CONTRACEPTIVE TECHNOLOGY AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS: THE IUD AT HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL JUNCTURES

Abstract

I begin my historical analysis of the co-evolution of reproductive norms and desires, approaches to fertility control, and the meaning assigned to contraceptives with an examination of the Grafenberg Ring, the first modern IUD. The Grafenberg ring, developed in the late 1920s by a German doctor, Ernst Gräfenberg, was a small ring made of silkworm gut and coiled silver that can be compressed to be inserted into the uterus. The Grafenberg ring appeared at a time when changes in social attitude towards sexuality had formed a favorable climate for a new contraceptive method. The device was greeted with much interest from the European birth control movement, and Gräfenberg was invited to speak at the Third Congress of the World League for Sexual Reform held in London in 1929 and at the Seventh International Birth Control Conference in Zurich in 1930 (Davis, 1971).

Citation

Takeshita, C. (2004), "CONTRACEPTIVE TECHNOLOGY AND REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS: THE IUD AT HISTORICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL JUNCTURES", Texler Segal, M., Demos, V. and Jacobs Kronenfeld, J. (Ed.) Gendered Perspectives on Reproduction and Sexuality (Advances in Gender Research, Vol. 8), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 251-284. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1529-2126(04)08008-7