ted States in 1916. The clinic was open for only ten days before being closed by the police, and Sanger was accused of having broken Section 1142 of the state penal code that made it a misdemeanor to give away or sell information on contraception. She would ultimately prevail and change the law, but it would not be until 1923 when another clinic could be opened (Reed 106-108).
The 1920s was a period of professionalization of birth control in America, and proponents now "sought to solve by objective study what had previously been ethical and political questions" (Gordon 253). In 1942 Sanger's Birth Control Federation of America changed its name to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the only national birth-control organization until the abortion-reform movement of the late 1960s. The new name--Planned Parenthood--defined a new conception of birth control that would now dominate in the United States (Gordon 341). The anovulant pill would be the first new contraceptive developed in the twentieth century, and it would change th
...