Fun Facts

I was reading "Devices and Desires"by Andrea Tone yesterday (for my internship, not just for fun) which is about birth control (what else?) and decided that I wanted to share some of my favorite parts with ya'll. (Btw, this book is great. I highly recommend it. It is easy to read, filled with crazy information and entertaining)

Congress passed the Comstock Laws in 1873. These laws prohibited the sale of contraceptive material through the mail or across state lines by using the power of the federal government to regulate interstate commerce as justification. Throughout the 1800's contraceptive material had been widely available at druggists and even street corner shops. However, the methods were slightly less the reliable, since scientists still knew very little about how women got pregnant. (Condoms were frequently made out of animal intestine until the vulcanization of rubber made it possible to produce rubber condoms cheaply.) Until the 1920's, many doctors thought that the "safe period" was during the middle of the month b/c animals ovulate during menses, so they thought women did as well. Whoa were they wrong! In the late 19th century, people including suffragists, free love advocates, and progressives began to criticize the availability of contraceptives because they were "socially disruptive, morally offensive, and physically dangerous." By disassociating sex from procreation, they encouraged lewdness and lust especially in men.

Margaret Sanger (as ya'll know) spent her life trying to spread contraception to the masses (sometimes using eugenicist arguments to make her point). She said "no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body." However, most people (men) disagreed. When Sanger was arrested in 1918 for violating NY state law (it was illegal to give away or sell bc info), the judge ruled against her. He "rejected the idea that a woman has the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception." (ummmm...I object.)

Unfortunately, there is also a dirty side to birth control. Most advocates justified the need for birth control at least partially by saying that it was needed to "better" the human race. (aka getting rid of anyone who deviated from standard, healthy, white male especially anyone with mental issues or "sexual perversions") The Supreme Court ruled in Buck vs. Bell (1924) that coercive sterilization was a valid exercise of the state's right to protect public health. This applied many to people in mental institutions. (At this time, masturbation was considered a sexual perversion that could earn you a stint in a mental institution and thus, sterilization). This ruling also justified the sterilization of thousands of Native American women in the 1970's. (In some tribes, half of the women were forcibly sterilized) By 1932, 26 states had laws permitting forced sterilization. As if this doesn't suck enough, the lawyers at the Nuremberg Trials defending the Nazis used these sterilization laws as justification for Nazi policy. However, after the Holocaust, eugenics lost a lot of support (once people saw exactly how far it could go). '

Since companies were not allowed to market contraceptive devices, "feminine hygiene" became a term used for anything they claimed had contraceptive properties. Lysol (yes, the disinfectant) was the most popular contraceptive (in the form of a douche) from 1940-1960. Although it was ineffective (some studies said it was less effective than withdrawal), the company was not liable for any claims b/c it was not marketed as a contraceptive. Also, it caused burns, and death in some causes.

In the 1950's, Margaret Sanger and her peeps began to support research to find a "magic pill" for birth control. (later, known as the Pill). However, the federal government refused to fund this research. In 1959, President Eisenhower said "I cannot imagine anything more emphatically a subject that is not a proper political or government activity or function or responsibility...The government will not, as long as I am here, have a positive political doctrine in its program that has to do with the problem of birth control." (Apparently, 1/2 of the of the voting, tax-paying population doesn't merit government research or regulation) Luckily, his successors felt otherwise and approved FDA funding of research into the Pill which was approved in 1960(and used by 1.2 million women within the first two years)

Since it was still illegal to market any contraceptive information (due to obscenity laws) the Pill was originally sold to cure menstrual problems. (However, the dose was about 100 times stronger than it is today, so it actually caused more problems than it helped, but no babies) This changed in 1965 when the Supreme Court ruled (Griswold v. CT) that the right to privacy clause protected MARRIED couples including privacy in the bedroom which gave women a right to have access to birth control. UNMARRIED women were not allowed to the Pill for reasons other than menstrual probs until 1972 when the Supreme Court again ruled that the privacy clause protects us as well. Wow, its been a long journey.

Angry yet? I am. But ever thankful that I have access to affordable and safe, birth control. I wish whole-heartedly that all women around the world had this access and this choice. Sorry for another history lesson! (They will probably stop, but I am a history major, so i can't guarantee anything)

Lots of Love,
Lady Lola