The Ongoing Fight for Reproductive Rights

Image by freepik

A historical look at the women who have protected and advanced reproductive health and rights

Women in medicine have been fighting for reproductive health and rights for decades. History has shown that for every setback faced, there are determined women who are ready to meet that moment and make a difference. 

The Women in Medicine Legacy Foundation’s mission is to preserve and promote this history, and to honor those who have made strides in this arena over the past century plus.

The birth of birth control

“We now know that there never can be a free humanity until woman is freed from ignorance, and we know, too, that woman can never call herself free until she is mistress of her own body. Just so long as man dictates and controls the standards of sex morality, just so long will man control the world.

Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.”

Margaret Sanger, who is credited with coining the term ‘birth control,’ wrote these galvanizing words in 1918. 

More than a century later, the fight to control women’s bodies continues.

In the company of visionaries

Sanger advocated for birth control in a world tightly controlled by men. One in particular held outsized influence in the reproductive health arena: Anthony Comstock. A devout Christian who abhorred birth control, he drafted 1873’s Comstock Act, which made it a federal crime to sell or distribute contraceptives through the mail or across state lines. 

This Congressional act did not deter Sanger from opening America’s first birth control clinic in 1916, even though she was arrested nine days later. She went on to found the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau and, in 1921, the American Birth Control League (itself a successor of the National Birth Control League that Mary Ware Dennett, Jessie Ashley, and Clara Gruening founded in 1915). 

Sanger’s work didn’t end there. She quietly worked behind the scenes to defang the Comstock Act in 1936 so doctors could legally mail birth control devices and information.   Then in 1951, she partnered with scientist Gregory Pincus to develop the first oral contraceptive, Enovid — a groundbreaking initiative funded in large part by MIT-educated philanthropist and activist Katharine McCormick.

Better known simply as “the pill,” Enovid won FDA approval in 1960 and revolutionized women’s lives. 

And yet, for all these advances in birth control, abortion — long denounced by the American Medical Association and the Catholic Church — remained illegal in much of the United States. 

That changed 13 years after the pill’s debut.

 A seismic win for women 

You might not know Norma McCorvey by her given name. That’s because she’s more famous as ‘Jane Roe’ in Roe v. Wade. 

In this landmark case argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, a 7-2 majority ruled in 1973 that the Due Process Clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment protects women’s right to an abortion.   

That right was further reaffirmed in 1992’s Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. In their 5-4 majority opinion, U.S. Supreme Court justices wrote, “The woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy before viability is the most central principle of Roe v. Wade. It is a rule of law and a component of liberty we cannot renounce.″

More women became ‘mistresses of their own bodies’ in the 1990s without having to invoke Roe, thanks to advances in birth control. The FDA approved Preven, ‘the morning-after pill,’ in 1998; the following year, it approved Plan B, a prescription-only emergency contraception. Plan B was approved for over-the-counter distribution to those 18 and older in 2006.  

For almost half a century, one could dare to hope that the U.S. was coming closer to fulfilling Sanger’s vision of ‘human emancipation.’  

Ominous events 

Yet, not everyone celebrated the Roe and Casey decisions, or advances in birth control. Abortion opponents ceaselessly challenged Roe’s legitimacy—and even resorted to violence on occasion. 

In 1984, anti-abortion advocates bombed a clinic and two doctors’ offices.  Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) laws were created in 1994 in response to the shooting of two abortion providers and a clinic volunteer. In 2009, an abortion provider was killed while attending church, while 2015 witnessed a fatal mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. 

Far from being recognized as stare decisis, settled law that establishes a precedent, Roe v. Wade remained in abortion foes’ legal crosshairs.

The darkening legal landscape 

Mere months before Roe’s 50th anniversary, it was rendered moot — along with Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey and decades’ worth of legal precedent. 

On June 24, 2022, a 6-3 majority on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Constitution does not give women the right to seek an abortion. 

Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan recognized this decision as the chilling defeat for civil rights that it is. 

They concluded their contrary opinion with an eloquent eulogy for the decades of  reproductive freedom this decision undid, stating: 

“With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent.”

On February 21, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court further complicated the issues surrounding reproductive care. This state’s justices ruled that frozen embryos “are ‘children’ ... without exception based on developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics.” This ruling raises even more questions about personhood and whose rights — mothers’ or children’s — are recognized and prioritized by the judiciary. 

In the face of these recent court decisions, one particularly pointed question demands an answer: Who will advance the cause of reproductive care and rights? 

A powerful spotlight

Women in power have already made pointed moves to spotlight reproductive rights’ importance and imperiled status.

Vice President Kamala Harris made history on March 14, 2024, as the first incumbent president or vice president to visit a Planned Parenthood clinic. And on March 18, 2024, the Biden Administration issued an executive order establishing the Office for Women’s Health, the goal of which is to advance women’s health research and innovation.

At President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address, First Lady Jill Biden’s guests included Kate Cox, a Texas woman who had to cross state lines to receive an abortion. Similarly, U.S. Representative Judy Chu of California — author of the yet-to-be-passed Women’s Health Protection Act — brought Dr. Caitlin Bernard, who provided reproductive care services to a 10-year-old abuse victim.  

Our country, including the Foundation, is waiting for the next generation of reproductive freedom fighters.

So, too, are the history books yet to be written.