History of birth control
Other birth control methods mentioned in the papyrus include the application of gummy substances to cover the "mouth of the womb" (i.e. the cervix), a mixture of honey and sodium carbonate applied to the inside of the vagina, and a pessary made from crocodile dung.
[6] The Book of Genesis references withdrawal, or coitus interruptus, as a method of contraception when Onan "spills his seed" (ejaculates) on the ground so as to not father a child with his deceased brother's wife Tamar.
[7][8] The plant only grew on a small strip of land near the coastal city of Cyrene (located in modern-day Libya)[7][8] and all attempts to cultivate it elsewhere resulted in failure.
[8] Possibly due to its supposed effectiveness and thus desirability, by the first century AD, it had become so rare that it was worth more than its weight in silver and, by late antiquity, it was fully extinct.
Other plants commonly used for birth control in ancient Greece include Queen Anne's lace (Daucus carota), willow, date palm, pomegranate, pennyroyal, artemisia, myrrh, and rue.
[9] A Hippocratic text On the Nature of Women recommended that a woman who did not desire to conceive a child should drink a copper salt dissolved in water, which it claimed would prevent pregnancy for a year.
[9] He took a rational approach to this, rejecting the use of superstition and amulets and instead prescribing common-sense mechanical methods such as vaginal plugs and pessaries using wool as a base covered in oils or other gummy substances.
[10] In India, Vatsyayana's classical text (2nd century AD) presented various contraceptive methods including coitus obstructus involving controlling the release of semen.
The bitter cherry plant (Prunus emarginata), corn lily (Veratrum californicum), and star-flowered lily-of-the-valley (Maianthemum stellatum) were used by a variety of different tribes as a form of contraceptive or sterility inducer.
[12] Nahua women used parts of the plants in the Bignonia and Hameilia genera and those of the shaving brush tree (Pseudobombax ellipticum) in their medical practices as well.
[13] In the late 9th to early 10th century, the Persian physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi documented coitus interruptus, preventing ejaculation and the use of pessaries to block the cervix as birth control methods.
[14] During the same period Ali ibn Abbas al-Majusi (Persian) documented the use of pessaries made of rock salt for women for whom pregnancy may be dangerous.
[16] Historian John M. Riddle has advanced the hypothesis that women in classical antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Early Modern period used herbs to control fertility.
[22] Demographer Gigi Santow also takes issue with the proposition, writing that it overemphasizes the role of herbs and stating that Riddle seeks "not so much to persuade as to convert.
In the bull, which is sometimes referred to as the "Witch-Bull of 1484", the witches were explicitly accused of having "slain infants yet in the mother's womb" (abortion) and of "hindering men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving" (contraception).
"[32] Malthus later elaborated his contention that human misery (e.g., hunger, disease, and war) was the principal limitation on population growth and would inevitably afflict society along with volatile boom-and-bust economic cycles.
Instead Malthus recommended the preventive checks of sexual continence (chastity) and later marriages, which would produce both higher standards of living and greater economic stability without violating Christian morality.
[33] Malthus's ideas came to carry great weight in British political debate in the 19th century, and they heavily influenced the movement toward the adoption of laissez-faire liberal capitalism.
[42] Starting in the 1880s, birth rates began to drop steadily in the industrialized countries, as women married later and families in urban living conditions increasingly favoured having fewer children.
Stopes, who exchanged ideas with Sanger,[49] wrote her book Married Love on birth control in 1918; - it was eventually published privately due to its controversial nature.
[54] The clinic, run by midwives and supported by visiting doctors,[55] offered mothers birth control advice and taught them the use of a cervical cap.
[58] Throughout the 1920s, Stopes and other feminist pioneers, including Dora Russell and Stella Browne, played a major role in breaking down taboos about sex and increasing knowledge, pleasure and improved reproductive health.
[64] Birth control also became a major theme in feminist politics; reproduction issues were cited as examples of women's powerlessness to exercise their rights.
[65] Starting in the 1930s and intensifying in the '60s and '70s, the birth control movement advocated for the legalisation of abortion and large scale education campaigns about contraception by governments.
[64] In a broader context birth control became an arena for conflict between liberal and conservative values, raising questions about family, personal freedom, state intervention, religion in politics, sexual morality and social welfare.
[65] Gregory Pincus and John Rock, with help from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, developed the first birth control pills in the 1950s, which became publicly available in the 1960s.
