Birth Control And Abortion Essay

Mariana Aponte

Professor Leiderman

ENC 1101

March 15, 2017

Abortion and Birth Control

Feminism has been an important topic since the end of the 19th century. That is when the first wave of Feminism began by Elizabeth Cady Stanton who drafted the Seneca Falls Declaration to outline the new movement. Three hundred men and women joined together to rally towards equality for women. Their initial goal was to give women the chance to vote “so that [they] might have some influence over their fate”. Women wanted to have the right to better education, employment opportunities, wages and working conditions. ”In 1873, The Comstock Act, a federal act passed by the United States Congress, targeted pornography, contraceptive equipment, educational materials

The reason? Population; People became frightened that our country was going to become overrun with immigrants due to the rapid reproduction compared to us. Women felt that they had no choice then to take to extreme measures. “Many women died or suffered serious medical problems after attempting to self-induce their abortions or going to untrained practitioners who performed abortions with primitive methods or in unsanitary conditions. During this time, hospital emergency room staff treated thousands of women who either died or were suffering terrible effects of abortions provided without adequate skill and care.” In 1973, in the Roe v. Wade case the Supreme Court made the decision to make abortion legal, due to the unsafe circumstances of back alley abortions. It then became safe for women have an abortions from well-trained medical practitioners, leading to dramatic decreases in pregnancy-related injury and

In the Comstock Act, in 1873, the pill was outlawed, but knowing how hard the decision to have an abortion would be Margaret Sanger, born in 1879 who was a birth control, population control, and eugenics activist, came in (with some help) and produced “[the] magic pill”and sold it in a black market. Katherine Mccormack, a radical feminist, funded Sangers research to find a pill that can be most effective. Two Catholic OB/GYN doctors, Dr. Gregory Pincus and Dr. John Rock, violated Church teachings by advocating contraception, and began human trials of the pill. They tested 50 women with the pill and it came out positive that all 50 of the women were incapable of getting pregnant while on the pill. They also, without given consent, gave the pill to 12 female and 16 male psychiatric patients, to test side effects. The pill got lots of attention from scientists, and in 1956 they were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In 1962, “Serious side effects from the pill, such as blood clots and heart attacks, began to be publicized. Searle receives reports of 132 blood clots, 11 of which were terminal.” “Griswold v. Connecticut originated as a prosecution under the Connecticut Comstock Act of 1879. The law made it illegal to use "any drug, medicinal article, or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception”’ In 1911, Margaret moved to New York where she became an influential person by participating in radical groups and