Acceptance of contraception in the United States

A readiness to accept birth control as an integral part of responsible parenthood gradually developed among Americans in the years after the First World War. By 1932, there were some eighty clinics in the nation offering counsel on contraception. At approximately the same time, Comstock legislation was effectively overturned by several legal judgements permitting the importation of contraceptive literature and devices. Although the campaign in Britain was somewhat in advance of that in America, by the outbreak of the Second World War major resistance in the United States to contraceptive practice was overcome. Since that time, control over fertility has had profound social and economic ramifications.

While the efforts of campaigners on both sides of the Atlantic no doubt served as catalysts in the process of change, the major influences were social and economic. In an increasingly industrialized and urbanized society, a large family was both costly and inconvenient. With the slackening of the influence of the Christian religion over the lives of an increasingly large proportion of the population, a desire for greater sexual freedom grew. Developments in contraceptive technology, particularly the advent of the pill in the 1950s, further facilitated the fulfilment of that desire.

Despite the public calls for a liberalization of attitudes made by individual churchmen, it came as something of a surprise that the 1930 Lambeth Conference declined any longer to condemn the use of contraceptive methods if conscientiously adopted.