We Must Not Allow a Contraception Gap: Planned Parenthood's Campaign for New Birth Control and Feminist Health...

In 1990, Planned Parenthood Federation of America launched a nationwide public relations drive called the Campaign for New Birth Control in reaction to reports that Americans were being deprived of contraceptives available in other parts of the world. This article will use Planned Parenthood's Campaign for New Birth Control as a case study of how reproductive rights activists organized around emerging contraceptive technologies in the late twentieth century. It will discuss how Planned Parenthood tried to rally a diverse range of constituencies around the notion of a "contraception gap." This construct was based on the presumption that developing new contraceptive technologies was unmistakably feminist because it gave women more options to control their fertility. However, other actors involved in the New Birth Control campaign believed the "contraception gap" was an inappropriate strategy for mobilizing broad support for birth control innovation.