Why isn't the term "Birth Control" regarded as politically incorrect?

Birth control, and especially the birth control pill, was marketed to married women. Maybe they wanted to say the pill helps you plan when and how many children you will have, but still with the assumption couples will have children, so it was controlling births. Not sure. Maybe back in the day using the word birth was more acceptable than pregnancy? Kind of like how no one spoke of breast cancer because it involved saying breast shhh and now people say it without worry.

I’m not sure exactly what Sanger meant in her statements. Unfit could be a word used today to describe many people’s opinion about women having babies when they cannot afford them, nor provide a stable home. Are you sure she spoke of eugenics?

The term stands on its own now.

Go read my answer here, especially the part about how we aren’t going to rename the stuff every few years when our moral system shifts.

I think more people know about Margaret Sanger and eugenics than you think – and things like how she wasn’t for it along racial lines, didn’t believe poverty was hereditary, and how popular the idea of eugenics in some form (not Hitler’s form, actually much the same form we’re in favor of today…) (also, not really sure it was the main theme. A main theme, yes, the main theme, that seems really pushing it), and I haven’t really heard many people on the left saying we should change the name (if for no other reason than that birth control can be shortened to BC, which then takes up less characters on Twitter than contraception).

@saint, have you read about the Birth Control Federation of America? It is a merger of Sanger’s Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau and the American Birth Control League. In 1939, one of the BCFA’s first endeavors was the Negro Project.

”[We propose to] hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. And we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Commenting on the ‘Negro Project’ in a letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, December 10, 1939. – Sanger manuscripts, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon’s Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
(Note: There is a different date circulated, e.g. Oct. 19, 1939; but Dec. 10 is the correct date of Mrs. Sanger’s letter to Mr. Gamble.)

“The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.”

Speech quoted in “Birth Control: What It Is, How It Works, What It Will Do.” The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference. Held at the Hotel Plaza, New York City, November 11–12, 1921. Published by the Birth Control Review, Gothic Press, pages 172 and 174.

@bkcunningham Thus, my question.

I don’t understand why Sanger is being credited with Birth Control? Birth control is a wide umbrella of many things. Women wanted to control their fertility. Birth control is not just about certain people wanting to control or eliminate other populations.

In America, and most of the western world, birth control is admired. Countries that have controlled their births tend to be the most prosperous and educated.

Does it matter what it was called more than what it can be used for now? This is one way women can stave off being used, exploited, enslaved, indentured, etc. and for children to be spared being born into hostile environments, poverty or to people not prepared or capable of providing for them.

@JLeslie Because she helped to popularize it as a term.

@Aethelflaed: way back in the 1980’s when I first took BC, I’d never heard of Margaret Sanger. In fact, I didn’t hear of her associated with BC until the 1990’s. My guess is doctors and others supplying BC choose to focus on BC as the advantage it is instead of relating it to some 1920’s wackjob. Do people have a distaste for BMW, VW, Mercedes or other firms once associated with the Nazi party? Same stupid shite.

I think the eugenics part of birth control was only heard or known in the south, the rest of the United States thought of the term in a completely benign way. I am not very clear how openly Sanger and people who thought like her, publicized her desire to specifically limit black births. So the term for the most part I think was used overwhelmingly as controlling births in general, not as some sort of eugenics conspiracy.

Sanger has only been brought up recently to convince black people to be republicans, and to help the pro life movement.

LOL, I hope you are joking, @JLeslie.

Like you said, it must be because people aren’t aware. I had no idea about this; it’s pretty shocking. It makes sense now when you look at the word in her context.

@bkcunningham Why? The black people were predominantly in the south. It is a statement of circumstance. Even today the majority of blacks live in the south. I don’t think there was much discussion in other parts of the country about black people in general, especially before the civil rights movement. People who live in all white communities far from the situation during a time without TV and mass communication probably were not thinking much about race relations.

