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Comstock Laws
As enacted, March 2, 1873, the Comstock law forbade the sending through the sending through the mails of any drug or medicine or any article whatever for the prevention of conception." The 1873 act did not focus on fertility control, but was a statute that included birth control and abortion among a long list of commercial obscenities. Comstock rallied against contraceptive devices bought and sold in commercial spaces, not against natural forms of birth control such as abstinence and the rhythm -
Compulsory Sterilization
Compulsory SterilizationIn 1907, Indiana became the first state mandating the sterilization of those seen as “unfit for reproduction” based off the 1849 bill by Gordon Lincecum. The Indiana Eugenics law states that those with believed heredity problems such as criminality, mental illness, and pauperism (or being poor) were to be forcibly sterilized in order to preserve the rights of birth to those who would reproduce “good” genes. The laws were then passed in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington and California. In 1927, -
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger was an Irish woman from upstate New York, who worked as a nurse throughout her early life. Her mother died of a combination of child birthing and tuberculosis. Motivated by the loss of her mother, Sanger would later become an advocate for the birth rights of women. While working as a visiting nurse in the poor Lower East Side of New York City, Sanger met and treated the spark of her activism, Sadie Sacks. Sacks was a Jewish immigrant whose religion taught her no prohibition of co -
Margaret Sanger: The Status of Birth Control
Advocates of contraception had always evoked Comstock's wrath. Their numbers increased dramatically, and Comstock felt the activists became more brazen through the years. Margaret Sanger's pamphlet, Family Limitation, aroused his horror. Sanger, a visiting nurse who worked with New York City's poorest women, was deeply affected by the plight of women who, when faced with another unwanted pregnancy, resorted to back-alley abortions. Comstock arrested Sanger's husband, Bill Sanger, in January 1915 -
Improvements to Birth Control
In the mid 1950s, men by the names of John Rock and Gregory Pincus had created what they believed to be an effective means of oral contraception and were looking for a population to test it on. The men decided that Puerto Rico would be an ideal location due to the fact that the country supported birth control methods to prevent population growth (PBS.) The women the pill was tested on were mostly poor women who had very limited economic and educational opportunities. (PBS.) Rock and Pincus belie -
Sterilization of Puerto Rican Women
Between 1950 and roughly 1970, working class Puerto Rican women were being sterilized as a form of population control and social class control. This practice began
as early as the 1930s, and was the “policy” in Puerto Rican hospitals and family planning clinics (CWLU.) Many women were forced to have their tubes tied upon giving birth to their second child, but many women also experienced sterilization independently from giving birth (CWLU.) The hospitals in Puerto Rico during the mid-twentieth c -
Abortion Illegal in 49 States
Until 1973, pre-born babies were protected under American law. Now, while this may not have been in writing, the founding fathers of the United States referred to this as common law, where before the fourth month of pregnancy. It was seen as a ‘very heinous misdemeanor’ calling for swift repercussions such as the ‘loss of a limb, confiscation of property or life in prison’ in this timeframe. There were laws between 1840-1967 made in 49 states that refused the legality of abortions, and found the -
Roe v. Wade AND Doe v. Bolton
This has been true since the Supreme Court declared that autonomous abortion rights are built into the Constitution, and that legal barriers to abortion are unconstitutional. This ruling was arrived at on the premise that the 9th and 14th Amendments, according to legal precedent established during the 1960's, guarantees a woman's "right to privacy"—a right that extends even to abortion.
The opportunity to make such a sweeping declaration came via two cases which both presented constitutional cha -
Gonzales v. Carhart
Before the 2007 trial of Gonzalez v. Carhart, the law of 2003 known as the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was in practice. This meant that doctors were legally unable to perform an abortion within the second trimester of pregnancy. At the time, 85 to 90% of the annual 1.3 million abortions performed were within the first trimester, or the first three months, and were not covered under the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. The purpose of this act was to limit the abortions that occurred during the -
Birth Control in Health Care Benefits
The U.S. Department of Justice has petitioned the Supreme Court to review the craft-supply chain Hobby Lobby's case against the rule requiring employers to cover contraception in their health plans.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June that the Christian-owned Hobby Lobby should not be subject to fines for not complying with the requirement while it argues the birth-control rule in court. The rule, enacted under the Affordable Care Act, requires all for-profit, non-religious companies
