CHAPTER TWO
2.1 GENERAL REVIEW
The history of family planning in the United States was relatively uneventful until the late 19th century. Prior to this time, the majors of contraception were abstinence, withdrawal and infanticide (killing of an infant).
Children were generally considered an economic, asset in a rural subsistence lifestyle. It was not until the urban influx that the idea of small families was seen as directly relating to increased wealth and standards of living.
Family planning refers to the use of modern contraception and other method of birth control to regulate the number, timing and spacing of human births. It allows parents, particularly mothers, to plan their lives without being overly subject to sexual and social imperatives. However, family planning is not seen by all as a humane or necessary interventions, it is an arena of contestation within broader social and political conflicts involving religious and cultural injunctions, patriarchal subordination of women, social- class, formation and global political and economic relations. (Federal Office of Statistics, 1992).
Attempts to control human reproduction is not entirely a modern phenomenon. Throughout history, human beings have engaged in both pro and antinatalist practical directed social welfare. In many foraging and agricultural societies a variety of methods such as space births and maintain an equilibrium between resources and population size. But in hierarchical societies, population regulation practices did not bring equivalent or beneficial results to everyone. Anthropologists Marvin Harris and Eric Ross have shown that “As power differentials increase, the upper and lower strata may, in fact, develop different or even antagonistic systems of population regulationâ€. Being uniquely endowed with the capacity for reproduction, women of course have borne the costs of pregnancy, birth and location, as well as abortion and other stressful methods of reproductive regulation. Social class dominance over reproduction often place through the control of lower- class women by upper- class men. The particular forms these controls take vary across historical periods and cultures. In feudal agricultural and “plantation economic†experiencing labour shortages and short life expectancies, for example, there has been great pressure on women to bear as many children as possible. (USAID, ODA).
In the modern era of industrial capitalist development, conservative fundamentalist groups have tended to oppose abortion and reproductive choice for women on grounds of religion and tradition. They believe that abortion and contraception, are inimical to the biological role of women as mother and to maintenance of male- dominant familial and community arrangements. In both the industrialized north and the poor countries of the south, religious fundamentalists oppose abortion and the expansion of reproductive choice for women and sometimes they do so violently, as in the attacks in the United States against in the United States against clinics and doctors providing legal abortions. The rapid spread of evangelical Christianity and militant Islam around the World Further aggravate the situation.
Odimegwu C.O (1995), partly as a result of religious fundamentalist opposition, in the early twenty- first century abortion remains illegal in many countries. It is estimated that woodwind approximately 200,000 women die annually due to complications form illegal abortions. The actual figures may be higher, since only about half the countries in the world report maternal mortality statistics. Indeed, the unchallenged position of the Vatican against artificial conception and U.S. government policy against funding for international, abortions has led some to believe that illegal abortions and material mortality could further increase. Not only does the Bush administration refuse money for abortions, but it also prohibits medical professionals in international organizations such as international planned parenthood from talking about abortion if they receive U.S. government support. In the context of both the conservative religious backlash and the problems attributed to global population expansion, family planning seems an enlightened and progressive endeavor. Yet, the movement to provide modern contraception has been fraught with gender, race and class inequalities and health and ethical problems from the outset. Efforts to reform and democratize international, family planning must necessarily grapple with these concerns.
By 1873, condoms and diaphragms were available through the mail. Physicians knew very little about birth control and supplies were hard go get.
The late 19th early 20th centuries the modern birth control movement had it roots during this time with health care workers in the socialist movement who tied uncontrolled fertility to social and economic ills. Central to the birth control movement was Margaret Higgins Sanger. Her mother, after bearing 11 children and having seven miscarriages, had died in her early 40s. Sanger saw hardship she experience, at home reflected in the lives of the poor, whose uncontrolled fertility compounded their problems. Trained as a nurse, Sanger continually heard desperate pleas for “the secret†of contraception. She witnessed the consequences of sometimes fatal self induced and illegal abortions and saw the deterioration of women’s health. She became outraged at the medical community and laws that prohibited The spread of information about fertility control. (ibid Adewuyi AA, Omideyi AR and Ralmi MO, 1992)
