Show Notes
Birth control has a long history in America. In colonial times, people relied on withdrawal, herbal remedies, and homemade barriers, though few spoke about it openly. During the 1800s, condoms became more practical after Charles Goodyear learned to vulcanize rubber in 1839, and diaphragms and douches came into use as well. This progress met resistance. In 1873, the Comstock Act made it a crime to send contraceptives or information about them through the mail, treating the subject as obscene and pushing it out of public view. The movement took shape through Margaret Sanger. She opened the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916 and gave the practice its name. Her organization eventually became Planned Parenthood. The legal walls came down slowly. A 1936 court ruling weakened the Comstock restrictions and allowed doctors to prescribe contraceptives. The turning point came in 1960, when the FDA approved the first birth control pill. The Pill gave women far more control over their own lives and became a defining part of the decade that followed. The courts soon caught up. In Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, the Supreme Court ruled that married couples had a right to use contraception. In 1972, Eisenstadt v. Baird extended that right to unmarried people. The years after brought more options: the IUD, hormonal implants, and emergency contraception such as Plan B, which later became available over the counter. In 2010, the Affordable Care Act required most insurance plans to cover contraception at no cost, a rule that drew legal challenges over religious objections. Contraception is still a subject of political debate. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, questions returned about the privacy rulings that once secured the right to birth control, and its future remains uncertain. References (full list on patreon)
Avery, B. Y. (1991). Empowerment through wellness. Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, 4(1), 147–154. Baker, J. H. (2011). Margaret Sanger: A life of passion. Hill and Wang. Balmer, R. (2021). Bad faith: Race and the rise of the religious right. Eerdmans. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 (2014). Center for Constitutional Rights. (2021, February 1). Black liberation archives, week 1: Fannie Lou Hamer taught us. https://ccrjustice.org/home/blog/2021/02/01/black-liberation-archives-week-1-fannie-lou-hamer-taught-us Christianity Knowledge Base. (2005). Contraception. https://christianity.fandom.com/wiki/Contraception Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. (2017). Taking the unintended out of pregnancy: Colorado’s success with long-acting reversible contraception. Commonwealth Fund. (2025, December 16). Overview of federally funded contraceptive programs. Issue Briefs. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2025/dec/overview-federally-funded-contraceptive-programs D’Emilio, J., & Freedman, E. B. (2012). Intimate matters: A history of sexuality in America (3rd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022). Eisenberg, M. L., & Lipshultz, L. I. (2010). Estimating the number of vasectomies performed annually in the United States: Data from the National Survey of Family Growth. Journal of Urology, 184(5), 2068–2072. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.juro.2010.06.117 Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972). Franks, A. (2020, July 28). Margaret Sanger’s extreme brand of eugenics. America Magazine. https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/07/28/margaret-sangers-extreme-brand-eugenics/ Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). Guttmacher Institute. (2023). Contraceptive use in the United States [Fact sheet]. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-united-states Guttmacher Institute. (2025, September). The right is waging a quiet war on contraception. Jones, R. K., & Dreweke, J. (2011). Countering conventional wisdom: New evidence on religion and contraceptive use.
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