A "Semiofficial" Program: New Deal Politics and the Discourse of Birth Control in California, 1939–1942

During the later years of the Great Depression, birth control advocates in the Birth Control Federation of America (BCFA) developed a program to distribute birth control among California's migrant workers. In order to reach the migrants, these advocates reached out to the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a New Deal agency that was establishing its own programs to "rehabilitate" migrant families. Though the top levels of the FSA were wary of becoming publicly involved with the birth control movement, they lent their tacit support to the program. The resulting "semiofficial" program to bring birth control to California's poor relied heavily on the support of local administrators and professionals. This article examines the on-the-ground operations of this project; in doing so, it challenges the traditional top-down narrative of the New Deal and explores how the forging of alliances at the local level reshaped the political landscape.