History Birth Control

Phuong van 

The right of a woman to plan her family through birth control is one of the most crucial ideas of this century. The viewpoints of Margaret Sanger’s The Case for Birth Control which was published in the Woman Citizen in February 23, 1924 have some adaptability in status of family and society. At that time, Margaret Sanger tended to represent the development of birth control movement as a consequence of Sanger’s will as an autonomous individual independent of the historical context in which she was situated. Sanger’s Birth Control tends to underestimate the political struggles in which Sanger and her “Sangerist” compatriots engaged to define their vision of contraceptive practice within contested gender and race politics of period.

The Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control was legalized in terms of need for society to protect maternal and infant health, the need of families to limit their size to their incomes, and the need of nation to control the size and ethnic character of its population. In the Case  for Birth Control, Margaret Sanger explained clearly about status of economics, health, age and other problems if the children already born. Some people think the Sanger’s Case for Birth Control represented a necessary part of progress; human reproduction became one more process that required conscious intervention. Without conscious control, hospitals, and asylums would be crowned by the weak offspring of weakened mothers. Freedom from unending pregnancies would enable women to bear and raise healthier children, who would in turn, become productive to member of society; however, with the nine reasons Sanger articulated radical maternalist logic for legalized birth control. If ethnic mothers had birth control they could rise to the scientific standards of motherhood and prevent disease, delinquency and dependency among their children. For motherhood to succeed in guiding progress, she must popularize birth control thinking, set motherhood free, and give the foreign and submerged mother knowledge that will enable her to prevent bringing to birth children they do not want. For example, a middle-income family (earning $44,500 to $74,900 a year) with two children might well spend 40 to 45% or more their after-tax income on their offspring. For a child born in 2006 of a middle-income family with two children, the cost before age 18 could be $197,700, and college expenses are yet to come! (Source Dye 2006), so “children should not be born to parents whose economic circumstances do not guarantee enough to provide the children with the necessities of life,” (reason of seventh). Beginning in midthirties, the message of the Case for Birth Control movement began to focus on winning state financing of contraceptive clinics. In part this was a response to declining contributions. In part it was a response to renewed public commitment to maternal and infant health. Sangerist organized this effort by drawing on an extensive national network of support for the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control (NCFL) to encourage local, state, and country health services to request funding for contraceptive clinics under New Deal health legislation. Sanger was same as guider for birth including contraception and abortion, and that offers them few routes out of poverty, and reproduction choices; the poverty rates are also much higher among women of color, these women will bear the brunt of such coercive applications of the economic ethic of fertility. The guiding right to life in the Case for Birth Control however was legal. For much of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s the movement pressured State and Federal legislatures to ensnare abortion in a thicket of regulations and prohibitions. In 1980s, for instance, these included a waiting period between the request for and the performance of an abortion; birth and death certificates for fetuses providing the patient with and oral description of the fetus and its physiological characteristics; informing the patient that the unborn child is a human life, limiting abortions to hospitals (thereby raising the cost); using extraordinary measures (such as compulsory cesarean section) to allow “aborted” fetuses to survive, and requiring permission from minors’ parents and women’s husbands. In 1990s, further state restrictions were added: post viability abortions now required the consent of a second physician, gestational age, weight, and lung maturity of fetuses prior to abortion must be determined by physician; birth control clinics receiving public funding may not inform women of their legal right to an abortion, and detailed information about abortion providers and patients must be reported publicly. The Margaret Sanger’s nine reasons also consider more contraception to resolve the population; they are the best ways to concern about woman and family status before decide yes or no. The Sanger’s apply is basic health care and should be treated as such as a matter of public policy. The average woman will spend five years pregnant or trying to get pregnant, and nearly three decades trying to avoid pregnancy. Laws promoting insurance coverage for contraception are crucial to protecting and promoting women’s health. By guaranteeing that insurers cover prescription contraception to the same extent as other drugs, contraceptive-equity laws help ensure women’s access to birth control and ultimately prevent unintended pregnancies and reduce the need for abortion. Today basing on the main reasons of the care for birth control, there has been a modest increase in childlessness in the United States. According to Census data, about 16 to 17 percent of women will now complete their child bearing years without having born any children; compared to 10 percent in 1980, as many as 20 percent of women in their 30s expect to remain childless (Biddlecom and Martin 2006). More and more couples today, choose not to have children and regard themselves as child-free rather than childless. They do not believe that having children automatically follow from marriage, nor do they feel that reproduction is duty of all married couples. Margaret Sanger’s reasons are best advice for couples who will in the future have greater regard for the quality of bodies and brains which must be equipped for the task of building the future civilization. The Sanger is the cornerstone of that great structure although it several arguments in history.