The movement began in 1914 when a group of political radicals in New York City, led by Emma Goldman, Mary Dennett, and Margaret Sanger, became concerned about the hardships that childbirth and self-induced abortions brought to low-income women.

The government's response included an anti-venereal disease campaign that framed sexual intercourse and contraception as issues of public health and legitimate topics of scientific research.

[15] Contraception was legal in the United States throughout most of the 19th century, but in the 1870s a social purity movement grew in strength, aimed at outlawing vice in general, and prostitution and obscenity in particular.

[16] Composed primarily of Protestant moral reformers and middle-class women, the Victorian-era campaign also attacked contraception, which was viewed as an immoral practice that promoted prostitution and venereal disease.

[19] Comstock and his allies also took aim at the libertarians and utopians who comprised the free love movement – an initiative to promote sexual freedom, equality for women, and abolition of marriage.

[21] The efforts of the free love movement were not successful and, at the beginning of the 20th century, federal and state governments began to enforce the Comstock laws more rigorously.

[23] Supported by radicals, feminists, anarchists, and atheists such as Ezra Heywood, Moses Harman, D. M. Bennett, and Emma Goldman, these activists regularly battled anti-obscenity laws and, later, the government's effort to suppress speech critical of involvement in World War I.

[25] Goldman's circle of radicals, socialists, and bohemians was joined in 1912 by a nurse, Margaret Sanger, whose mother had been through 18 pregnancies in 22 years, and died at age 50 of tuberculosis and cervical cancer.

[36] While Sanger was in Europe, her husband continued her work, which led to his arrest after he distributed a copy of a birth control pamphlet to an undercover postal worker.

[37] The arrest and his 30-day jail sentence prompted several mainstream publications, including Harper's Weekly and the New-York Tribune, to publish articles about the birth control controversy.

[53] The committee also started publishing the monthly journal Birth Control Review, and established a network of connections to powerful politicians, activists, and press figures.

[58] The publicity from Sanger's trial and Byrne's hunger strike generated immense enthusiasm for the cause, and by the end of 1917 there were over 30 birth control organizations in the United States.

[64] Sanger and her fellow advocates began to tone down their radical rhetoric and instead emphasized the socioeconomic benefits of birth control, a policy which led to increasing acceptance by mainstream Americans.

[70] British suffragette activist Kitty Marion, standing on New York street corners, sold the Review at 20 cents per copy, enduring death threats, heckling, spitting, physical abuse, and police harassment.

[74] The birth control movement received an unexpected boost during World War I, as a result of a crisis the U.S. military experienced when many of its soldiers were diagnosed with syphilis or gonorrhea.

[76] The military's anti-venereal disease campaign marked a major turning point for the movement: it was the first time a government institution had engaged in a sustained, public discussion of sexual matters.

On the final night of the conference, as Sanger prepared to give a speech in the crowded Town Hall theater, police raided the meeting and arrested her for disorderly conduct.

[91] The Town Hall raid was a turning point for the movement: opposition from the government and medical community faded, and the Catholic Church emerged as its most vocal opponent.

[95] To avoid police harassment the clinic's existence was not publicized, its primary mission was stated to be conducting scientific research, and it only provided services to married women.

Following the successful opening of the CRB in 1923, public discussion of contraception became more commonplace, and the term "birth control" became firmly established in the nation's vernacular.

[105] However, Catholic lobbying was particularly effective in the legislative arena, where their arguments – that contraception was unnatural, harmful, and indecent – impeded several initiatives, including an attempt in 1924 by Mary Dennett to overturn federal anti-contraception laws.

[108] The ABCL achieved a major victory in the trial, when the judge ruled that use of contraceptives to space births farther apart was a legitimate medical treatment that benefited the health of the mother.

[117] The dominance of whites in the movement's leadership and medical staff resulted in accusations of racism from blacks and suspicions that "race suicide" would be a consequence of large scale adoption of birth control.

[125] Based on her work at the Harlem clinic, Sanger suggested to the DNS that African Americans were more likely to take advice from a doctor of their own race, but other leaders prevailed and insisted that whites be employed in the outreach efforts.

[139] Leaders of both groups viewed this as an auspicious time to merge the two organizations, so, in 1937, the Birth Control Council of America, under the leadership of Sanger, was formed to effect a consolidation.

[144] In 1942, there were over 400 birth control organizations in America, contraception was fully embraced by the medical profession, and the anti-contraception Comstock laws (which still remained on the books) were rarely enforced.

[148] Fear of global overpopulation became a major issue in the 1960s, generating concerns about pollution, food shortages, and quality of life, leading to well-funded birth control campaigns around the world.

[151] In the early 1950s in the United States, philanthropist Katharine McCormick provided funding for biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the birth control pill, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1960.

In 1967 activist Bill Baird was arrested for distributing a contraceptive foam and a condom to a student during a lecture on birth control and abortion at Boston University.

[160] In 1982, European drug manufacturers developed mifepristone, which was initially utilized as a contraceptive, but is now generally prescribed with a prostoglandin to induce abortion in pregnancies up to the fourth month of gestation.