The Right to Know? The Politics of Information about Contraception in France (1950s-80s).

In 1920 in France, a law was passed prohibiting abortion, the sale of contraceptives and 'anti-conception propaganda'. While contraception was legalised in 1967 and abortion in 1975, 'anti-natalist propaganda' remained forbidden. This article takes seriously the aim of the French state to prevent the circulation of information for demographic reasons. Drawing from government archives, social movement archives and media coverage, the article focuses on the way the propaganda ban contributed to shaping the public debate on contraception as well as lastingly impacting the ability of the state to communicate on the subject. It first shows how birth control activists challenged the legal interdiction against communicating about contraception (1956-67) without questioning the natalist obligation. It then shows how, after 1968, communication on contraception became a power struggle carried out by various actors (sexologists and feminist and leftist activists) and how the dissemination of information about contraception was thought of as a way to challenge moral and social values. Finally, the article describes the change of state communication policies in the mid-1970s, leading to the first national campaign on contraception launched in 1981, which defined information as a task that women should take on.

A vida social das pílulas anticoncepcionais no Brasil (1960-1970): uma história do cotidiano / The social life of birth control pills in Brazil (1960-1970): a history of everyday life

As pílulas anticoncepcionais podem ser consideradas um dos medicamentos mais importantes desde seu surgimento, em 1960. Sua difusão trouxe inúmeras transformações no campo da saúde feminina, nas normas e padrões reprodutivos/sexuais e nos estilos de vida de seus usuários. Estudar os diversos aspectos que atravessam a vida social ou a biografia dos medicamentos permite descortinar a história por trás do sucesso desse método contraceptivo que chega até os dias atuais. Partindo dos marcos teórico-metodológicos dos estudos sociais da ciência e tecnologia e tendo como objeto a história social das pílulas anticoncepcionais nas décadas de 1960 e 1970, o objetivo desse estudo foi investigar a trama de interações suscitadas por esses medicamentos, nas suas primeiras décadas de circulação, e descortinar a parte, ainda pouco explorada, da biografia local dos contraceptivos hormonais no Brasil. Para isso, mapeamos algumas fontes orais. No universo de atores selecionamos: 3 propagandistas, 13 médicos, 5 profissionais do mundo da farmácia e 15 mulheres. A análise narrativa do material compilado nos permitiu reconstituir uma parte da trajetória desse objeto sócio técnico. No decorrer do trabalho conseguimos capturar os mecanismos, as associações, os significados e os efeitos desses contraceptivos na sociedade e na vida privada de seus produtores e consumidores. Também foi possível compreender como a formação dessa rede de associações composta de diferentes atores e diferentes esferas de circulação se mostrou fundamental para formação do pilar de sustentação das pílulas anticoncepcionais. Discutimos a importância de cada um desses atores que acompanharam o leito do rio percorrido pelas pílulas anticoncepcionais e como as oportunidades e as soluções projetadas e agenciadas pelas pílulas anticoncepcionais e o senso-comum de traduzi-las como signo de modernidade foram transformando todos em usuários e permitindo sua consolidação entre nós até os dias atuais.

Contraceptive pills can be considered one of the most important drugs since their emergence in 1960. Their diffusion has brought about numerous changes in women's health, reproductive/sexual norms and standards, and the lifestyles of their users. Studying the various aspects that go through social life or the biography of medicines allows us to unveil the story behind the success of this contraceptive method that reaches to the present day. Starting from the theoretical-methodological frameworks of social studies of science and technology and having as its object the social history of birth control pills in the 1960s and 1970s, the aim of this study was to investigate the web of interactions raised by these drugs in their early decades. circulation, and uncover the still unexplored part of the local biography of hormonal contraceptives in Brazil. For this, we mapped some oral sources. In the universe of actors we selected: 3 propagandists, 13 doctors, 5 professionals from the pharmacy world and 15 women. Narrative analysis of the compiled material allowed us to reconstruct part of the trajectory of this socio-technical object. Throughout the work we managed to capture the mechanisms, associations, meanings and effects of these contraceptives on society and the private lives of their producers and consumers. It was also possible to understand how the formation of this network of associations made up of different actors and different spheres of circulation proved to be fundamental for the formation of the pillar support pill. We discussed the importance of each of these actors who followed the riverbed covered by birth control pills and how the opportunities and solutions designed and brokered by birth control pills and the common sense of translating them as a sign of modernity were turning everyone into users and allowing its consolidation between us until the present day.

