The Birth Control Debate Over the Years

The debate, the controversy and the uproar over birth control and abortion in the United States is not a new occurrence. The public dispute stretches back to the mid-1800s.

Contraception is not a modern phenomenon. Contraceptive methods were practiced in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, and in other cultures and civilizations throughout history.

The modern birth control movement began in England in the mid-1800s. By the 1870s English and American pharmacies sold contraceptives. The availability of contraceptives in the U.S. stirred an anti-birth control movement, eventually leading to the passage of the Comstock Law.

Anthony Comstock was a staunch anti-birth control and anti-obscenity activist. He was a country boy, born and raised in rural Connecticut, but eventually settled in New York City. He was appalled by the depravity he witnessed everywhere in the city. He worked hard to close down the sex trade and eliminate prostitution, and was horrified by the birth control devices advertised at the time. He connected the issues, believing the availability of birth control led to the illicit sex trade and prostitution.

Comstock lobbied Washington for an anti-obscenity bill, including a ban on birth control. Congress obliged, passing what came to be known as the Comstock Law in 1873. The statute declared birth control obscene and illicit. It was now a federal crime to distribute contraceptives or abortion information by mail or across state lines.

The Comstock mandate applied to commerce across state lines. Several states closed the gap, making it illegal to distribute contraceptives within a state, by passing their own laws. The Connecticut legislature passed the most restrictive law. The statute pronounced the use of birth control a crime. Married couples were subject to a one-year prison sentence if convicted.

Birth control advocates such as Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger spoke out publicly for birth control and against the constricting laws of the day preventing the dissemination of birth control information and devices. The most common birth control device at the time was the diaphragm.

Goldman worked as a nurse and midwife on the lower East Side in New York City in the 1890s, a neighborhood overflowing with European immigrants. Realizing the need for contraceptives among the women, she began speaking out about the need for contraceptives and against the Comstock Law.

Margaret Sanger is considered the major crusader for women’s right to use contraceptives. She coined the term ‘birth control’ and publicly challenged the Comstock law. At one point she fled to Europe for a year to avoid prosecution.

Sanger was a nurse and witnessed first-hand the pregnancies and self-induced abortions women endured. Sanger’s mother had 18 pregnancies (11 live births) in 22 years and died at the age of 50 of tuberculosis and cervical cancer.

Sanger funded research to develop contraceptives and opened the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York, in 1916. Police closed down the clinic. Sanger was arrested for dispensing birth control and spent thirty days in a workhouse. She opened another clinic in New York City in 1923.

Evidence over the years indicated American women, with or without the sanction of the medical profession and various moral and religious organizations, sought birth control information. Fortune magazine in 1938 reported American women spent $210,000,000 yearly on contraceptive materials, the majority non-medically sanctioned. The upshot was that millions of women received false and misleading information, sometimes with tragic results.

Confrontation and court challenges to Comstock continued over the years. A court ruled in 1918 that contraception could be used to prevent diseases. A Supreme Court case in 1936 asserted the constitutionality of Comstock, but permitted doctors to distribute contraceptives across state lines. In 1965 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Connecticut's law unconstitutional. This was the last state anti-birth control law on the books. The U.S. Supreme Court declared the birth control sections of the Comstock law unconstitutional in 1983.

G. D. Searle and Company marketed the first birth control pill in the United States in 1960. Realizing the size of the market, over a dozen pharmaceutical companies around the world began testing and eventually selling birth control pills.

Comstock is still on the books. It is the leading law cited in pornography cases. The law was instrumental in the fight to ban books and artwork. But that is another story…