The first hormonal birth control pill, Enovid, was approved by the Federal Drug Administration in 1690. Hormonal contraceptives work by combining estrogen, the female sexual hormone, and progestin, a derivative of progesterone that prevents ovulation, together to inhibit ovulation and create an inhabitable cervical environment for both sperm and embryos. Therefore, oral contraceptives effectively block the fertility cycle by not allowing sperm to meet an egg or implantation of a fertilized fetus. When a woman takes birth control, she effectively can prevent pregnancy until she feels ready physically, mentally, and financially to support a child. This reproductive control directly impacts the social institutions of education, economics, and
…show more content…
Women entered the public sphere of society after assuming roles of their husbands during the Civil War. When their husbands returned, they were to properly return to the home or were forced into the labor market to provide for a handicapped husband (Changing Ideals of Womanhood, pp. 191). Domestication was however the upper and middle classes women’s place. Marriage and motherhood were expected and structurally functional to society. Marriage was considered a survival method due to lack of education, low wages in jobs, and terrible working conditions. However, women of the lower class were often immigrants who lived in slums, worked in horrid, industrialized jobs, and had more children than they could feed (Women and the Progressive Movement). There however were no contraceptive agents available due to the Federal Comstock Act prohibiting the distribution of obscene materials for immoral use, including information on contraceptives (Comstock Law of …show more content…
She initiated it by publishing a column in the socialist newspaper, The Call, about women’s health, hygiene and sexuality. The Woman Rebel, a magazine published later by Sanger, distributed birth control information such as use of fertility cycles, coitus interruptus, and condoms (Reading Feminist Theory, pp. 144-145). After violated the Comstock Act twice, Sanger was arrested in August 1914. She fled charges however by exiling in Europe where she became enlightened at birth control clinics about the use of diaphragms, rubber devices that blocked the cervix from conception. She returned a year later and smuggled back as many diaphragms as possible. Sanger then on October 16th, 1916 opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in Brooklyn, New York. However after two short weeks, the clinic was shut down due to violating the Comstock Act by selling copies of her articles and ways to medicinally prevent pregnancy (Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement).
This however would not stop Sanger. She continued to reopen clinics with physician support. New York recognized that if a physician judges a woman marred and requires contraception for medical reasons, it is not a crime to advise and instruct them on such. This was a great victory for reproductive rights. It however it did not stop there. Clinics began to open nationwide to provide affordable, widespread, and reliable family planning information. Information
Women entered the public sphere of society after assuming roles of their husbands during the Civil War. When their husbands returned, they were to properly return to the home or were forced into the labor market to provide for a handicapped husband (Changing Ideals of Womanhood, pp. 191). Domestication was however the upper and middle classes women’s place. Marriage and motherhood were expected and structurally functional to society. Marriage was considered a survival method due to lack of education, low wages in jobs, and terrible working conditions. However, women of the lower class were often immigrants who lived in slums, worked in horrid, industrialized jobs, and had more children than they could feed (Women and the Progressive Movement). There however were no contraceptive agents available due to the Federal Comstock Act prohibiting the distribution of obscene materials for immoral use, including information on contraceptives (Comstock Law of …show more content…
She initiated it by publishing a column in the socialist newspaper, The Call, about women’s health, hygiene and sexuality. The Woman Rebel, a magazine published later by Sanger, distributed birth control information such as use of fertility cycles, coitus interruptus, and condoms (Reading Feminist Theory, pp. 144-145). After violated the Comstock Act twice, Sanger was arrested in August 1914. She fled charges however by exiling in Europe where she became enlightened at birth control clinics about the use of diaphragms, rubber devices that blocked the cervix from conception. She returned a year later and smuggled back as many diaphragms as possible. Sanger then on October 16th, 1916 opened the first birth control clinic in the United States in Brooklyn, New York. However after two short weeks, the clinic was shut down due to violating the Comstock Act by selling copies of her articles and ways to medicinally prevent pregnancy (Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement).
This however would not stop Sanger. She continued to reopen clinics with physician support. New York recognized that if a physician judges a woman marred and requires contraception for medical reasons, it is not a crime to advise and instruct them on such. This was a great victory for reproductive rights. It however it did not stop there. Clinics began to open nationwide to provide affordable, widespread, and reliable family planning information. Information