Who Chooses? American Reproductive History since 1830 (review)

In the pantheon of early twentieth-century American social reformers, Margaret Higgins Sanger (1879–1966) is without peer. In our contemporary age, it is difficult to conceive of the barriers women faced, and continued to encounter until a half century ago, for information on matters of birth control and family planning. Trained as a practical nurse, traumatized by her mother's early death, which Sanger attributed to having spent too much of her life in a gravid state, and deeply concerned by the experience of women facing serial pregnancy (particularly lower-income, less well-educated women), Sanger dedicated her career and life to battling the establishment and reactionary religious intolerance for women's reproductive rights. Through her writing, lecturing, and witness, Sanger challenged the 1873 Comstock Act that defined contraceptives as obscene and illicit and made it a federal offense to disseminate birth control information. Sanger fought for sex education, family limitation, and the ability of women to obtain accurate and effective information on "birth control," a term she created. In 1914, Sanger commenced publication of The Woman Rebel, a monthly that advocated militant feminism and information on birth control. Soon, she was forced to flee to the United Kingdom to avoid trial for illegally dispensing contraceptive information. A year later, she returned to open a women's clinic with her sister in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Police raided the clinic after little more than a week and arrested Sanger and her sister. They were ultimately convicted and spent a month imprisoned on Blackwell's Island. Other dedicated women joined Sanger in this crusade to help shape our culture and society. These women did not form a cohesive group, differing as they did on issues such as regulation versus liberation, reform versus revolution, secular versus religious motivations, but they were connected by a common thread of working for the betterment of their sisters and colleagues. Much of this history has been documented in other works.

In her monograph Who Chooses? American Reproductive History since 1830, the Wake Forest University historian Simone M. Caron details the vicissitudes of the birth control/contraception movement in America, and also discusses the history of issues regarding sterilization and abortion. In nine chapters, Caron surveys these topics during the nineteenth century, the early twentieth-century work of Sanger and others, the eugenics movement, attempts at population control during the depression of the 1930s, the baby boom following World War II, events of the 1960s "Great Society" in which federal policy toward family planning underwent a revolution, introduction of the pill, and aspects of contraception, sterilization, and abortion up to the beginning of the new century. Although not explicitly stated, the theme covers much of the Progressive movement and the social Darwinist population controllers during the past century. Particularly striking is the documentation of opposition by the Catholic Church to legislation, with the inducement of fear among legislators seeking governmental, state, or local support for contraception (over two dozen major instances with references).

Among the strengths of this volume, Caron uses the state of Rhode Island as a case study, with its legacy of the Protestant theologian Roger Williams (1603–83) (America's first proponent of the separation of church and state, and individual religious freedom). As well, the work presents a wide-ranging survey with national perspective. Well organized thematically, the book is clearly written. Of notable value, essentially every chapter presents an introductory overview as well as a concluding summary. The work is also well referenced, although many comments and quotations are from secondary sources. A major weakness is that in many instances, the chronology is unclear without repeatedly checking the references. Also, the index is quite limited, failing to include a number of the individuals discussed and specific topics presented, and contains several errors. Also, perhaps from a biased medical perspective, the author overlooks no opportunity to knock physicians as part of the "white elite power structure" (81), advocates of "sterilizing the unfit...