Individual aims, social movements.

The Moral Property of Women--A History of Birth Control Politics in America Linda Gordon (University of Illinois Press, 2002, 446pp.)

LINDA GORDON PUBLISHED A version of this book in 1976 under the title, Woman's Body, Woman's Right. This updated benefits from a look back at events during the past quarter century or so. Gordon's thesis, and one with much merit, is that conflicts about reproductive rights are political conflicts that exist in the context of conflicts over gender, class and race. Her insights are compelling, especially as we face a presidential election in 2004 that could be decided by the abortion issue. The first book was somewhat controversial with family planning advocates who wanted to keep a distance from feminism and the efforts to legalize abortion. After 30 years of religious and political right-wing organizing against legal birth control and abortion, there is widespread acknowledgment of a convergence of interests between mainstream family planning organizations, the struggle for abortion rights and feminist interests.

Gordon provides a detailed survey of two centuries of women's struggle for control of their reproductive lives. Women from all times, classes and races have sought and used methods of birth control and abortion regardless of whether those methods were legal or sate. The desire to control reproduction is not just a feminist goal or a modern goal. Neither is it just a personal goal, but a goal for families and societies. Gordon's book describes the transformation of individual efforts to reach those goals into a political movement.

The women's rights movement was born in the middle of the 19th century, and, at the outset, more women were involved in the birth control movement than in the suffrage movement. As they do now, women's rights advocates adapted their arguments to their times and reflected who they were as individuals. Initially, while advocates supported women's decision making, many strongly supported the institution of marriage. The recommended method of birth control was continence, not contraception. Many women's advocates argued that, in order to improve the status of women, men had to control their sex drives. This led to campaigns to restrict prostitution and access to alcohol and contraceptives to make sex outside of marriage less accessible.

The late-19th century saw extreme legal repression of birth control and abortion. The 1873 Comstock Laws forbade distribution of any information about birth control through the mail. Abortion was banned. Legal bans were fed by fears that the US native-born population was declining. Eugenic arguments also fed the frenzy. None of these schemes actually worked to curb the use of birth control but made it less safe for women and put both providers and users in conflict with the law.

In the period 1910-1920, the birth control movement was identified with radical movements for the poor. The phrase "birth control" was a slogan coined by Margaret Sanger in 1915. Activists in this time "created a politics based on women's shared experience that, for a brief period, united women across class and race groups in support of birth control." (p138) Their demands came at the height of American radicalism. Margaret Sanger was one of the many women who, initially at least, boldly advanced a women-centered birth control struggle.

After World War I, the birth control cause changed rapidly. The post-war backlash against radical politics, the Red Scare and the collapse of the women's rights movement after the passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the vote all took a toll on the struggle for birth control. The cause was then taken over by professional organizations.

From this period Margaret Sanger's story illuminates many of the developments in the movement. Unlike other accounts that either condemn or ignore Sanger's record, Gordon allows the reader to judge Sanger in the context of the time in which she lived. Like other reformers, the feminists of the time "harbored racist and ethnocentric attitudes ... [and] had a reservoir of anti-working class attitudes." (p196) However, Gordon continues, "Birth control reformers were not attracted to eugenics because they were racists; rather they had interests in common with eugenicists and had no strong tradition of antiracism on which to base a critique of eugenics." A cursory, examination of the records of most politicians and advocates of that time would find a host of attitudes that most would find utterly repugnant today. Sanger comes in for particular vehemence from contemporary anti-choice advocates precisely because of the pivotal role she played in forcing acceptance of contraceptives onto the political stage.

As the family planning movement prospered in the 1940s and 1950s--mainly due to concerns about population levels-I was struck at how thoroughly the demand for birth control was separated from the women's rights movement.

The renewal of feminism in the late 1960s and the assertion by women of their right to reproductive choice brought an intense backlash against not only abortion but also contraception and sterilization. Never before, Gordon notes, had birth control been so controversial. Initiated by the Catholic hierarchy, the movement against reproductive rights soon attracted a significant opposition from a huge number of activists, almost immediately more Protestant than Catholic. The abortion issue has since been completely incorporated into right wing politics and today, because of the strength of that ideology. in politics and the government, these battles remain intense.

Anybody who cares about the struggle for reproductive rights should read this important book, and will benefit from the careful analysis Gordon provides. The historical context Gordon provides of political and social movements vying on the reproductive rights issue is important information for anyone who wants to understand and influence the current struggle.

MARY JEAN COLLINS has worked as a women's and civil rights advocate for thirty years and is currently Vice. President and National Field Director at People For the American Way.