Women's Health Movements

Popular Health Movement, 1830s and 1840s

At this time, slavery had not yet been abolished, and voting was limited to “free men.” Under these conditions, participation in social movements became a form of political participation for women, and many women joined the popular health movement. The movement challenged professional medicine and celebrated self-reliance. Movement tactics included public lectures, the formation of self-help societies, and the widespread publication of medical manuals. The women's health component of the movement focused primarily on limiting family size. Women met regularly to discuss fertility control and they advocated abstinence within marriage. This approach may have helped women gain power in their sexual relationships as well as some degree of control over the frequency of childbearing.

Late 19th Century

Following the Civil War, women's role in society consisted mainly of care work—caring for husbands and children in the home and doing charity work and engaging in social reform in the community. Many social reform efforts circled around “sexual morality” and an anti-contraception/anti-abortion movement arose. Movement participants supported abstinence as a form of birth control and thought that contraception encouraged promiscuity and prostitution. This activism led to legislation such as the Comstock Act of 1873 that restricted access to abor-tifacients and contraceptives.

A second component of this wave of organizing is often referred to as the women's medical movement. This movement aimed to increase the number of female physicians and challenge prevailing medical theories about women. At the time, it was believed that women's health was controlled almost entirely by their reproductive organs. This idea led to excessive sexual surgery (e.g., removing healthy ovaries to treat everything from menstrual pain to epilepsy) as well as limitations on women's physical and intellectual exertion because it was thought that too much activity compromised women's reproductive capacity.

Progressive Era, 1910s

The Progressive Era was marked by efforts to solve social problems by turning to professional experts, using scientific methods, and exercising the power of government. Along with the women's suffrage movement, two movements developed around women's health. The first was concerned with infant and maternal mortality. Women involved with this movement fought for government-supported maternal and child health programs and succeeded with the passage of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921. This legislation provided federal funding for prenatal care and child health services. The second movement was organized around the legalization of contraception and was a direct challenge to the Comstock Act of 1873. Women such as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, established birth control clinics and argued that birth control was not just about women's health. It was also about women's right to self-determination.

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