Birth Control Movement in the United States - Essay Example

To what extent does disparity exist with the legalization of the birth control movement in regards to poor and minority women in the United s Birth control has been a major issue since its introduction in the United States. It arose out of socialist, feminist, and other groups concerned with women's rights and sexual freedom. It was after 1920 that the birth control movement became gradually transformed into a respectable, non radical reform cause, but with women's rights secondary only to the overriding concern with medical health and population control. This was achieved by "professionalization" of the birth control movement. It is the takeover by professional experts rather that the radical amateur women who are fighting for their own interests. The professionals are composed of doctors, who made medical issue, held back the development of popular sex education, and stifled a previously developing feminist approach to women's birth control needs and the academic eugenists who contributed racism to the birth control movement, helping to transform it into a population control movement with racist and anti-feminist overtones. But both prevented the spread of birth control by changing from a popular, participatory cause to a professional operation (Gordon, 1975). The most prominent activist is Margaret Sanger. She is known the founder of the birth-control movement in the United States was Margaret Sanger. She has witnessed the results of uncontrolled fertility, self-induced abortions, and high rates of infant and maternal mortality. Her experiences as a nurse and midwife led her to focus all her energy on the single cause of reproductive autonomy for women. She was convinced that there is a need for extensive information on contraception. She established information and advice centers that help women in safe, effective and female controlled contraceptive. She founded the American Birth Control League which later became Planned Parenthood Federation of America. That time issues regarding birth control and contraception was considered obscene and this results to continuous government harassment and closure of her shops. The Comstock Act which was passed in 1873 states that it is illegal to convey any information or devices that could be used for preventing conception and defined it as obscene was used against Sanger in her advocacy (Battaglia, 1998). It was the government that controlled the access of poor women to birth control, sterilization and abortion for the most part of the 20th century. Primarily concerned about the maternal and infant mortality, the officials began to offer access to birth control centers but women have limited access. Birth control has difficulty in finding legislative support mainly because of the eugenic rhetoric and arguments used by supporters to promote them. There are four main groups that influenced the nature and delivery of the policies. First are the medical and social scientists that offer theories about the origins and characteristics of poverty and proposed solutions that involved the control of reproduction. Second are the leading health and welfare professionals that shaped public policy and influenced the nature of reproductive services. Third, the state and county officials who implemented public health and welfare policies shaped the delivery of reproductive services. Finally, the poor and minority women targeted by the programs responded to them. Factors such as sexuality, class and racial conflicts shaped the negotiations over reproductive control. The ability of women to control their sexuality in terms and conditions of motherhood are the center of debates about birth control. Class and racial background determines whether women will have access to reproductive health care. It was assumed by Policy makers and health and welfare professionals that poor single mothers in particular if they are African American, Hispanic, or Native American-lacked the ability to function properly as mothers and that they should be discouraged from further childbearing. Many white, male researchers and health professionals assumed that poor and minority women were unable or unmotivated to use contraceptives properly and encouraged the development and testing of cheaper contraceptives and contraceptives that were outside the control of female patients. Concerns about racial discrimination shaped both the contemporary discourse about the experiences of women in reproduction and the historical understanding of those experiences. Black nationalists frequently voiced suspicions that birth control for African Americans was equivalent to race genocide. Such allegations raised legitimate concerns. Critics pointed to the real abuse and coercion perpetrated by some family planning programs that targeted minorities for involuntary sterilization. They criticized persistent racial discrimination in access to health care, disapproved of the lack of minority representation on family planning boards, and expressed wariness about the attraction that family planning programs held for many racists. And they found an echo in academic circles in the 1970s, as mainland socialist feminists began to write about abuse as the defining experience that poor, non white women-both in Puerto Rico and on the mainland-had with sterilization. It was the immigrant radicals, African-Americans and middle class reformers that embraced the idea of birth control. But African Americans have always pointed out that health and race advancement are more important than women's sexual freedom. Birth control was used to mitigate poverty, hard labor, and sexual abuse and understood women's autonomy to be based on economic and physical security, not freedom from childbearing. It was also suggested that birth control might be a weapon of self-defense for black women against sexual exploitation by white