History
See also: History of abortion, History of condoms, and Timeline of reproductive rights legislationEarly ways of preventing unwanted pregnancy included withdrawal and various alternatives to intercourse; they are difficult to use correctly and, while much better than no method, have high failure rates compared to modern methods. Various devices and medications thought to have spermicidal, contraceptive, abortifacient or similar properties were also used.
Abortions have been induced to prevent unwanted births since antiquity, abortion methods are described in some of the earliest medical texts. The degree of safety of early methods relative to the risks of child birth is unclear.
Infanticide (‘customary neonaticide’) or abandonment (sometimes in the form of exposure) are other traditional way of dealing with babies that were not wanted or that a family could not support. Opinions on the morality or desirability of the practices have changed through history.
Where modern contraceptives are not available, abortion has sometimes been used as a major way of preventing birth. For instance in much of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics in the 1980s, desired family size was small, but modern contraceptive methods were not readily available, so many couples relied on abortion, which was legal, safe, and readily accessible, to regulate births. In many cases, as contraceptives became more available the rate of unintended pregnancy and abortion dropped rapidly during the 1990s.
In the 19th and 20th century, the desired number of pregnancies has declined as reductions in infant and childhood mortality have increased the probability that children will reach adulthood. Other factors, such as level of education and economic opportunities for women, have also lead to reductions in the desired number of children. As the number of desired number of children decreases, couples spend more of their reproductive lives trying to avoid unintended pregnancies.
Read more about this topic: Unintended Pregnancy
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)