15,697
edits
Changes
no edit summary
[[File:440px-MargaretSanger-Underwood.LOC.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Margaret Sanger, c. 1922.]]
__NOTOC__
As the women’s rights movement gained momentum in the early 20th century, women's rights activists demanded not only the vote, but also equality in marriage, access to divorce, an end to the sexual double standard, the right to refuse sex from their husbands, and the right to control their reproduction. The birth control movement of the early 20th century emerged in tandem with this wide-ranging feminist agenda, and was easily adopted by the "New Woman" of the era. [[File:440px-MargaretSanger-Underwood.LOC.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Margaret Sanger, c. 1922.]]
==What role did Margaret Sanger play in the creation of Planned Parenthood?==
Sanger’s foray into contraception emerged from her own personal experience. She was the 6th of 11 children born to Irish Catholic immigrant parents. Her mother had a number of miscarriages, and by some accounts, she was pregnant 17 or 18 times over the course of her short life. She died before the age of 50 and Sanger blamed her mother’s death on constant childbearing and lack of access to contraception.
== Towards Planned Parenthood ==
In 1921, Sanger established the American Birth Control League. This organization would serve as a precursor to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger served as its first president, and oversaw the creation of more, legal, birth control clinics. Perhaps recognizing that the laws needed to change in order to provide access to contraception in the hands of many, Sanger continued to lobby for changes to allow legal access to contraception. Sanger's lobbying was ultimately effective in the 1936 case ''United States v. One Package''. With this amendment to the Comstock Act, physicians were legally able to mail contraceptives across state lines.
Over the course of the next thirty years, Planned Parenthood was dedicated to provided access to contraception to those who needed it, but also to study the global impacts of population growth. In the 1940s, Planned Parenthood funded the development of a birth control pill. Eventually, these pills were tested in Puerto Rico--where other birth control methods were tested as well (sometimes unethically). The birth control pill was eventually approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1960; however, there were still legal troubles. Specifically, contraception was still illegal in some states.
In the landmark ruling in the 1965 case ''Griswold vs. Connecticut'', the Supreme Court argued that marital couples were entitled to a certain measure of privacy and that it was illegal to prevent married couples from accessing contraception. Unmarried couples would have to wait seven more years for the ruling in the 1972 case ''Eisenstadt v. Baird'' before contraception was legal for all persons--married or unmarried.
==Conclusion==
Despite the Rights Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, Planned Parenthood has remained significant in American culture and is a political lightning rod--a call to action for those who are anti-abortion, and an important center of reproductive knowledge, education, and access for all others. While many have reduced Planned Parenthood as abortion central, it continues to provide important STD, STI, Pregnancy, Prenatal, Postnatal, and Preventative Health screenings to all.
