The Long Struggle for Birth Control

In the late 1700s and early 1800s British intellectuals were very worried about overpopulation. Malthus's famous 1798 book argued that the mass of humanity would always be desperately poor because any increase in resources is immediately accompanied by an increase in the number of children born, who will use up the increased resources. He believed the overall level of prosperity could never increase because of population pressures.

There were actually two kinds of population problems. The first was total population of a country or a region. People can reproduce faster than they can increase their food supply so increases in population quickly lead to dangers of famine and mass starvation over a wide area. The second problem was within poor families where the number of children could quickly exceed the ability of the parents to care for them leaving parents with no obviously good solution.

In an article he wrote for the 8th ed. of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1818 James Mill called population control the most important practical problem of the time.

Some thinkers, like James Mill, started to explore the idea that contraception could help deal with these population problems. They usually were very cautious in their writings because the very idea of contraception was considered scandalous at the time.

One man who wrote about contraception openly was Francis Place. In an 1822 book he wrote: “If, above all, it were clearly understood, that it was not disreputable for married persons to avail themselves of such precautionary means as would, without being injurious to health, or destructive of female delicacy, prevent conception, a sufficient check might at once be given to the increase of population beyond the means of subsistence….”

Mr. Place was quickly condemned for promoting immorality and “good men refused to be introduced to him.”

When James Mill's son John Stuart Mill was a teenager he found a bundle of rags in St. James's Park that contained a strangled newborn child. This terrible crime was probably committed by desperate parents who could not find a way to feed one more mouth. They could have brought the baby to a foundling hospital but the end result would likely have been the same. It is estimated that 80-90% of babies brought to foundling hospitals died before their first birthday due to neglect or maltreatment.

Mr. Place created handbills with information about contraception and then volunteers, including young John Stuart Mill, passed them out to poor families. As a result of this activity John was arrested for distributing obscene materials. The case was dismissed but a professional lampoonist must have heard about it because he published a little poem in the newspaper:
"There are two Mr. M…ls, too, whom those who like reading
What’s vastly unreadable, call very clever
And whereas M..l senior makes war on good breeding
M...l junior makes war on all breeding whatever."

More than a century after these events in England the United States Supreme Court finally decided that "the Constitution of the United States protects the liberty of married couples to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction." This was in the case Griswold v. Connecticut. In 1965.

That took a while!

Griswold v. Connecticut Click here to read more about how birth control became legal in the United States. This article is about the Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut

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