The Liberation Pill
By Stephanie T.
Margaret Sanger’s mission for women’s health rights began in her own home as a young girl growing up in a working class Irish family. Eighteen pregnancies and eleven live births finally took its toll on Sangers’s mother as her body slowly passed on. Shortly after her mother’s death, Sanger began working as an obstetrical nurse and midwife in New York’s lower East Side. During this time, Sanger repeatedly saw and aided women “deprived of the health, sexuality, and ability to care for children already born”. American women were deeply excluded from major decisions pertaining to their own bodies and lifestyles.
Between the 1920’s to the 1950’s inducing abortion was quite common among American women, yet was not something much talked about openly. With the economic boom and advancements of the Cold War, women simply did not have the time and energy to bear and rear more children. Only the educated had access to contraceptives and those contraceptives were obtained outside of the United States from France.
Buying a single condom in thirty states was considered to be a crime. It became an understood secret that women could resort to black-market diaphragms. However, if women were caught or suspected of using any forms of contraceptives, not only did they face serious criminal charges, but it was common for priests to tell young women that they would be gravely “haunted by their unborn children”.
Margaret Sanger became highly popularized as the “women’s champion” when she made it a point to “teach the world to look at the women as if they mattered”. In hopes of finding a voice for women, thousands of desperate women wrote to Margaret Sanger for the freedom to options. Though Sanger’s actual birth control pill and foundation, Planned Parenthood, made their first appearances in 1916, it was the need for some solutions to the Feminine Mystique of the 1950’s that introduced the pill as a breakthrough for women’s rights.
Despite the inventions of the airplane, atomic bomb, or the internet, it is said that the tiny birth control pill transformed 20th century society. Power was “redistributed in the bedroom, the classroom, and the workplace”. Women finally gained the sense of freedom and ability to determine “when, how, and if they wanted to have children, careers, or marriages”. Sanger educated women of their right to their own bodies through numerous and highly regarded articles “What Every Girl Should Know”.
The 1950’s was a repression for women and they felt as if they were forced to submissively oblige to their “second class roles”. As Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique clearly points out, women were isolated from the world after maintaining society during the war. There was no way that these women were going to graciously step aside from their working roles as independent women back into the aproned subordinate housewife. The Pill liberated many American women in the sense that they no longer had to live under such social and personal scrutiny. The Feminine Mystique was finally being broken and lifted off women.
Sources
Conlin, Michelle. Birth Control of a Nation. September 13, 2004.
Steinem, Goria. Margaret Sanger. April 13, 1998. Time.
The Pharmaceutical Company: The Decades of Drug Discovery.
The Pill Timeline.
Margaret Sanger’s mission for women’s health rights began in her own home as a young girl growing up in a working class Irish family. Eighteen pregnancies and eleven live births finally took its toll on Sangers’s mother as her body slowly passed on. Shortly after her mother’s death, Sanger began working as an obstetrical nurse and midwife in New York’s lower East Side. During this time, Sanger repeatedly saw and aided women “deprived of the health, sexuality, and ability to care for children already born”. American women were deeply excluded from major decisions pertaining to their own bodies and lifestyles.
Between the 1920’s to the 1950’s inducing abortion was quite common among American women, yet was not something much talked about openly. With the economic boom and advancements of the Cold War, women simply did not have the time and energy to bear and rear more children. Only the educated had access to contraceptives and those contraceptives were obtained outside of the United States from France.
Buying a single condom in thirty states was considered to be a crime. It became an understood secret that women could resort to black-market diaphragms. However, if women were caught or suspected of using any forms of contraceptives, not only did they face serious criminal charges, but it was common for priests to tell young women that they would be gravely “haunted by their unborn children”.
Margaret Sanger became highly popularized as the “women’s champion” when she made it a point to “teach the world to look at the women as if they mattered”. In hopes of finding a voice for women, thousands of desperate women wrote to Margaret Sanger for the freedom to options. Though Sanger’s actual birth control pill and foundation, Planned Parenthood, made their first appearances in 1916, it was the need for some solutions to the Feminine Mystique of the 1950’s that introduced the pill as a breakthrough for women’s rights.
Despite the inventions of the airplane, atomic bomb, or the internet, it is said that the tiny birth control pill transformed 20th century society. Power was “redistributed in the bedroom, the classroom, and the workplace”. Women finally gained the sense of freedom and ability to determine “when, how, and if they wanted to have children, careers, or marriages”. Sanger educated women of their right to their own bodies through numerous and highly regarded articles “What Every Girl Should Know”.
The 1950’s was a repression for women and they felt as if they were forced to submissively oblige to their “second class roles”. As Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique clearly points out, women were isolated from the world after maintaining society during the war. There was no way that these women were going to graciously step aside from their working roles as independent women back into the aproned subordinate housewife. The Pill liberated many American women in the sense that they no longer had to live under such social and personal scrutiny. The Feminine Mystique was finally being broken and lifted off women.
Sources
Conlin, Michelle. Birth Control of a Nation. September 13, 2004.
Steinem, Goria. Margaret Sanger. April 13, 1998. Time.
The Pharmaceutical Company: The Decades of Drug Discovery.
The Pill Timeline.
posted by Leslie Madsen-Brooks at 10/30/2006 12:56:00 PM
3 Comments:
Reading this article I am absolutely shocked that women were forced to drive themselves to self induced abortions. It is really sad that a woman really had no power over their own bodies. It is also interesting to see the shift between todays society and how we view birth control in comparison to the past. Now birth control is widely available in the United States but many religious groups still try to shut down planned parenthoods that were once taboo. I am curious to see the changes that the coming years will bring with new introductions of birth control.
I agree with the previous post and find it disturbing to think that women had such little control over their bodies and the ability to become pregnant. It is especially interesting to think that only fifty years have passed and now television and magazines are filled with advertisements for various types of birth control methods. Not only do women now have significantly more control over their bodies, but the issues are out in the public's view. It is no longer scandalous to be prescribed birth control pills or purchase condoms, in fact among young adults it has become the norm.
It seems ridiculous that condoms were illegal and contraceptives had to be procured via France. It seems that ‘Planned Parenthood’ has always come under fire for its championing of women’s reproductive rights. In the 1950s they were criticized for any contraception distribution and now they are criticized for providing the ‘morning after’ pill as well as their continued support of a women’s right to choose.
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