Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement

At a time of the Comstock Law, where speaking about birth control, along with disseminating related information was deemed "obscene" and thus outlawed, Margaret Sanger, who had previously been involved in Progressive Era activism, sought to provide women with key birth control information. She deemed the ability to limit family sizes essential to ending the incessant cycle of women's poverty, which she was a first-hand witness to as a nurse in New York City. In 1914, she coined the term "birth control" and advocated for it in The Woman Rebel, a feminist publication.

Margaret Sanger visits Los Angeles," 2022, Wikipedia Commons. Accessed 17 April 2025.

"Kitty Marion in USA selling BC Review in 1915," Picryl. Accessed 17 April 2025.

In 1916, she opened America's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn and was subsequently sentenced to jail for 30 days. Thanks to publicity generated by the arrest, she gained numerous supporters and re-opened the clinic. In 1917, she published the Birth Control Review, another effort to educate the public on birth control. The following year, People v. Sanger reaffirmed Sanger's conviction, as the New York Court of Appeals upheld Sanger's violation of Section 1142 of the NY Penal Code—she was not a physician and hence could not disseminate birth control information. They also, however, granted protections to physicians prescribing birth control for preventing diseases. This allowed Sanger to legally open the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB) in 1923, as it staffed female physicians and social workers. Seven years later though, the U.S. impeded the circulation of birth control with the Tariff Act of 1930, identifying its importation as illegal. But in 1936, through U.S. v One Package of Japanese Pessaries, doctors were legally allowed to prescribe birth control through mail. Throughout the 1930s, the diaphragm or "womb veil" was the most popular form of birth control in the US. The 1936 Supreme Court ruling spurred great advancements in birth control clinics, totaling 639 by 1939. In the 1950s, with $2 million in funding from Katharine Dexter McCormick, Sanger obtained support to develop the first oral contraceptive.