Contraception Essay ⋆ Essays on Controversial Topics ⋆ EssayEmpire

Contraception refers to the numerous methods and devices used to prevent conception and pregnancy. For millennia, women and men have relied on such folk and medical methods as condoms, herbs, vaginal suppositories, douching, and magic rituals and potions—along with abortion and infanticide—as means to control the birth of children. Today contraceptives include medically prescribed hormones for women; condoms, diaphragms, and other barriers; behavioral practices, including withdrawal and the rhythm method; and irreversible male and female sterilization. Although there are a number of contraceptive options with varying levels of reliability and effectiveness, use is circumscribed by access and availability, as well as by legal and cultural restraints.

Because contraception separates intercourse from procreation, it raises moral and legal issues. The Catholic Church and some other religious institutions have long morally condemned contraception as a mortal sin. However, legal prohibitions in the United States against contraception and the advertisement and sale of contraceptives did not arise until 1873 with the passage of the Comstock Law. This law made it illegal to distribute “obscene” material through the mail, thus effectively banning contraceptives for Americans.

In 1914, Margaret Sanger, who would go on to found Planned Parenthood, was charged with violating the Comstock Law when she urged women to limit their pregnancies in her socialist journal, The Woman Rebel, coining the term birth control to emphasize women’s agency in procreative decision making. Sanger, along with other birth control advocates, promoted contraception in publications, distributed contraceptives in birth control clinics, lobbied for their legalization, and urged the medical establishment to develop more effective methods. The birth control movement described contraception as a “right” of women to decide if, when, and how many children to bear (a right that would be echoed in the abortion rights movement) without intervention from the state or religious institutions.

Eugenicists were also advocates of contraception in the first half of the 20th century. Contraception, including permanent sterilization, was heralded as a solution to social problems such as poverty, insanity, and criminality because it would ensure that indigent, mentally ill, and otherwise “undesirable” populations would not reproduce. Thus one aspect of the history of contraception in the United States and worldwide has been its link with eugenic programs. Furthermore, just as the term birth control emphasized an individual’s contraceptive choice, population control emphasized contraception as a policy issue for entire populations.

Although the Comstock Law had been overturned in most states by the early to mid-20th century, it was not until the 1965 Supreme Court case of Griswold v. Connecticut that the use of contraceptives was legalized throughout the United States. The court decided that couples had the right to privacy and that contraception was a decision that should be left to the individual couple, not the state. The Griswold decision was followed 8 years later by Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States.

Along with the overturning of the Comstock Law, another major development in contraception of the 1960s was the invention and widespread use of the oral hormonal contraceptive known as “the pill.” Indeed, demand for the pill precipitated the Griswold v. Connecticut decision. The pill further cemented the separation between intercourse and procreation because it is highly effective (between 90 and 99 percent), and its timing is separated from the sexual act.

In the 1990s and 2000s, long-term contraceptive solutions were developed and marketed as scientific breakthroughs. Instead of ingesting pills on a daily basis, hormones could be implanted under the skin of a woman’s arm, injected right into her bloodstream, or worn as a patch on her body. Although these methods are highly effective, lasting for anywhere from 1 week to 3 years, and are less subject to user error than is the pill, critics have raised concerns about their side effects. Others emphasize that long-term contraceptives have the potential to be used as coercive or eugenic measures against marginalized populations, such as poor women of color. Furthermore, critics argue that scientists should prioritize developing male contraceptives, lessening the burden on women to be responsible for contraception.

Thus it is largely women today who have a wide range of contraceptive options. According to a 2004 report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 98 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 44 who have ever had sexual intercourse with a male partner have used at least one contraceptive method or device, and 62 percent are currently practicing contraception. Use of contraceptives, however, varies by socioeconomic status, ethnicity, age, religion, education, and many other factors.

Differences in contraceptive use bear out globally, as well. The UN 2005 World Contraception Report indicates that 60.5 percent of married women of reproductive age worldwide are currently practicing some form of contraception. Contraceptive use is highest in northern Europe (78.9 percent) and lowest in western Africa (13.4 percent).

Contraception continues to be an important issue throughout the world. As indicated by UN data, global disparities exist in use of, access to, afford-ability of, and availability of contraception. Birth control and family planning may be linked to global development by controlling population growth and by providing women in the developing world with more sexual agency, yet contraception sometimes conflicts with traditional norms about sexuality and childbearing.

In the United States, controversy has arisen around the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception—a pill that is taken after unprotected sexual inter-course—because some religious figures view it as a method of abortion. Those with even more conservative views continue to see all contraception as immoral and aim to restrict it in the United States once again.

Bibliography:

Feyisetan, Bamikale and John B. Casterline. 2000. “Fertility Preferences and Contraceptive Change in Developing Countries.” International Family Planning Perspectives 26(3):100-109.
Gordon, Linda. 1990. Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: Birth Control in America. New York: Penguin.
McCann, Carole R. 1994. Birth Control Politics in the United States, 1916-1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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