@JLeslie As best as I can tell, she didn’t really want to limit black births, she wanted to give black people the ability to control their own bodies – which, black people (Mary McLeod Bethune, W. E. B. DuBois, Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc) wanted as well. She didn’t want to impose her values on the black community, she wanted to work with them. Also, she says stuff about “race” a lot, but means the human race.
NYU has a pretty good series of scholarly articles on the subject. Unfortunately, the 1939 letter to Clarence Gamble doesn’t seem to be able to be found online in whole (and I don’t have access to the manuscript), only that quote from pro-life blogs (meaning, not scholarly sources), save for the NYU series, which only mentions that it wasn’t in context, and this About page, which says that she didn’t want word to get out because it wasn’t true (like how I don’t want word to get out that I look good in orange, because I don’t).

@JLeslie, Sanger sought world-wide acceptance of birth control. She was a major player in women’s rights issues around the globe. She organized and gathered financial support for the World Population Conference held in Geneva, Switzerland in 1927.

I think that making words, names, or phrases politically incorrect with every twist and turn of events in which they happened to be involved rather silly.

The argument between using the term “birth” or “pregnancy” seems a little trivial to me. They essentially mean the same thing. However – I think BIRTH control is honestly more appropriate. Think about it this way. Trying to prevent a pregnancy is trying to prevent a birth. However, a pregnancy DOES NOT GUARANTEE a birth. The essence of birth control is to prevent just that – A LIVE BIRTH. While yes, a pregnancy before that is necessary, you are trying to prevent the end result of a birth. Seems we have the correct term to me :-/

@bkcunningham So? I am guessing she was not talking about birth control to eliminate an entire race in her world wide quest. And, I would also think the average person was not are of her statements on controlling births of specific races. The term birth control does not have a negative connotation for the majority of people then or now.

Not just a race, @JLeslie. Sanger was a eugenisist.

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=238946.xml

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/publications/electronic_ed/on_the_web.html

@bkcunningham I don’t see a big difference between wanting to eliminate a race and being a eugenist? Race is part of eugenics. Hitler viewed the Jews as a race, he wanted to get rid of us, I get it. Was Sanger forceably aborting to suit her goals? I know of some instances in some southern states, possibly in northern states too, I just don’t know about any, where they sterilized black women without their knowledge. Did it when they gave birth without their consent. Seems like birth control was there for all women, a great thing in my opinion, and maybe Sanger saw it as an opportunity, a tool for her eugenic goals. Hitler used trains to transport Jews to the death camps, but we still use trains.

Again, my point is the term birth control is not directly related to eugenics, birth control was maybe used to accomplish eugenic goals, but birth control is not inherintly evil. The irony for me is I think the lack of birth control is one of the factors that contributes to impoverished people not being able to lift themselves out of poverty, and in turn is a black issue as well.

Some black people are told to have lots of children, strength in numbers. Blacks also tend to be religious, and the pro-life movement has used this Sanger history to encourage black people to see abortion as a conspiracy. It is an easy task. Here in Memphis Tuskagee lives in their minds, distrust of medical professions, white men in lab coats, it’s all very real to some of them in present day. And, I can understand the sentiment of wanting to have children for numbers. A part f me feel like that being Jewish. But, not to have more power or more voice, just simply to continue, to say the Nazis and those before have not won.

Meanwhile, if people prefer to change the term, I have no objection. What should we change it to?

Eugenics at the time didn’t have to mean elimination of an ethnic group. It was and is simply the attempt to better the human population’s genetic composition. Like today, when we question if the poor should be having so many children that they can’t support, or wonder what to do about overpopulation, or debate what to do about underaged and/or mentally incompetent women become pregnant, or discuss if people who have serious genetic disorders should be procreating, or encourage those who are exceptionally able to procreate more. When people look for potential mates and pass over those who have asthma or brittle bones because they want a stronger mate, that’s eugenics. Just because we’ve moved away from the e word doesn’t change that, and up until Hitler, people used the word eugenics.

Sanger used the popular eugenics movement to help promote birth control as a science-based remedy for overpopulation, poverty, disease and famine. Incorporating the rhetoric of the eugenics movement into her writings allowed Sanger to make a stronger biological argument that fertility control was necessary for the improvement and health of the entire human race, not only as a means to liberate women. Sanger did seek to discourage the reproduction of persons who were, in the terms of her day, “unfit” or “feebleminded,” those, it was believed, who would pass on mental disease or serious physical defect. And she did advocate sterilization in cases where the subject was unable to use birth control. This was a popular position espoused by many progressive medical leaders, scientists and health reformers of the day – those groups who Sanger hoped to win over to the birth control fight. (Source)

@Aethelflaed Great answer. Even today the word Eugenics does not have to be a sinister term. I think many people relate the term to Hitler, and the use of genocide by him and others in history, but in fact the science of eugenics does not always have evil intent.

What’s in a name? Communication is the goal; not to proliferate futile issues. We all understand what Birth Control means, and thus it has been effectively communicated.
The only upsetting thing about the term itself is the definition you hold to it for yourself.

There are plenty of legitimate issues in the world, which if corrected, would actually make the world a better place. Semantics are not one of them.

@Esedess Since words actually mean something specific, and since communication is at it’s best when it is specific, how is semantics not an important issue?

Tomato / Tom-a-to / soft red fruit looking thing that goes on salads. Pronounce it however you want; it doesn’t change what it is.

Arguing semantics is a measly debate method in which the actual issue at hand takes a back seat to either sides’ pride.

Imagine this scenario:
You’re having a discussion with a friend about the pros and cons of contraceptive.

She says, “I love birth control! It keeps me from not having kids till I can afford them.”

You reply, “Margeret Sanger, the American pioneer of Birth Control, spoke openly of the need to put an end to breeding by what she called “the unfit”. You should call it what it is… “Pregnancy Control.”

Now, suddenly, you’re no longer talking about the legitimate pros and cons of birth control, but rather debating the semantics of a term. In that, you’ve merely distracted from the conversation at hand. And why? All because you couldn’t separate what she actually meant from a measly word. Furthermore, the response on your part, in this scenario, would be based solely in ego; because even though you completely know your friend doesn’t associate that term with that definition, and wasn’t trying to in this instance, you’ve inhibited her point based on the fact that YOU do.

In effective communication you have to have the intelligence to see beyond a symbol and your own personal associations with it. What if you traveled way into the future and found that the swastika stood for peace, and “nigg*r” was a term of endearment? Would you refuse the symbols as an act of Nazi racism, or could you rise above the narrow scope of your prior convictions and receive it in a become manner of its new intent?

If you want to talk about the original intent for birth control as it pertains to our modern day social/political agendas, then that’s fine. Let’s talk about that. But as far as I can tell, that’s not what you’re talking about. And no amount of lobbying or debating over a name will change what it really is, how people understand it now, or what it once started as.

@saint see above… I forgot to tag you.

I thought we were talking about the original intent for birth control as it pertains to our modern day social/political agendas. Oh, well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3FnpaWQJO0&feature=related

@saint Words mean something specific, but you haven’t proved that a) the word has the same meaning now that it did when it was first coined and b) that when it was coined, it had a negative meaning.

@bkcunningham So, you think the original intent for birth control was to kill off undesireable populations? I’m confused now. I don’t want to misunderstand what you are trying to say.

No, @JLeslie, I don’t believe the original intent of birth control was to kill off undesireable populations. As a sidebar, did you know that Lysol Disinfectent was once sold as a douch and a birth control method?

@bkcunningham I didn’t know, but it doesn’t surprise me. Women still use antiseptics in douches. If you look up the history of abortion it is so scary what women have tried over the centuries to rid themselves of an unwanted pregnancy.

@bkcunningham Sorry, I’m a little late on the response here… I’m answering your post from 5 up.

You may be talking about that… and as I said, that’s fine. But that is not what Saint is talking about.

Last 3 lines of the question:
“So wouldn’t “Pregnancy Control” be a better term.
If everybody knew about the history of the term Birth Control (it seems a safe assumption that they do not) I suspect they would object to the term.”

=/ Just wanted to clarify that my responses were in regards to that question, not your discussion.

Gotcha’, @Esedess. I’m sorry, I misunderstood that portion of the conversation.