Margaret Higgins Sanger, also known as Margaret Sanger Slee, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
The American Birth Control League (ABCL) was founded by Margaret Sanger in 1921 at the First American Birth Control Conference in New York City. The organization promoted the founding of birth control clinics and encouraged women to control their own fertility. In 1942, the league became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Shidzue Katō, also published as Shidzue Ishimoto, was a 20th-century Japanese feminist and one of the first women elected to the Diet of Japan, best known as a pioneer in the birth control movement.
Clarence James Gamble, was an American medical doctor and the heir of the Procter and Gamble soap company fortune. He was an advocate of birth control and eugenics, and founded Pathfinder International.
The National Birth Control League was a United States organization founded in the early 20th century to promote sex education, the use of means and methods to prevent conception, to lobby for a change in legislation making this illegal, and to bring up courtcases with the aim to change jurisprudence, enabling birth control.
Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America is an anti-abortion documentary film produced by anti-abortion activist Mark Crutcher in 2009. The film, which has been enthusiastically received by anti-abortion activists, argues that the modern-day prevalence of abortion among African Americans is rooted in an attempted genocide or the maafa of black people. The film is part of an anti-abortion, anti-birth control campaign aimed at African Americans.
Katharine Martha Houghton Hepburn was an American feminist social reformer and a leader of the suffrage movement in the United States. Hepburn served as president of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association before joining the National Woman's Party. Alongside Margaret Sanger, Hepburn co-founded the organization that would become Planned Parenthood. She was the mother and namesake of actress Katharine Hepburn and the grandmother and namesake of actress Katharine Houghton.
The birth control movement in the United States was a social reform campaign beginning in 1914 that aimed to increase the availability of contraception in the U.S. through education and legalization. The movement began in 1914 when a group of political radicals in New York City, led by Emma Goldman, Mary Dennett, and Margaret Sanger, became concerned about the hardships that childbirth and self-induced abortions brought to low-income women. Since contraception was considered to be obscene at the time, the activists targeted the Comstock laws, which prohibited distribution of any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail. Hoping to provoke a favorable legal decision, Sanger deliberately broke the law by distributing The Woman Rebel, a newsletter containing a discussion of contraception. In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, but the clinic was immediately shut down by police, and Sanger was sentenced to 30 days in jail.
The Clinical Research Bureau was the first legal birth control clinic in the United States, and quickly grew into the leading contraceptive research center in the world. The CRB operated under numerous names and parent organizations from 1923 to 1974, providing birth control and infertility clinical services to thousands of patients, and serving as a site for medical research and education on these topics.
The Birth Control Council of America (BCCA) was a short-lived organization that was established 1937 to reconcile the activities of the American Birth Control League (ABCL) and the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB). The goal was to reduce redundancy, improve cooperation, and discuss the future of the birth control movement in the United States. The BCCA was created following the 1936 United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries federal court case, effectively removing legal obstacles limiting the ability of doctors to import, disseminate and prescribe contraceptives.
The history of birth control, also known as contraception and fertility control, refers to the methods or devices that have been historically used to prevent pregnancy. Planning and provision of birth control is called family planning. In some times and cultures, abortion had none of the stigma which it has today, making birth control less important.
The first large-scale human trial of the birth control pill was conducted by Gregory Pincus and John Rock in 1955 in Puerto Rico. Before the drug was approved as safe in the mainland U.S., many Puerto Rican women were used as test subjects. These trials are a major component in the history of the development of female oral contraceptives, occurring in between initial small trial testing on the east coast and the release of the drug for public consumption.
Hilda Crosby Standish was a pioneer in the birth control movement in the state of Connecticut. In 1935, she became medical director of the Maternal Health Center in Hartford, the state's first birth control clinic. Dr. Standish was inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.
Dorothy Hamilton Brush was a birth control advocate, women's rights advocate and author. She worked with Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement and wrote plays, travel articles, and books
Fania Esiah Mindell was an American feminist, activist, and theater artist.
Ethel Byrne was an American Progressive Era radical feminist. She was the younger sister of birth control activist Margaret Sanger, and assisted her in this work.
Mabel Antoinette Sine Wadsworth was an American birth control activist and women's health educator. Influenced by the work of Margaret Sanger, she organized door to door campaigns in rural Maine in the 1950s and 1960s to teach women about birth control. In the 1960s she established and directed the state's first family planning program which provided contraceptive services, and helped found the Maine Family Planning Association in 1971, serving as its first president. In 1984 she supported the establishment and naming of the Mabel Wadsworth Women's Health Center in Bangor, Maine, a private, non-profit, feminist health center. Wadsworth was in the first class of inductees to the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in March 1990.
Juliet Barrett Rublee was an American birth control advocate, suffragist, and film producer. She was married to George Rublee.
Family Limitation is a pamphlet written by American family planning activist, eugenicist, educator, writer, and nurse Margaret Sanger that was published in 1914. It was one of the first guides to birth control published in the United States. The 16-page pamphlet details information on, and ingredients for, various contraceptive methods and included illustrations and instructions for use. After the pamphlet was released, Sanger was forced to flee the United States to Britain to avoid prosecution under federal anti-obscenity laws, the Comstock Act, which prohibited disseminating information about contraception.
Cora Louise Hartshorn was an American pioneer in the field of birth control. She used her position in the community of Short Hills, New Jersey to form the Short Hills Birth Control Committee and to raise funds for a clinic during 1926–1927. This helped to fund the statewide New Jersey Birth Control League, which opened the Newark Maternal Health Center, New Jersey's first birth control clinic, in 1928. The New Jersey Birth Control League was later renamed the New Jersey League for Planned Parenthood, now Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan New Jersey.
