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Birth control devices in different shapes and forms.

The Battle for Birth Control Could Have Gone Differently

Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett each had a different vision of reproductive freedom. Would reproductive rights be more secure if Dennett’s had prevailed?
by Joanna Scutts via The New Republic on January 3, 2025
Sketch of Mother and Infant, by J. Alden Weir, 1888.
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Keep Her Body from Pain and Her Mind from Worry

A reading list tracing the history of the birth control movement through novels.
by Stephanie Gorton via HNN on November 19, 2024
Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennet

The Frenemies Who Fought to Bring Birth Control to the U.S.

Though Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett shared a mission, they took very different approaches. Their rivalry was political, sometimes even personal.
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on November 18, 2024
A man sitting in a chair

Making Medical History: The Sociologist Who Helped Legalize Birth Control

When professor Norman E. Himes published The Medical History of Contraception in 1936, he had made a tactical move, to legalize birth control.
by Lea Eisenstein via Nursing Clio on April 27, 2021
Hannah Mayer Stone with Margaret Sanger and other activists.

An Emancipation Proclamation to the Motherhood of America

A profile of Hannah Mayer Stone, one of the key figures in the struggle to make contraception safe, effective, and widely available.
by Jennifer Young via The New Inquiry on November 16, 2017

Birthright

What's next for Planned Parenthood?
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on November 14, 2011
Vintage photograph of condom testing, depicting a table full of condoms blown up like balloons, and two men inspecting them.

Margaret Sanger's Bold, Gutsy Response to a 1929 Raid on a Birth Control Clinic

A feminist rant for the ages.
by Margaret Sanger via The New Republic on May 1, 1929
Guinan Phillips, 31, attends a candlelit memorial for victims of the mass shooting at Tops supermarket in Buffalo. (Heather Ainsworth for The Washington Post)
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The Tie Between the Buffalo Shooting and Banning Abortion

The two may seem unconnected, but a centuries-long history of panic about White birth rates binds them together.
by Mytheli Sreenivas via Made By History on May 20, 2022
Two types of intrauterine devices, copper and hormonal, such as Mirena or Skyla
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Abortion Opponents Are Gunning For Contraception, Too

Efforts to roll back abortion and contraception access aim to control women’s sexuality.
by Anya Jabour via Made By History on March 25, 2022
Woman holding syringe

How Anthony Comstock, Enemy to Women of the Gilded Age, Attempted to Ban Contraception

Hell hath no fury like a man with a vaginal douche named after him.
by Amy Sohn via Literary Hub on July 20, 2021
Cribs in maternity ward
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Worried About a Population Bust? History Shows We Shouldn’t Be.

Letting panic about fertility rates drive policy is dangerous.
by Mytheli Sreenivas via Made By History on July 19, 2021
Collage of sexual freethinkers with a book, a gavel, and a bra.

The Radical Women Who Paved the Way for Free Speech and Free Love

Anthony Comstock’s crusade against vice constrained the lives of ordinary Americans. His antagonists opened up history for feminists and other activists.
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on July 15, 2021
Four people looking at a latrine

The Paradise of the Latrine

American toilet-building and the continuities of colonial and postcolonial development.
by Simon Toner via Modern American History on November 29, 2019
Margaret Sanger appeals before a Senate Committee for federal birth-control legislation in Washington, D.C., March 1, 1934.

The Socialist Pioneers of Birth Control

When birth control was still taboo, early socialists fought to make it accessible to working-class women.
by Adam J. Sacks via Jacobin on August 14, 2019

The US Medical System is Still Haunted by Slavery

Medicine’s dark history helps explain why black mothers are dying at alarming rates.
by Ranjani Chakraborty via Vox on December 7, 2017

What Planned Parenthood Looked Like in The 1940s

Following WWII, the birth control organization published illustrated pamphlets with authoritative guidance on family planning.
by Claire Voon via Hyperallergic on October 5, 2017

The Black Politics of Eugenics

For much of the twentieth century, African Americans embraced eugenics as a means of racial improvement.
by Ayah Nuriddin via Nursing Clio on June 1, 2017

The Surprising Origin Story of Wonder Woman

The history of the comic-book superhero's creation seven decades ago has been hidden away — until now.
by Jill Lepore via Smithsonian on October 1, 2014
Eleanor Roosevelt speaking at a podium.

The Women She Left Behind

Eleanor Roosevelt’s tacit support for a program that jailed sex workers suggests the limits of the elite-led reform efforts she championed.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via New York Review of Books on September 18, 2024
A women's liberation group marches in Boston on April 17, 1971.

The Reproductive Rights Movement Has Radical Roots

Abortion rights in the US were won in the 1970s thanks to militant feminist groups. As those rights are repealed, the fight must return to the streets.
by Nancy Rosenstock, Anne Rumberger via Jacobin on May 11, 2023
Abortion protestors kneeling by pro-abortion signs.
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Failing to Embed Abortion Care in Mainstream Medicine Made It Politically Vulnerable

Actions by the medical profession in the 1970s still reverberate today.
by Carole Joffe via Made By History on January 11, 2022

Lovers Under an Apple Tree

Why did the priest and the choir singer die, and what was the nature of their love?
by Audrey Clare Farley via Contingent on March 8, 2020
Justice Clarence Thomas arrives for the ceremonial swearing-in of Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the East Room of the White House on Oct. 8, 2018.

Why Clarence Thomas Is Trying to Bring Eugenics Into the Abortion Debate

They really do not have anything to do with each other.
by Adam S. Cohen, Dahlia Lithwick via Slate on June 17, 2019
Portrait of Charles Knowlton

Charles Knowlton, the Father of American Birth Control

Decades after Charles Knowlton died, his book would be credited with reversing population growth in England and the popularization of contraception in the U.S.
by Amy Sohn, Robert E. Riegel, Wilson Yates, Roderick S. French via JSTOR Daily on March 21, 2018
Newly appointed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor stands in front of the Supreme Court on Sept. 25, 1981, in Washington.

Pro-Choice Advocates Fear That Roe v. Wade Could Be Lost. But It Already Happened.

How “undue burden”—a concept nurtured by anti-abortion groups and championed by the first woman on the Supreme Court—has eroded the right to choose.
by Meaghan Winter via Slate on March 28, 2016
A depiction of the female reproduction system in an early sex ed film.

Slut-Shaming, Eugenics, and Donald Duck

The scandalous history of sex-ed movies.
by Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on December 12, 2014

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