Birth Control

Birth Control

Birth Control is defined as various ways used to prevent pregnancy from occurring. Birth Control has been a concern for humans for thousands of years. The first contraception devices were mechanical barriers in the vagina that prevented the male sperm from fertilizing the female egg. Other methods of birth control that were used in the vagina were sea sponges, mixtures of crocodile dung and honey, quinine, rock salt and alum. Birth Control was of interest for a long time, but women did not worry to much about it because child death rates were so high. They felt they needed to have many children just for a few to survive. In the early 1800's death rates began to drop and people began to show concern for controlling births. Early efforts to develop birth control met with resistance from religious leaders and other groups. In 1873, the U.S. Congress passed the Comstock Law, which regulated public access to birth-control devices and information for the next 60 years. This prohibition, which made it illegal to distribute any device, medicine or information designed to prevent conception, applied even to doctors. During the early 1900's, Margaret Sanger started the birth control movement in the United States. She and others opened clinics to provide women with information and devices. She and her followers were frequently jailed but were also able to change many laws. In 1930 the courts in New York State held that in certain cases the sale of contraceptives could be legal. This ruling by the court changed the Comstock Law. Other laws also weakened the Comstock Law. It was not until 1972 that the Supreme Court legalized birth control for unmarried persons. Methods of birth control that are available today range from p...

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...ive pills are taken in two doses. The first dose should be taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse, and the second dose, 12 hours later. The other type of emergency contraception is the insertion of an IUD will prevent pregnancy up to five days after intercourse. Today birth control is widely practiced in the United States and all over the world. But in the United States 42 million women of reproductive age, or 7 in 10, are sexually active and do not want to become pregnant. Nearly half of America's 6 million annual pregnancies are accidental. Unintended pregnancies result in 1.4 million abortions annually, as well as 1.1 million births that women either did not want to have until later or did not want at all. Eighty percent of teen pregnancies are unintended, and each year, one in nine young women aged 15-19 become pregnant; more than half become mothers.