Birth Control: Then and Now

By: Dina Pobudanovic

                Today, when we think about birth control, we think about little pink-colored pills, the patch, little t-shaped IUDs with weird names like Mirena, and we’ve ALL seen that commercial about the recall on YAZ and Yasmin birth control, at least once. But what we don’t hear about is the various and sometimes unethical things that women would do to protect themselves from getting pregnant. Things such as having the man “pull-out” and relying on random crushed leaves and berries to protect themselves from getting pregnant. While some of the things I’m going to introduce may sound unbelievable, keep in mind that there wasn’t running water, much less a birth control pill with hormones in it to control ovulation and a woman’s menstrual cycle.

                To begin, there are records from 3000 B.C. which shows that people, “made condoms from fish bladders, linen sheaths, and even animal intestines.”[1] I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable having sex with a man that had animal intestines wrapped around his penis as a condom. But this was an interesting fact to discover, because it shows that even men in the B.C. era were taking precautions on getting a woman pregnant and some guys today aren’t even smart enough to purchase them. Moving on to 1550, women would, “mix dates, acacia, and honey into a paste, smear it over wool and use it as a prevention method.”[2] On to the 1700s, there was a man by the name of Giacomo Casanova. He was an adventurer, a free-spirit, and a passionate lover. He had a reputation was a “womanizer”[3] but he even experimented with birth control. In his memoir, he wrote of, “experimenting with sheep-bladder condoms to the use of half a lemon as a makeshift cervical cap.”[4] And once again, if a womanizer like Casanova can use a form of condoms and fruits as birth control, it just blows my mind that guys in the 21^st century can’t do this. It’s just backwards.

                Now we’re into the 20^th century and from 1914 to 1921, Margaret Sanger, “invented the term ‘birth control,’ opened the first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and started the American Birth Control League.”[2] During this time, Sanger suffered from any arrests and prosecutions, and even spent 30 days in jail for being deemed a “public nuisance.”[2] I was surprised to learn this because documented since B.C. men and women were participating in prevention of unplanned pregnancies but the law, at this time, prevented any form of birth control pill to be invented for public use. Finally, however, in 1951 Sanger teamed up with Gregory Pincus and together they began constructing a birth control pill and in 1960 it was finally approved for contraceptive use.[2]

                Overall, contraception was a thing of the past and is now a thing of the future. The controversy
among birth control is still present in today’s society but if you really think about it, if it wasn’t for women like Sanger, we might not have even gotten this far. We do have other methods of birth control today, also, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, but none of that would have been possible without the perseverance of Sanger many years ago. Sometimes, all it takes is one voice to stand out against the crowd and when it comes to contraception, it was definitely worthwhile.

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[1] "A New Edition for a New Era - Our Bodies Ourselves." A New Edition for a New Era - Our Bodies Ourselves. http://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/book/companion.asp?id=18&compID=53 (accessed January 28, 2014).

[2] Nikolchev, Alexandra. "A brief history of the birth control pill." PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/a-brief-history-of-the-birth-control-pill/480/ (accessed January 30, 2014).

[3] Cavendish, Richard. "The Death of Casanova." History Today. http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/death-casanova (accessed January 31, 2014).

[4] Time Inc.. "A Brief History of Birth Control." Time. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1983970,00.html (accessed January 28, 2014).