The pressure for a more explicit statement and codification of women's reproductive rights today derives from two major forces in society, the first being the movement for equality for women before the law and the second from concerns about the environment and the damage done to the world ecosystem and social order by overpopulation. The issue has been framed as "reproductive rights" by the women's movement, and under this rubric are included issues of contraception, sexual freedom, and abortion. Those who oppose reproductive rights often do so for religious reasons, from a dedication to the traditional family unit and to traditional conceptions of women's social roles. These are not new issues, but they have been particularly powerful in motivating large numbers of people to agitate for change in this century. The concept of reproductive rights will be considered as the matter has been discussed, legislated, and adjudicated over the last century.
Birth control was a matter of controversy in the nineteenth century, though it was also a subject that was gaining more and more interest as the century progressed, with a variety of books and pamphlets offered to help people understand the issue and some of the techniques for what we would today call family planning. A crusade began in the 1870s to suppress birth control information, an attempt to force America to live up to its sexual ideals. Before the Civil War, moral reform was directed largely at slavery, but after the Civil War moral reform turned to vices and perceived problems with families. The first generation of professional women after the war led the fight for moral purity, and thousands of women enlisted in this purity crusade based on a belief that justice required a single standard of sexual morality: "They associated freer sexuality with the selfish appetites of men who lacked respect for women" (Reed 35). In New York, Anthony Comstock was leading a crusade to e...