Reproductive Issues Study Guide

Reproductive Issues Study Guide

By Lauren Orsini and Larisa Mount

Prehistory:

·  Birth control is very old. Prehistoric women realized that when animals grazed on certain plants, they failed to reproduce. Used these plants for planned miscarriages.

·  Ancient Greeks used an herb called fennel.

·  390 AD – The bishop of Constantinople deems contraception immoral.

·  1869 – Pope Pius IX outlawed abortion among Catholics.

Reproduction Timeline:

·  Background: 25-50% of people used condoms around the 1920s-2030s. Introduced by WWI soldiers as a way to combat venereal disease. Other methods in the early 20th century: male withdrawals and illegal at home abortions.

·  Comstock Act – Passed in 1873. An amendment to the US Postal Code specifically. This included obscene materials and devices, such as pornography, contraceptives and contraceptive information.

·  Eugenics is coined – 1883. Defined as a method of racial improvement through controlled breeding. Some people determined not fit for breeding, and if they were allowed to, they would mess up the gene pool. In 1906, a committee on Eugenics was created, by the American Breeders Association.

·  1905 – Teddy Roosevelt claims that smaller families are the sign of a moral disease. He claimed women who used birth control as committing suicide to the race.

·  Indiana’s Compulsory Sterilization Law – 1907. This law forced the mentally ill, mentally retarded, physically deformed, deaf, blind, epileptic people, Native Americans, and African American women to receive sterilization WITHOUT their knowledge, while they were in the hospital for another reason, in example, childbirth.

·  Margaret Sanger – 1912. She worked at Lillian Wald’s Visiting Nurses’ Association on the Lower East Side. Seeing women die from illegal abortions inspired her to fight to legalize contraception.

In 1912, Sanger, wide and mother of 3, practiced nursing in New York City. One day she accompanied a physician to an emergency at the house of Jake Sachs, a 28 year-old truck driver and husband of Sadie Sachs. Sadie was very ill, the product of a self-induced abortion. Sanger nursed Sadie for several weeks until she recovered, but as Sanger prepared to make her leave, Sadie said that another pregnancy would end her life. Sanger asked the physician if there was anything that could be done, but he responded negatively. Three months later, the Sachs household had another emergency, and Sanger promptly arrived, already knowing what she would find. It was too late to save Sadie Sachs.

After this incident, she stopped being a nurse, and started being an activist.

In 1914, she coined the term “Birth Control.”

·  Early 20th Century: Rise of the Rhythm Method

·  1914: Margaret Sanger publicizes birth control in nine issues of The Woman Rebel (magazine) and a pamphlet called Family Limitation. Is arrested on charges of obscenity and incitement to murder and riot. Escapes to Europe. Once in Europe, receives birth control training in Holland. Then, returns to US to face trial.

·  1916: Charges against Sanger are dropped. She and Ethel Byrne and Fannie Mindel open the first birth control clinic in America. It stays open for only ten days. 488 women are fitted with pessaries (diaphragms). All three women are arrested. The next year they are each given a 30 day prison sentence.

·  1916: Mary Dennett forms the National Birth Control League. It disbanded in 1919 and was reformed into the Voluntary Parenthood League. (later to become Planned Parenthood.)

·  1919: League of Women Voters refuses to put birth control on the agenda.

·  1921: First American Birth Control Conference in New York.

·  1921: Alice Paul prevents issue of birth control from being introduced at the National Women’s Party Convention

·  1922: American Birth Control League applied for a license to operate a birth control clinic, was denied. W.E.B. Dubois gives his public endorsement to birth control.

·  1923: Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau opens in NYC and operates without a license.

·  1924: ABCL attempts to introduce a bill that would exempt physicians from the Comstock Act of 1873 so they could prescribe birth control. DENIED.

·  1929: Clinical Research Bureau is raided by NYC police. All charges are dropped.

·  1937: AMA Committee on Contraception tentatively endorses contraception

·  1960: ORAL CONTRACEPTIVES (publically) AVAILABLE!

o  This is pretty overdue. In 1937, scientists figured out that the hormone progesterone would prevent ovulation in female rabbits.

o  Then in 1949, scientists created synthetic progesterone.

o  Then in the 50s, they tested the pill, successfully. Finally, after all this time, the pill was available on the market.

o  This wasn’t the end of science. They have revamped the pill so its safer and emits fewer hormones. It also has been tested to show it has plenty of other benefits. These days, women take the pill for all sorts of reasons besides birth control- to control weight gain or acne, to stop painful cramps, or to decrease risks of breast cancer and ovarian cysts.

·  1974: Forced sterilization (eugenics) outlawed. Enforcement was unsuccessful

Court Cases Timeline:

·  1927: Buck vs. Bell condones compulsory sterilization. 18 year old Carrie Buck was forced to be sterilized because she was mentally retarded and was said to be “immoral” and “have a history of prostitution” because she had an illegitimate child (she was actually raped by her cousin.) Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writes the ruling for the decision. “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

·  1930: Young’s Rubber Co. vs. C.I. Lee and Co. First court reinterpretation of the Comstock Act. You can send obscene material if the intent is not contraceptive.

·  1933: Davis vs. United States: to be convicted under Comstock Act, you have to have evidence of intent to distribute contraceptives for immoral purposes. Since there was no such proof with Davis, they was charged not guilty.

·  1936: US vs. One Package of Japanese Pessories – Sanger bought a diaphragm. You can prescribe a contraception for the purpose of saving a life or promoting well being. She was allowed to keep the diaphragms, but only for those purposes.

·  1965: Griswold v. Connecticut: made birth control legal for married couples

·  1973: Roe v. Wade: woman has a right to choose if she wants an abortion. The decision was based on the right to privacy, that a women didn’t have to have other people tampering with her body. Opponents today make the case about fetal rights.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization

http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/13_2%20Birth%20Control%20in%20Antiquity.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2003073

McCann, Carole R. Birth Control Politics In The United States, 1916-1945. 1994; Cornell University Press. Ithaca.