Family Planning Timeline
History of Birth Control in the United States
1873 — Congress passes the “Comstock Act,” named after moral crusader Anthony Comstock, defining contraceptives as obscene and illicit and making it a Federal offense to disseminate birth control through the mail or across State lines. 1900 — Six to nine out of every 1,000 women die in childbirth, and one in five children die during the first five years of life. 1916 — Margaret Sanger, a public health nurse, opens America’s first family planning clinic, in Brooklyn, New York. It is shut down within 10 days. 1921 — Sanger founds the American Birth Control League, which later becomes the…
