Maima D. Beer

English 24

Prof. Thompson

Date: 7/26/12

Final Research Paper

Birth Control and Its importance for Women Rights

Women for centuries have been subjugated to men, and it’s hard to believe but there was a time in history in this country when women didn’t have any rights. Women couldn’t speak in public without the permission of men and were only looked to for bearing children, while taking care of the home. Throughout history women have fought for their rights with movements like the suffrage and birth control movements. The birth control unlike the suffrage movement is still an ongoing battle, even though women have the right to contraception, but many women don’t have access to because of certain state’s government have laws limiting that access to birth control. By the government controlling women’s access to birth control they are controlling the liberty for women.

Birth control has been a very controversial topic and taboo since the classical period. Before one can grasp why and how birth control and the use of birth control can be controversial, one will need to understand what birth control is and the history. First, birth control should be viewed as a woman’s basic right that goes hand in hand with her first amendment right, and without any interference from the government. The all encompassing question is what is birth control? Birth control is a practice, material, or device by which sexual intercourse can be rendered incapable of producing a pregnancy (Walker 161). While birth control through the centuries had been practice by both men and women in an extensive variety of ways, but only in the past two centuries that birth control has become a big matter of public debate. At a point in time, even speaking and writing about birth control was not protected by our first amendment. The law that forbids any mere mention of birth control was the 1873 Comstock Act, which was a federal law, designed to prevent the distribution of immoral material (Walker 161). This law was used to censor communication about birth control; even any medical advice was deemed obscene and placed in the same category as pornographic literature.

Birth control has been condemned and seen as immoral and obscene by public officials such as President Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt referred to birth control “as suicide of the race” (walker 161). But way before the 17th century birth control have been condemned, in the Judeo-Christian period, which was a heavily religious historical period, even though the bible didn’t make any mention of birth control, or contraceptive, but early fathers of the church condemned it (Potts 93). Saint Augustine concluded that the only justification for any sexual intercourse was to perpetuate the human race. In his words, “that which is done for lust must be done in such a way that it is not for lust’s sake” (contra Julianum 5, 9). As time when on other western theologian came up with more ways to place restraints on the human sexuality. By the middle Ages, intercourse was not permitted on Sundays, Fridays, feast days and throughout the 40 days of lent. Sexual intercourse was basically forbidden for half of the year. So if a woman was to conceive an abnormal baby, the reasoning behind it was because she had sex during her menstruation or during the forbidden time (Potts 93).

The term “birth control” was coined by Margaret Sanger, the leading activist in the United States for contraceptive prevention in the twentieth century (Kline 39). According to Sanger, the movement started on the day one of her patients, Sadi Sachs, died from an induced abortion. At that time, Sanger was a 29 years old mother of three, working as a public health nurse in new York city’s lower East Side. Specializing in obstetrics, she witnesses women struggling to deliver and raise baby after baby in crowded urban conditions with little money or power. She recalls the number of women who begged her to tell them the “secret” to preventing conception (Kline 39). All she was permitted by law to recommend them were condoms or withdrawal, both of which depended on the cooperation of the male partner. One day, she was called to the home of a young Jewish immigrant living in a tenement on Hester Street. Sadi Sachs, mother of three, was suffering from complications of a self-induced septic abortion. Sanger recalled the accompanying doctor’s response to Sach’s plea not to have another child was for her to tell her husband to sleep on the roof (Kline 39). Three months later however Sanger was called again back to the home of Sachs to find her pregnant and dying of Septicemia. It was because of this event that set off the birth control movement. Sanger told this particular story over the period of her activist career emphasizing class-based restrictions on fertility control. She believed that it was the poor uneducated women that was in need of access to birth control and vowed to make it her lifelong crusade-making birth control accessible to women (Kline 39). In 1914 she began publishing the women Rebel that was a magazine targeting workingwoman to educate themselves about sexuality and contraception. She uses this magazine also to challenge the 1873 Comstock law, which prohibited the importation and mailing of contraceptive information and devices in the United States. It was also in this magazine where she chose the term birth control in replacement of awkward phrases like “family limitation” or “voluntary motherhood”. After only seven issues of the magazine, it was shut down being that it was “unmailable” by the U.S post offices. But this did not discourage Sanger for she birthed the birth control movement, which began in 1914 (Kline 39).

