Wikipedia:Today's featured article/March 12, 2012



The birth control movement in the United States was a social reform campaign from 1914 to the 1940s that increased the availability of contraception through education and legalization. The movement was started by Emma Goldman, Mary Dennett, and Margaret Sanger, who were concerned about the hardships that childbirth and self-induced abortions brought to low-income women. In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the US, but it was immediately shut down by police. A major turning point for the movement came during World War I, when many US servicemen were diagnosed with venereal diseases, leading to an anti-venereal disease campaign that treated contraception as a matter of public health. Sanger successfully opened a second birth control clinic in 1923. Legal victories in the 1930s continued to weaken anti-contraception laws and in 1937 the American Medical Association adopted contraception as a core component of medical school curriculums. In 1942, the Planned Parenthood organization was formed, creating a nationwide network of birth control clinics. (more...)

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