Pharmaceuticals and modern statecraft in South Africa: the cases of opium, thalidomide and contraception.

This article provides a history of three pharmaceuticals in the making of modern South Africa. Borrowing and adapting Arthur Daemmrich's term 'pharmacopolitics', we examine how forms of pharmaceutical governance became integral to the creation and institutional practices of this state. Through case studies of three medicaments: opium (late 19th to early 20th century), thalidomide (late 1950s to early 1960s) and contraception (1970s to 2010s), we explore the intertwining of pharmaceutical regulation, provision and consumption. Our focus is on the modernist imperative towards the rationalisation of pharmaceutical oversight, as an extension of the state's bureaucratic and ideological objectives, and, importantly, as its obligation. We also explore adaptive and illicit uses of medicines, both by purveyors of pharmaceuticals, and among consumers. The historical sweep of our study allows for an analysis of continuities and changes in pharmaceutical governance. The focus on South Africa highlights how the concept of pharmacopolitics can usefully be extended to transnational-as well as local-medical histories. Through the diversity of our sources, and the breadth of their chronology, we aim to historicise modern pharmaceutical practices in South Africa, from the late colonial era to the Post-Apartheid present.

Testing the Gräfenberg Ring in Interwar Britain: Norman Haire, Helena Wright, and the Debate over Statistical Evidence, Side Effects, and Intra-uterine Contraception.

This paper examines the introduction to Britain of the Gräfenberg ring, an early version of what later became known as an intrauterine device (IUD). The struggle during the interwar years to establish the value of the ring provides an opportunity for a case study of the evaluation and acceptance of a new medical device. With the professionalization of the birth control movement and the expansion of birth control clinics in interwar Britain, efforts to develop better scientific means for contraception grew rapidly. At the end of the nineteenth century, methods for controlling fertility ranged from coitus interruptus and abstinence, to diverse substances ingested or placed into the vagina, to barrier methods. The first decades of the twentieth century brought early work on chemical contraceptives as well as a number of new intrauterine devices, among them the Gräfenberg ring. Developing a cheap, reliable, and widely acceptable contraceptive became a pressing goal for activists in the voluntary birth control movement in Britain between the wars. Yet, tensions developed over the best form of contraception to prescribe. By situating the Gräfenberg ring within the context of the debates and competition among British medical and birth control professionals, this paper reveals broader issues of power relationships and expertise in the assessment of a new medical technology.

'Clueless about contraception': the introduction and circulation of the contraceptive pill in state-socialist Poland (1960s-1970s).

This paper discusses the introduction of the pill into the state-socialist Polish market in the late 1960s and its circulation over the following decade. Abortion, legalised for socio-economic reasons in 1956, had been available practically on demand since 1959, and there were no legal obstacles to contraception. The pill first appeared in Poland in the early 1960s, but was not widely available in pharmacies until 1969, when the local pharmaceutical industry began production. Throughout the 1970s, only two brands were widely available: Femigen and Angravid. The pill played a marginal role in family planning during the 1960s and 1970s in Poland, with cycle-observation, backed by the possibility of a legal abortion, being the main resource for birth control. This was due to structural limits to the distribution of the pill on a centrally-planned market closed to Western pharmaceutical companies, cultural patterns of sexual behaviour, and the availability of abortion.

Defusing the population bomb in the 1950s: foam tablets in India.

After the World War II era, Western experts explained that the progress of medicine, which had led to a decrease in mortality in developing countries ('control of death') was not accompanied by a parallel decrease in birth rates ('control of life'). This conjunction, they warned, would lead inexorably to population explosion and its terrifying consequences: famines, riots, political instability, expansion of Communism, wars. A heterogenous coalition of demographers, public health experts and politicians was urgently looking for an effective means to curb population growth. In the 1950s, many of them considered that mass distribution of foam tablets, a local contraceptive presented as simple to use, cheap and efficient, was a possible solution for the population crisis. At the same time, a potential opening of huge markets for this product generated intense competition among manufacturers and attempts to disqualify competing preparations as inefficient and dangerous for health. Struggles around the marketing of foam tablets, especially in India, reveal a unique combination of science, medicine, cold war politics, philanthropy and business. The presumed commercial and social potential of foam tablets was never fulfilled, due to the unreliability both of the product itself and of its 'backward' users, who either refused this contraceptive mean, or abandoned it promptly.

