The establishment of the world’s first birth control clinic in Amsterdam inspired the creation of similar clinics in other countries and helped to promote acceptance of contraception in many different cultures.
Although various methods of contraception had been used for thousands of years to prevent pregnancy, the idea of using birth control as a means to limit human population growth to help end poverty did not arise until the nineteenth century. Up to that time, political economists saw human population growth as an indicator of prosperity. It was not until after Thomas Robert Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population
Malthus was an Anglican clergyman who postulated that population growth is geometric, while the supply of resources can only grow arithmetically. He foresaw a time when the rapid growth of the human population would outstrip natural resources, leading to widespread poverty and starvation. He saw the need for birth control, but due to his religious beliefs, he could support only delayed marriage and abstinence to achieve that goal.
Thomas Robert Malthus.
In most industrialized countries of Malthus’s time, the general public had no practical knowledge of birth control. The only published source of information was The Fruits of Philosophy: Or, The Private Companion of Young Married People, published by the American physician Charles Knowlton in 1832. Knowlton was promptly arrested on the book’s publication. The book then traveled to Great Britain, where birth control activists Charles Bradlaugh
The first organization to actively promote contraception among the poor as a means to control population took its name from Malthus
The only European country in which it was not illegal to give out birth control information was the Netherlands. In 1879, upon receiving her medical degree, Aletta Jacobs, the first professionally trained woman physician of that country, visited England and became acquainted with the Malthusian League. During that same year Drysdale
Unlike the British Malthusian League, the Dutch Neo-Malthusian League from its beginning stressed family planning, admitted socialist members—who gave the league access to the poor)—and actively distributed two hundred thousand tracts that explained methods of birth control. Since Jacobs had always provided free medical care to the poor in her clinic, it was just one more step for her to offer free family planning advice to the poor as well as to the wealthier patrons of her private practice. Jacobs established her birth control clinic in Amsterdam in 1882; it was the world’s first such clinic. Along with counseling, Jacobs also fitted women with diaphragms, a recent invention she perfected. However, it was the only form of artificial contraception she advocated.
Over the next several years, physician members of the Dutch Neo-Malthusian League established birth control clinics in The Hague, Rotterdam, and many other cities in the Netherlands by 1892. All were characterized by giving free birth control advice to poor patients and by hiring midwives to counsel and fit patients. By 1894, the midwives were treating more than five hundred women a year. In 1898 alone, more than fifteen hundred women used the clinic’s services.
Near the turn of the twentieth century an organization of midwives opposed to Neo-Malthusianism formed in Amsterdam, and it excluded any woman associated with the league from practicing midwifery. The clinics responded by training poor women instead of midwives, and they encouraged these “lay-nurses” to go out and teach other poor women. Church and medical organizations went to the Dutch parliament to protest the clinics, and doctors faced difficulties if they showed any support of Neo-Malthusianism. However, the government subsequently passed no laws against birth control, most likely because of the efforts of Samuel van Houten
The clinics were never shut down, and in 1925 Jacobs was able to report on their success. Around 1880, the birth rate in the Netherlands was 37.6 births for every 1,000 inhabitants. In 1920, the rate was 19.3 births. Birth control became accepted by the majority of the Dutch populace, and the league established the Aletta Jacobs Huis in 1931. This institute, the first large public birth control clinic in Amsterdam, was allowed to continue, and others followed.
Birth control took longer to find acceptance in other parts of the world, but it eventually did, thanks in large part to Margaret Sanger
During the 1960’s, governments throughout the world were committed to giving money to Planned Parenthood. In 1969, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities was established. The United Nations has hosted international conferences addressing the problem of overpopulation in Bucharest in 1974, in Mexico City in 1984, and in Cairo in 1994. Many governments, the most notable being China, adopted official policies regarding family planning. Birth rates began to fall in developed countries, and many international groups focused their attention on reducing birth rates in developing countries as well. By the twenty-first century, the use of birth control to control population growth as well as family size was generally accepted.
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Avery, John. Progress, Poverty, and Population: Re-reading Condorcet, Godwin and Malthus. London: Frank Cass, 1997. Traces the history of the debate during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries between utopian optimists, such as Condorcet and Godwin, and pessimists, such as Malthus, about the effects of population growth upon society. -
Back, Kurt W. Family Planning and Population Control: The Challenges of a Successful Movement. Boston: Twayne, 1989. A thorough, easy-to-read account of the history of the birth control movement, stressing trends and mores shifting as the need for contraception became more obvious. -
Besant, Annie, and Charles Knowlton.“A Dirty, Filthy Book”: The Writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant on Reproductive Physiology and Birth Control and an Account of the Bradlaugh-Besant Trial. Edited by Sripati Chandrasekhar. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Includes Besant’s Law of Population and her recantation Theosophy and the Law of Population (1891), as well as Knowlton’s Fruits of Philosophy. The texts are prefaced by a useful introduction. -
Bosch, Mineke, with Annemarie Kloosterman, eds. “Unity Above Nation, Race, or Creed: An Introduction to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance.” In Politics and Friendship: Letters from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, 1902-1942. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1990. A translated edition of a Dutch book of Jacobs’s letters. Provides a well-researched account of her life and causes. -
Elwell, Frank W. A Commentary on Malthus’s 1798 Essay on Population as Social Theory. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2001. An analysis of the essay that seeks to eliminate some of the dogma and misinterpretation surrounding Malthus’s theories and present his ideas with more subtlety and complexity. Includes a reprint of the original essay -
Jacobs, Aletta. “Birth Control in Holland.” The Nation 120, no. 3118 (April 8, 1925): 392. Shows success of Dutch birth control clinics with statistics on birth rate, infant mortality, and illegitimate children. -
_______. “The First Birth Control Clinic.” In European Women: A Documentary History, 1789-1945, edited by Eleanor S. Riemer and John C. Fout. New York: Schocken Books, 1980. An account of how and why Jacobs went into birth control practice. Also explains its success and lack of acceptance as late as 1928. -
Ledbetter, Rosanna. “Neo-Malthusians Abroad.” In A History of the Malthusian League, 1877-1927. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1976. Incredibly detailed and well written, this chapter gives an outstanding brief account of the Dutch Neo-Malthusian League and the circumstances surrounding the birth control clinic.
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Annie Besant; Thomas Robert Malthus; Francis Place; Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska.