Elaine Tyler May's America And The Pill

Taylor Hurst Kaiser AP Lang 11 November 2015 Analysis of Margaret Sanger’s Speech on Birth Control Margaret Sanger, an American birth control activist, made an announcement titled “The Children’s Era,’ at the first national birth-control conference in March of 1925. In this speech, Sanger attempts to influence her ideas and beliefs on the importance of birth control and contraceptives to the health of society’s women. She also vividly explains how controlled childbearing would apply to children who would eventually be born.

In America and The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation, Elaine May Tyler examined the history of birth control in the United States. May traced the pill's conception and evolution the United States through to the twenty-first century. The book consisted of an introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion. May approached the topic in the context of influence of suffragist and reformer Margaret Sanger's advocacy originating in the late Progressive Era and Cold War American ideology, through to the emerging movements of the sexual revolution and the feminist movement, including acknowledging political, religious, racial, socio-economic, and gender bias factors.

The first article presented only the author’s point of view and refused to say the words “birth-control” or even “contraceptives.” Sadly, it only focused on how “evil” the people were who were sending out the literature, not how these women, many of whom were likely married, simply did not want any more children and needed medication and information on how to prevent pregnancy. The second article, however, addressed the issue with a more factual approach. It seemed to accept the idea that women have the right to birth control and sex education, even if the author only discussed married people. These articles are evidence of how, in one hundred years, the nation can change its entire stance on an issue.

She introduces the use of contraceptives, “it’s a piece of equipment with a practical purpose, like a...” (Kingsolver, 150) In the beginning, Codi was always avoiding situations that would bring back the memories of her miscarriage. Nonetheless, Codi’s willingness to introduce the unit of birth control into the school’s curriculum portrays her finally not letting the death of her child set her back. Finally the question is answered through Codi’s ability to conceive another child.

The center for information distribution affected women’s lives for the better. Just the possibility to become educated on the subject of birth control could protect people from undesired situations, but to personally distribute the necessary contraceptives to women is a huge leap toward reform and changing public standards. Next, Margaret Sanger “Opened the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in New York City,” (Commire, ed., 1994). This research was aimed at driving toward birth control breakthroughs and changing the norm for family planning.

In the early 1900s, women’s health was non-existent. It was not taught in school, it was never spoken about in the media, and many women themselves had no knowledge about reproductive health. During this time it was common to see women with ten, fifteen, even twenty pregnancies throughout their lives. Men and women both were often unaware on how to plan or prevent a pregnancy and birth control was pronounced illegal. Consequently, this was also a period of high childbirth mortality, as well as a time where many women were dying due to self-induced or “back-alley” abortions.

Margaret Sanger knew first-hand what it was like to experience the effects of a life without birth control, being the sister of ten siblings. Her activism for birth control was strongly influenced by her personal experience. At the young age of nineteen, she tragically watched her own mother die from tuberculosis. She personally blamed her father for causing this, saying her mother died from “having too many children and working herself to death” (Amory, 2011).

In the year 1700 there were too many pregnancies going on and the population was getting larger with just small amount of resources. During the baby boom years there was an average of 3.5 babies born to each couple in American couple. The use of the birth control was what prevented America from being overpopulated. According to Wikipedia, birth control or contraception are methods or devices used to prevent pregnancy. These birth controls are meant for women to prevent them from unwanted pregnancy, and many other women till choses not to use these methods of contraception because of the side effects they have.

Mandatory Insurance Coverage on Birth Control: Good or Bad? “Unplanned pregnancies can have severe consequences, such as physical and emotional stress, as well as financial hardship” (Friedman). The Affordable Care Act put into action on March 23, 2010 mandated that insurance companies fully cover contraceptives for women (Pecquet). Nearly 30 million women are already benefiting greatly from this mandate (Chesler and Flynn, “The Contraceptive Mandate”).

The 1960’s became a key moment of social change which saw a significant shift in societal attitudes, values and patterns of family formation and gender relations. The introduction of the pill in 1961 was viewed as an ‘equaliser’ in providing women the same sexual freedom as men, aiding in a rise of promiscuity and the separation of reproduction from sex which directly opposed deeply ingrained religious values of society. Women no longer had to choose between having a family and having an occupation, and this lead to not only the de-institutionalisation of reproductive partnerships but also an increase in singleness and childlessness. This is evident in a steady decline in the crude

By telling women that the pill can better complexion and reduce the effects of menopause, Vogue is telling women how to keep their husbands even as they get older. Rather than using the pill as a medium for women’s liberation, Vogue highlights its uses to continue the oppression of women in the domestic

Effective contraceptives were considered a luxury but companies decided to sell “feminine hygiene” with the underlying promise of birth control, where the underlying part made it legal. Manufacturers even went as far as making female sellers wear nurse outfits in order to get women buying the contraceptives to trust them. The industry ultimately shaped and controlled the birth control developments in the U.S. Commercialization profited on the fact that birth control was in high demand and found an abundance of ways to get women to buy them, even though some of the ways were not

In 1961, Kurt Vonnegut was concerned about overpopulation in the world. With his short story, “Welcome to the Monkey House”, he displays how a society attempts to control overpopulation by having only one legal form of birth control. The one legal form of birth control is a pill for males and females that made people numb from the waist down. The birth control was described as, “The pills were ethical because they didn’t interfere with a person’s ability to reproduce, which would have been unnatural and immoral. All the pills did was take every bit of pleasure out of sex.”

A big outcry has been heard from people as the Trump Administration decided to rollback the requirement that birth control coverage is mandated by employer-provided health insurances. Without this mandate, an employer has the choice to deny any birth control insurance coverage to women of their workforce based solely on their religious and moral beliefs. This affects thousands of women that rely on their company’s health insurance plan to provide a low-cost method to receiving birth control. Although this may conflict with the employer’s beliefs and moral system, women also use birth control for many other purposes: to control periods, acne, or even reducing the symptoms of serious health issues such as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. The argument against the

Birth control and the cost of contraceptives has been an ongoing debate since the early 1900s with the birth control movement in the United States. Back then, women who used birth control were seen as scandalous and immoral. Now that birth control is more common – and since then new forms of birth control have been produced – not as many people criticize those who use contraceptives. Some might still not agree with women’s use of contraceptives and can argue against affordable birth control. Having affordable, accessible birth control means women can stay sexually active without having to worry as much about getting pregnant.