Tacit consent: the Church and birth control in northern Italy.

This article employs novel documentation to examine ways in which the Church's moral rules on contraception were (or were not) communicated to parishioners in a predominantly Catholic context in a period of rapid fertility decline: the diocese of Padua, in the northeastern Italian region of Veneto, during the first half of the twentieth century. The account is based on documents that have until now been overlooked: the moral cases discussed during the periodic meetings among Padua priests in the years 1916­58, and the written answers provided by priests in response to a question asked of them concerning their efforts to combat the limiting of births. This documentation reveals the limited effect on the reproductive behavior of the position of the Catholic Church against birth control.

The construction of a "population problem" in colonial India, 1919-1947.

This article examines the construction of a "population problem" among public health officials in India during the inter-war period. British colonial officials came to focus on India's population through their concern with high Indian infant and maternal mortality rates. They raised the problem of population as one way in which to highlight the importance of dealing with public health at an all-India basis, in a context of constitutional devolution of power to Indians where they feared such matters would be relegated to relative local unimportance. While they failed to significantly shape government policy, their arguments in support of India's 'population problem' nevertheless found a receptive audience in the colonial public sphere among Indian intellectuals, economists, eugenicists, women social reformers and birth controllers. The article contributes to the history of population control by situating its pre-history in British colonial public health and development policy and outside the logic of USA's Cold War strategic planning for Asia.

"Pictures with a purpose": the birth control debate on the big screen.

In the first half of the twentieth century, birth control advocates used the mass media to reframe contraception from a private, secret matter to an acceptable part of life fit for public discussion. Although their campaign began in print, they quickly embraced the more far-reaching medium of film to deliver their message. This article argues that birth control advocates circumvented the Comstock Act in the early decades of the twentieth century by taking up this new medium as part of a long-running strategy to publicize the birth control movement. Their efforts shaped both the public debate on the topic and the development of motion picture censorship.

The association of television and radio with reproductive behavior.

This note analyzes the association between media exposure and reproductive behavior in 48 developing countries. A summary of part of a more extensive Demographic and Health Surveys report, it shows strong connections between media exposure and the use of modern contraception, the number of children desired, and recent fertility. Television viewing is particularly important; it is assumed to expose viewers to aspects of modern life that compete with traditional attitudes toward the family and is associated with greater use of modern contraceptive methods, with a desire for fewer children, and with lower fertility. These relationships are particularly noteworthy because the data measure only the frequency of media exposure with no information about its content.

The first welfare case: money, sex, marriage, and white supremacy in Selma, 1966: a reproductive justice analysis.

King v. Smith, the first welfare case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court, overturned the Alabama substitute father law. Such laws directed or allowed welfare officials to use the sexual behavior and reproductive capacity of poor African American women to alienate this population from "cash-money"; to reassert political and bureaucratic control over the intimate relationships of African Americans, demonstrating that this population was unprepared for civil rights and full citizenship; and to shore up white supremacy in the civil rights era. The context for this case which originated in Selma, Alabama in 1966 illustrates that even if poor African American women had had access to contraception and legal abortion at that time, they would still have lacked reproductive autonomy and dignity as the state surveilled their sexual behavior and enforced laws making sex, itself, as well as reproduction, and the right to define their own intimate relationships and families, a race and class privilege.

[A long-playing record: contraception]. / La Contraception en microsillon.

The humoristic record "Contraception", recorded during the year 1976 by the humorist René Cousinier, conducted the author of this article to study contraceptives means used in France from 1968 to 1976. Here are studied firts pregnancy tests; the birth of Planning familial and Neuwirth law; each classical contraceptives. The Pill is fully related in detail. Each part is illustrated with citations from the record.