The American birth control movement starting with the efforts of Margaret Sanger and the national birth control league was an attempt to promote family planning through contraceptive use among recently arrived immigrant groups. Sanger strongly believed that access to contraceptive was a woman’s fundamental right, and that without it motherhood was compulsory. Sanger argued that women should exercise their rights to decide how many children she will have and when she will have them, and that with birth control women would be able to devote their time and talents to solving social problems and enriching the life of the nation. Even though Sanger was not the only woman to challenge the laws and taboos about birth control but because of her actions led to an enduring and controversial social movement. The controversy surrounding birth control stemmed from moral and social concerns about separating sex and reproduction (McCann 750) soon in cities across the U.S Nurses and physicians operated independent clinics in which married women could obtain advice and materials to prevent conception (McCann 750). But these clinics activist didn’t want to attract controversy like Margaret Sanger.

Sanger sought out publicity simply as a means of support for her cause, which was to build support for contraception as a lawful health practice and a woman’s basic right. Sanger was not the only woman stirring up controversy during the birth control movement, a woman by the name of Mary ware Dennett. Dennet organized the voluntary parenthood league to lobby for repeal of the Comstock laws. From Dennet perspective, the Comstock laws violated the first amendment right to free speech. In the mid-1930s shifted her activism to sexual education, but in 1928 she was prosecuted for publishing a sex educational manual entitled side of life. Her conviction was eventually overturned on appeal in 1930 with a decision that obscenity depended on intent. Setting a precedent, this decision was an important precursor to the 1936 decision that exempted physians form the Comstock law. (McCann 750)

In the 1930s Contraceptive organizations sought to stem controversy by embracing a strategy of family planning that relied on conventional notions of family life. This strategy was enshrined in 1942 in the new name the movement took for itself: the Planned Parenthood federation of America. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Planned Parenthood’s leaders, which were mostly men, relied less on the language of individual women’s rights to promote acceptance of contraception. Instead they focused more on the social benefits of family planning for improving maternal and infant health and for containing the dangerously high population growth that threatened world stability (McCann 750). One important pro-birth control argument back then was Neo-Malthusian Economics. Neo-Malthusian derived from the philosophy of Thomas Malthus, an 18th century clergyman and political economist. (McCann 752) Malthus believed that the fundamental nature of population growth meant that population would always grow faster than resources in turn causing amongst humans this natural imbalance which will lead to inevitable misery and war unless something is done to restraint reproduction. So in other to preserved happiness Malthus specifically addressed men only to wait until marriage and financial stability that would enable them to support their offspring. Malthus disregarded contraception, but the Neo-Malthusians endorsed contraceptives, they argued that contraceptives were needed in order to control family size and income efficiently. (McCann 752) This reasoning became extremely persuasive as the result of economic hardship of the great depression in the 1930s. (McCann 752)

Although many people wanted the legalization of contraceptive, there were also many people that oppose its legalization. The primary opposition to legalizing contraceptive came from those who saw it as morally wrong. Politicians and government officials was willing to end the prohibition on marital contraception, but feared that if contraceptive was offer to every woman married or not it would imply a desire to indulge in sex without any consequences and also encourage promiscuity. The Roman Catholic Church consistently and actively opposed artificial means of contraception throughout the 20th century. The Catholic Church teaches that the purpose of marital sex is procreation, not pleasure. They would only allow periodic abstinence in marriage, but purposefully separating sex and procreation through contraceptives undermines the holy sacrament of marriage and is thus inherently sinful. (Potts 93) The church even when as far as to oppose the Malthusian logic that economic consideration should dictate when children should be born. The church believes that such logic only in fact promotes a wrong-headed valuation of the material over the spiritual and disparages respect for the sanctity of the human life. (Potts 93) Pope Pius affirmed this perspective in his 1930 encyclical casti connubii; Pope Paul VI also reaffirmed this teaching in 1968 in his encyclical humanae vitea. The last to address this subject was Pope John Paul II who reaffirmed this teaching in a 1987 statement in which declared the matter closed to further discussion. (Potts 93)

The 1960s witnessed an immense deal of change surrounding contraceptive law; with the 1965 Supreme Court ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut which successfully overturned the Connecticut law that prohibited the use of contraceptive. The plaintiff was Estelle Griswold who was the executive director of the Connecticut Planned Parenthood association. As director she wanted to repeal Connecticut’s very repressive birth control laws that prohibited the use and distribution of birth control. After years of trying to get the law repeal without any success, Griswold and Charles lee Buxton, chairman of Yale obstetrics and gynecology concocted a plan of deliberating violating the law and that will result in a court case that will be useful to repeal the law. November of 1961 Griswold opened offices of birth control clinics in new haven, Connecticut. After several weeks of operation and warnings to stop activity from the Connecticut government officials, Griswold was arrested and convicted of violating Connecticut state law of that prohibited the use of contraception. The appeal of her conviction led to the Supreme Court ruling that ruled married couples have a right to privacy and the right to freedom from government intrusion in matters of their marital intimacy (McCann 755). The court reasoning relied on the family planning logic about the right to privacy included decisions about when to procreate. A decade later the court relied on the same privacy rights in this case to legalize abortion in Roe v. wade.

