Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Birth Control

The Institute of Medicine (part of the National Academies) has just released a report recommending (among other things) that FDA-approved contraceptives should be on the list of services insurance companies must provide to women without copays. This would mean that for women with health insurance, contraception would be free. Public policy about reproductive matters is always controversial in this country, and there is no doubt that this recommendation will inspire a lively debate. I know you, dear readers, have lots to contribute to this debate already – but if you'd like to join with me in a crash course in birth control history, read on!

Let's begin with the ancient world.  Contraception seems like such a very modern thing – many contraceptive methods were invented in the 20th century and it's a little difficult to imagine how folks navigated the challenge of contraception in the distant past. John M. Riddle explores this historical territory in his sharply argued Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance. Riddle exposes evidence that people throughout western history have known safe and effective means of contraception – from the ancient Egyptians on up. He then goes on to explore the question of how this knowledge was lost during the Middle Ages. Fascinating stuff!

But how were modern contraceptives developed, and how did they become available to people in the United States? In her book Devices and Desires, Andrea Tone explains the history of the technological developments, business innovations, and social changes that brought us the Pill, the IUD, and many other modern contraceptives. Tone lays the groundwork for her history with a discussion of the Comstock Act, which criminalized the production and sale of birth control in 1873, and then details a dizzying array of new products and their consequences: chemical spermicides, antiseptic douches, the Dalkon Shield, vaginal sponges, and many other contraceptive methods and devices.  Along the way, she makes sure to explain the human stories that illustrate how contraceptives have affected men and women's lives in the last 140 years.

And, lest we take a view to focused on technology, let's close our course of study with Rickie Solinger's Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America.  The book chronicles a wide range of reproductive issues across American history – from slaveholders' breeding schemes to the question of which children are removed from their parents into foster care. Some women, Solinger argues, are encouraged to birth and raise children, while others are impeded from becoming mothers, and this pattern is the result of societal biases about race and class. According to her account, women's own choices are hardly the only meaningful factor in whether, when, and how they have and raise children.