Abortion Before Birth Control

Why has postwar Japanese abortion policy been relatively progressive, while contraception policy has been relatively conservative? The Japanese government legalized abortion in 1948 but did not approve the pill until 1999. In this carefully researched study, Tiana Norgren argues that these contradictory policies flowed from very different historical circumstances and interest group configurations. Doctors and family planners used a small window of opportunity during the Occupation to legalize abortion, and afterwards, doctors and women battled religious groups to uphold the law. The pill, on the other hand, first appeared at an inauspicious moment in history. Until circumstances began to change in the mid-1980s, the pharmaceutical industry was the pill's lone champion: doctors, midwives, family planners, and women all opposed the pill as a potential threat to their livelihoods, abortion rights, and women's health. Clearly written and interwoven with often surprising facts about Japanese history and politics, Norgren's book fills vital gaps in the cross-national literature on the politics of reproduction, a subject that has received more attention in the European and American contexts. Abortion Before Birth Control will be a valuable resource for those interested in abortion and contraception policies, gender studies, modern Japanese history, political science, and public policy. This is a major contribution to the literature on reproductive rights and the role of civil society in a country usually discussed in the context of its industrial might.

This text traces the history of contraception and abortifacients from ancient Egypt to the 17th century, and discusses the scientific merit of the ancient remedies and why this knowledge about fertility control was gradually lost over the course of the Middle Ages.

The "contraceptive revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s introduced totally new contraceptive options and launched an era of research and product development. Yet by the late 1980s, conditions had changed and improvements in contraceptive products, while very important in relation to improved oral contraceptives, IUDs, implants, and injectables, had become primarily incremental. Is it time for a second contraceptive revolution and how might it happen? Contraceptive Research and Development explores the frontiers of science where the contraceptives of the future are likely to be found and lays out criteria for deciding where to make the next R&D investments. The book comprehensively examines today's contraceptive needs, identifies "niches" in those needs that seem most readily translatable into market terms, and scrutinizes issues that shape the market: method side effects and contraceptive failure, the challenge of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, and the implications of the "women's agenda." Contraceptive Research and Development analyzes the response of the pharmaceutical industry to current dynamics in regulation, liability, public opinion, and the economics of the health sector and offers an integrated set of recommendations for public- and private-sector action to meet a whole new generation of demand.

Drawing from a wide range of private and public sources, examines how American families gradually found access to taboo information and products for controlling the size of their families from the 1830s to the 1890s when a puritan backlash made most of it illegal. Emphasizes the importance of two shadowy networks, medical practitioners known as Thomsonians and water-curists, and iconoclastic freethinkers.

Birth control, or family planning through contraception, has become a common practice in society. Many new methods of permanent and temporary contraception have become widespread. Consequently, Muslims have also increasingly begun adopting the various means of limiting or spacing out procreation. This no doubt has a deep influence on the very core of our society and thus raises many ethical and religious questions, particularly surrounding abortion. Birth Control & Abortion in Islam systematically and concisely presents the relevant rules and regulations of Islamic law on these issues. The discussions are based entirely on the Holy Qur’an, Sunna, and the formal legal rulings propounded by the jurists of the four major Sunni schools of Islamic law. After learning of the significance of the topic through the author’s simple writing style, the reader is guided through the Islamic teachings on the various forms of birth control and abortion with unequivocal conclusiveness. Short and to the point, it contains all the essentials one needs to know about the subject.

The Clinical practice handbook for safe abortion care is intended to facilitate the practical application of the clinical recommendations from the second edition of Safe abortion: technical and policy guidance for health systems (World Health Organization [WHO] 2012). While legal, regulatory, policy and service-delivery contexts may vary from country to country, the recommendations and best practices described in both of these documents aim to enable evidence-based decision-making with respect to safe abortion care.