men (Simmons, 1989). According to Rodrique (1954), "population experts' ideological bias and research design have tended to foreclose the possibility of Afro-American agency, and thus conscious use of contraception." After WW1 a dramatic drop in black fertility rates was observed and it was suggested that the decrease resulted from poor health conditions and the "bestial" sexuality of African Americans and their lack of control. An examination during the 1970s showed that the use of birth control by African Americans during slavery is apparent and important steps were made in recognizing the desire of some blacks to use contraception. The main issue among African Americans are family and race attributed to their inferior social and economic status. Generally speaking nationalists and religious groups viewed the dysgenic tendency among the professional and upper-class blacks of having fewer babies as a threat to the existence of African Americans. It was considered that increasing the total population of blacks necessary to preserve their African heritage and to transcend oppression by whites. Birth control will create an African American population of "lesser" quality and made them vulnerable to oppressive conditions that would lead them consequently to inferior positions. Several negative notions have made the black apprehensive with the use of birth control methods. Contraception was believed to be a genocide tool for whites to maintain the domination of the world (King, 1924). Birth control was viewed by many as tool of the whites to control absolutely the fates of the blacks (La Farge, 1931). It was seen that birth control is a possible solution to African Americans' economic problems. Unplanned reproduction among workers inspired many of the supporters of contraception. It was Du Bois (1932) to express approval of birth control as a mechanism for racial progress, that the woman of the future must have knowledge and the right of motherhood at her own discretion. But only some women could obtain birth control information and services, with admission standards based on middle- and upper- class visions of morality. Importantly, some physicians did condemn their colleagues for biased actions. It is because that birth control for the poor could lead to greater independence and power, which in turn meant less dependence on whites (Sims, 1938). It was believed that African Americans needed to develop race consciousness to overcome oppression, which is only possible if lower-class African Americans used birth control and worked toward middle- and upper-class lifestyles and standards (Jamison, 1938). It is important to understand that the birth control movement among African Americans was not simply a movement. It was partly the result of their long struggle against the supposed oppression by the whites. More importantly though birth control has opened eyes on the more important issue that this addresses the freedom of women. References Alexander, V., (1932) "Contraception in Preventive Medicine," Birth Control Review 16 (July-August 1932): 215-16. Control Review 16 (June 1932): 170. Aptheker , H. (1973) The Correspondence of W.E.B. DuBois, vol. 1 selections, 1877-1934, (University of Massachusetts Press, 1973), pp. 301-02 Battaglia, M., (1988) Margaret Sanger Baxandall, R., (2001) .RE-VISIONING THE WOMEN'S LIBERATION MOVEMENT'S NARRATIVE: EARLY SECOND WAVE AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMINISTS. Feminist Studies DuBois, W., ( 1969): Voices from Within the Veil, (Schocken Books, 1969), p. 165; Folbre, N., (2004) Sleeping beauty awakes: self-interest, feminism, and fertility in the early twentieth century.(Part III: rethinking markets, rationality, and choice) Social Research Gordon, L., (1975) The politics of birth control, 1920-1940: the impact of professionals. Int J Health Serv. 1975;5(2):253-77. Hart, J. (1984)Who should have the children Discussions of birth control among African-American intellectuals, 1920-1939. The Journal of Negro History January 1, 1994 Holz, R., (2005) Nurse Gordon on trial: those early days of the birth control clinic movement reconsidered. (Linda Gordon) Journal of Social History Jamison, E.S. (1938) "The Future of Negro Health," Birth Control Review 22 (May 1938): 94. King, A.(1924) "The Population Problem and the Negro," Opportunity 2 (November 1924): 325. LaFarge, S.J.,(1931) "A New Mis-step in Race Relations," Opportunity 4 (June 1931): 185. Landy U. (1986).Abortion counselling--a new component of medical care. Clin Obstet Gynaecol. 1986 Mar;13(1):33-41. Nightingale, C. (2006). The transnational contexts of early twentieth-century American urban segregation. Journal of Social History Reagan, Leslie J.When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973.Berkeley: University of California Press, c1997. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft967nb5z5/ Schoen, J., (2005) Choice and Coercion Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare University of North Carolina Press. Sims, N., (1932)"A New Technique in Race Relations," Opportunity 9 (April 1931): 114-16, and "Hostages to the White Man," Birth Control Review 16 (July-August 1932): 214-215. Simmons, C. (2003) Women's power in sex radical challenges to marriage in the early-twentieth-century United States. Feminist Studies Simmons, C., (1989) Passion and Power: Sexuality in History, Christina Simmons Philadelphia: Temple University Press Solinger, R. (2005) Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America. By Rickie Solinger. New York: New York University Press.. Weisbord, R. (1974) Genocide Birth Control and the Black American. Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1975. Wolf, J. (1999) "MERCENARY HIRELINGS" OR "A GREAT BLESSING": DOCTORS' AND MOTHERS' CONFLICTED PERCEPTIONS OF WET NURSES AND THE RAMIFICATIONS FOR INFANT FEEDING IN CHICAGO, 1871-1961. Journal of Social History Read More