Birth Control

Jackie Corkery
College Research and Writing
Block 4
12-3-10

The Fight for Control
Birth Control has been studied for many years and will continue to be studied forever. Scientists are always searching for something more. There is always innovating to be done. Not everyone believes birth control is right. There is not just one person who invented birth control, first because there are so many diff kinds and one man couldn’t have possibly done it all and that it has evolved over hundreds of years.
Birth control was used as far back as 3000 B.C. Many historic people practiced birth control. Some of the first people to use birth control were the Egyptians. It was said that they used animal hide for condoms. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, is the first person to suggest using natural chemicals such as cedar oil, lead ointment or frankincense oil as spermicides. According to Princeton Education spermicides are a contraceptive substance that “eradicates sperm, inserted vaginally prior to intercourse to prevent pregnancy and as a contraceptive, spermicide may be used alone.” Another person who experimented with birth control was Casanova. He emptied half a lemon and had it used as a primitive cervical cap. A cervical cap simply catches the sperm when it is headed to the cervix. Casanova did this around the middle 1700’s. In 1832 Charles Knowlton, a Massachusetts physician, invented a birth control that was put into the uterus by a syringe after intercourse. The different ways to make the solution involved water, salt, vinegar, liquid chloride, zinc sulfite or aluminum potassium sulfite. The syringe method remained popular for the next forty years.
In 1839 Charles Goodyear invented the vulcanized, which means strengthened, rubber that lead to condoms and diaphragms. Years later in the 1870’s birth control starts to become available in America in stores for the public. This outraged the government. March 2, 1873, Congress passes the Comstock Law, an... [continues]

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