How Birth Control Changed America

How Birth Control Changed America
The sexualization of women in the media is often overlooked in today’s world; as a result of frequency and the normalization it has received from the beginning. Although sexist ideology against women originates from an extremely young age, the perspective of women being sexually active for intentions that are not linked to reproduction is still viewed as being taboo. The twentieth century allowed women to have a yet another source of empowerment with the creation of a revolutionary oral contraceptive that would become a turning point in American medicine and life. This option created a decrease in the amount of teen pregnancies, thus allowing women to further their education which in turn, lowers the wage

For centuries women were always supposed to just bear their husband’s child, and be nothing more than a mother and wife. This created lots of problems, such as the millions of childbirth related deaths and home abortions.This eventually sparked an initiative in Margaret Sanger. As a result of the death of Margaret Sanger’s mother due to multiple childbirths, Sanger was motivated to finding a prevention of pregnancy that could potentially save lives (Gibbs, Van Pyke and Adams 41). This task, however was not easily achieved. Sanger experienced multiple roadblocks on her journey to fight for the invention, as well as women’s rights to accessing oral contraceptives. In the year of 1914, Sanger was arrested for distribution of her magazine, The Woman Rebel which included progressive ideas about birth control use (41). Two years later, Sanger was arrested for a second time in Brooklyn, New York for opening the original family planning clinic (“History of Birth Control” 98). It was not until 1923 that Sanger achieved her goals of bringing America the first legal birth control clinic, which coined the name Planned Parenthood two years

Planned Parenthood declares that, “College enrollment was 20% higher among women who could access the birth control pill legally by age 18 in 1970” (2) In the article “Love, Sex, Freedom and The Paradox Of the Pill” authors Kathleen Gibbs, Nancy Van Dyk and Deirdre Adams reveal that the increasing number of women going into college was a result of colleges and graduate schools being encouraged to change their perspective of women dropping out due to pregnancy and allowing them to attend. Thus making the number of women seeking an education to increase greatly, “...10% of first year law students to 36% and from 4% of business-school students to 28%” (45). Before birth control it was difficult for women to be accepted into colleges due to the sexism held by the majority of America which led them to believe that careers such as being a lawyer, was a job only a man could pursue. The contraceptive was making a huge impact on how women were looked at in the educational system, as well as how they could further their abilities without being restricted by having a child too