yesterday on the charge of printing and circulating immoral literature through the mails.” The printing of this sort of news was not legal at the time because it considered immoral and wrong.

Early  illegal birth control clinic

      Margaret Sanger was the one to study and research about what is immoral and what isn’t during the progressive era and she was finding out what that really meant. During this time of creating contraceptives and the process of Sanger opening up birth control clinics, she had been put in jail for 30 days at one point and she also kept re-opening her clinics when she got out of jail and kept getting arrested. Now that contraceptives are not illegal birth control clinics are places that are now widely used and are essentially in every store. These contraceptives are so accessible and easily used that anyone could by them. But, is it morally correct to allow young teens to having sex? 

  

Sources:

Thompson, Kristen M.J. "A Brief History of Birth Control in the U.S. - Our Bodies Ourselves." Our Bodies Ourselves. Our Bodies Ourselves, 14 Dec. 2013. Web. 11 Feb. 2015.

http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/health-info/a-brief-history-of-birth-control/

I used this source by taking the information about what margaret sanger did and looking it up through google to find scholarly sources. I believe this is a credible source because i was able to check this information with other sources. Thompson was trained at the John Hopkins school of Public Health. She is now the project manager at the university of California, san francisco, Bixby center for Global reproductive health.

Sanger, Margaret, Mrs. "MY EXPERIENCES IN HOLLAND." The Public Papers of Margaret Sanger: Web Edition. NYU, Web. 09 Feb. 2015.

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=236589.xml

This is a credible source because they are first hand written works from Margaret Sanger’s public papers. Margaret Sanger was a researcher for birth control. She was trying to get birth control legalized and did extensive research on it also.

PBS. "The Pill." PBS. PBS, Web. 11 Feb. 2015.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/peopleevents/p_sanger.html

This is a strong and credible source because it comes from the Public Broadcasting Service and they are nationally renowned for being honest and truthful. This is helpful for my research because it talks about margarets sangers life before she started moving into the studies of birth control. I will be able to use this to my advantage because I can use her personal life to explain her first hand information from research in Holland.

Delvin, David, Dr. "Contraception – Diaphragms and Cervical Caps." Netdoctor. Netdoctor, n.d. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.

http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/sex_relationships/facts/diaphragms.htm

This is a strong and credible source because this a medical study about contraceptives. I will use this to explain why this was not a very effective mode of contraception in the period in which they were illegal. Dr. Delvin is a general Practitioner and family planning specialist. He knows how contraceptives are supposed to work correctly. I can use that data against other laws and acts in place at the time of margaret sanger to come to a conclusion of why things happened the way they did.

"Items of State News." The Christian Recorder [Philadelphia] 23 Aug. 1894: n. pag. Accessible Archives. Web. 21 Feb. 2015. http://www.accessible-archives.com/2011/03/federal-comstock-law-passed-1873/

This is a strong and credible source because this a medical study about contraceptives. I will use this to explain why this was not a very effective mode of contraception in the period in which they were illegal. Dr. Delvin is a general Practitioner and family planning specialist. He knows how contraceptives are supposed to work correctly. I can use that data against other laws and acts in place at the time of margaret sanger to come to a conclusion of why things happened the way they did.

Brinkley, Alan. "21 The Rise of Progressivism." American History: A Survey. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2007. N. pag. Print.

This source is a secondary source and very trustworthy because we use it for class everyday. It has very good information on immigration at the time of progressivism and eugenics and how that had a play in population.

"History of Contraception-Cervical Caps and Diaphragms." History of Contraception-Cervical Caps and Diaphragms. Case Western Reserve, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2015. http://www.case.edu/affil/skuyhistcontraception/online-2012/Cervical-Caps-Diaphragms.html 

I will use this source to learn about the history of contraceptives as a whole. This is a credible source because it is a university and made for students to use for research. This teaches me the history and how it has affected the  US as a whole.