Birth control politics in the United States, 1916-1945

In a disturbing behind-the-scenes history of the early achievements of Margaret Sanger's American birth control movement, Carole R. McCann scrutinizes the movement's compromises as well as its successes.

The author traces the birth control movement that legalized the availability of contraceptive information and devices and facilitated wider availability of the methods of family limitation to American society. She defines the central factors which influenced birth control's utilization and examines the relations between birth control, feminism, the medical profession, eugenics/racial betterment, the Interracial Coalition for Birth Control and the shift from laywomen to organization men in movement leadership. The book shows the early opportunities that public and professional discussion of female fertility provided groups with agendas antithetical to women's rights and demonstrates that these opportunities can be productively mined in a society ambivalent about race and gender equality.