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Birth Control on Main Street

Organizing Clinics in the United States, 1916-1939

Cathy Moran Hajo author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:University of Illinois Press

Published:5th May '10

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Birth Control on Main Street cover

A detailed examination of birth control as local movement

Unearthing individual stories and statistical records from previously overlooked birth control clinics, Cathy Moran Hajo looks past the rhetoric of the birth control movement to show the relationships, politics, and issues that defined the movement in neighborhoods and cities across the United States. Whereas previous histories have emphasized national trends and glossed over the majority of clinics, Birth Control on Main Street contextualizes individual case studies to add powerful new layers to the existing narratives on abortion, racism, eugenics, and sterilization.

Hajo draws on an original database of more than 600 clinics run by birth control leagues, hospitals, settlement houses, and public health groups to isolate the birth control clinic from the larger narrative of the moment. By revealing how clinics tested, treated, and educated women regarding contraceptives, she shows how clinic operation differed according to the needs and concerns of the districts it served.

Moving thematically through the politicized issues of the birth control movement, Hajo infuses her analysis of the practical and medical issues of the clinics with unique stories of activists who negotiated with community groups to obey local laws and navigated the swirling debates about how birth control centers should be controlled, who should receive care, and how patients should be treated.

"This useful, practical history of birth control approaches the topic from the unique perspective of the clinic. Cathy Moran Hajo offers a complete picture of how ideas about birth control affected everyday women.”--Wendy Kline, author of Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom

ISBN: 9780252035364

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

264 pages