Page 282 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

women’s reproductive-rights movements 2059

Britain, the common perception was that abortion was However, efforts to open birth control clinics both in
not a crime until “quickening” (when the fetus begins the United States and Europe met with considerable
moving). The Catholic Church at this time did not have resistance from the government as well as the Church,
a strong stand on the question of abortion. especially during the post–World War I years. A drastic
However, in the 1870s, as the use of birth control and decline in birth rates prompted the United States and
abortions grew, three groups—male medical practition- most European governments to attempt to control
ers, industrialists, and eugenicists—coalesced and called women’s fertility by encouraging births. Women were
for outlawing abortion and establishing considerable rewarded for producing many children, and indeed, dur-
male control over women’s fertility. Male physicians ing the decades following World War I, women’s fertility
wanted to monopolize women’s health by encouraging was linked to national vitality and prestige. Most Euro-
the rapid medicalization of childbirth. This resulted in pean governments introduced comprehensive welfare
marginalizing female midwives. Industrialists wanted to programs to aid and encourage parenthood.At the same
increase their productivity and profits by employing time, eugenicists lobbied hard to influence Western gov-
more women and children. Eugenicists argued for the ernments to control fertility by restricting the birthrate
rapid demographic growth of peoples of European among groups deemed “socially inappropriate.” Abor-
descent at the expense of “others.” The United States gov- tions and involuntary sterilizations were performed clan-
ernment responded with the Comstock Act of 1873, destinely, often in unsanitary conditions, on women
which restricted distribution of any material considered belonging to these groups.
obscene. Information on abortion and birth control
came under the purview of this restrictive law. As a con- Abortion Rights
sequence, women were denied gynecological and con- The 1960s were a major watershed in the reproductive-
traceptive information. rights movement.Women on both sides of the Atlantic
discovered feminist theories linking reproductive and
From 1900 to the 1950s sexual freedom to improving the quality of their lives.
The beginnings of the twentieth century coincided with They began to question their traditional roles as wives
the first battle for reproductive rights in the form of and mothers and articulated their need to control their
demands for access to gynecological and contraceptive own bodies in order to be liberated. The invention of
information. U.S. activists such as Margaret Sanger the birth control pill (approved by the U.S. Food and
(1879–1966) and the socialist Emma Goldman (1869– Drug Administration in 1960) was a major step in that
1940) and British activists such as Marie Stopes (1880– direction, as it allowed women the freedom to be sex-
1938) held public forums to advocate that reproductive ually active without the fear of becoming pregnant, if
rights were crucial to improving women’s status in soci- they so chose.
ety.They argued that working-class and poor women be In the United States, the women’s movement of the
allowed access to information. Despite being publicly 1960s linked reproductive rights to political, social, and
ridiculed, harassed, and arrested under the Comstock Act, economic power for women in society. Feminists
Sanger and Goldman successfully overturned the Act. demanded easy access to contraceptive and gynecologi-
Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, the cal information. They also exposed the hazardous con-
forerunner of today’s Planned Parenthood. In Great ditions under which illegal abortions were performed,
Britain, Marie Stopes continued to campaign for more primarily on the poor and women of color. They stated
government funding to open clinics that would provide that abortions were conducted without anesthesia and
women with information that would help them to make frequently in unsanitary conditions that seriously jeop-
informed choices. ardized the health of the mother.