With the new forms of contraception and the supreme court ruling in Griswold, women in the united states for the first time in history had access to contraceptives that were almost 100% effective. The introduction of the pill has been said to steer in the sexual revolution, the pill arrived during a time when people had concerns that the world was greatly overpopulated and human activity was degrading the environment (McCann 755)

Despite all the changes and efforts to lessen the moral controversy surrounding birth control, never fully succeeded. While Many people hold Sanger responsible for turning the birth control movement from a focus on women’s individual rights to an elitist focus on the social benefits of family planning (McCann 755). If it was for Sanger hard work, dedication and strong opinions there wouldn’t have been a birth control movement in the first place. Even though in today’s America women have access to birth control or contraceptive, but with limited or no funding from the government it still not accessible to many women. Most recently, pharmacists and other health care professionals who assert their right to refuse to fill prescriptions or otherwise assist in medical practices they find immoral have sought legal protection of this right. All such efforts have the effect of limiting women’s ability to exercise their individual reproductive rights. (Walker 162)

Recently in 2012 women’s access to birth control pills has emerged as a hotly-debated topic on Capitol Hill and in the 2012 U.S Presidential race. The Obama administration fueled the debate by proposing that all employers including religious institutions such as hospitals and universities, but not churches be required to offer health insurance plans to their employees that includes free contraception (Pear). Of course this didn’t sit well with the house republicans who called for a government reform committee hearing to be held on the Obama administration’s birth control coverage. The republican government reform committee panel didn’t have a single woman on its panel to represent the millions of women across the country. The republican chairman defended the panel by saying “this hearing is about religious freedom as you will note, the men that you have noted come from denominations other than Roman Catholic” (Pear).

A week later, house minority leader Nancy Pelosi held a hearing on women’s health and birth control, and invited the woman witness that democrats wanted for the government reform committee panel Sandra Fluke. Fluke who’s a Law school student at Georgetown University (Pear). Fluke said the Roman Catholic university she attends does not cover birth control as part of its health insurance plan for students. “Contraception, when it first became available, was a revolution in this country. It allowed women to enter employment and educational opportunities that had previously not been accessible because they were unable to control their reproduction in the same way (pear). And I just can’t imagine rolling back the clock on the progress”, “fluke said. Everybody should be entitled to their religious views and the mandate that require all employers including religious institutions are require to offer health coverage that includes free contraception goes against religious freedom. For example it compares to saying all Jewish deli should serve meat that is not kosher. It is a known fact the Catholic Church oppose contraceptive, so passing a law requiring their institutions to provide coverage for free contraception goes against freedom of religion. But the Catholic Church often contradicts itself; its opposition to contraception is that it goes against the purpose of sex which is to procreate not for pleasure. But yet the Catholic Church and its institutions provide health insurance coverage for Viagra for men (Zimmerman). The Roman Catholic Church needs to refrain from the old logic of the church because times have changed and so have women’s roles in society.

Instead of the Government asking employers to provide health insurance that covers free contraception to employees, the government itself should come up with a government funded program that provide all women with free contraceptive and making it accessible to all women, so that even if women attend catholic universities or institution they will still be able to receive free contraception.

In closing all through history we see how religious organizations hiding behind the bible or even using the bible to keep the female species down, we even see how politicians and government officials use their power to keep the female’s in a lower position. These men who speak against contraception do so in hopes to continue to control the female reproduction system. It’s not a problem when a man gets a vasectomy a permanent birth control for males which prevent the release of sperm when a man ejaculates, also known as a surgical procedure for male sterilization. This in turn puts a halt on procreation, but yet it is not as controversial as contraception. Men throughout history have been instructing women how to be women or ladies or what behavior is acceptable or waiting until marriage to have sex. Which I find to be puzzling because how can a man tell a woman how to be a woman and what is good for her, when he’s not a woman. A woman should have as much freedom as men; she should have the complete freedom of choice. She should have the choice to when she wants children and the control if she doesn’t. The idea of sex only being for procreation is rubbish in my opinion, because if that’s all God intended sex for that purpose it wouldn’t be any pleasure available during sex.

Women should have all access and free of expense to birth control, we are the one who experience pregnancies; it’s our bodies that go through a number of changes doing pregnancies. So why shouldn’t we have free access to birth control, the access to birth control is a woman’s basic right, which is protected by our first amendment; Women are the owners of their bodies and are in control of their own sexuality and reproduction. The government should not control or limit a woman’s rights to birth control because it will be going against the first amendment.