From Right to Responsibility: Resonance and Radicalism in Feminist-Led Reproductive Control Movements, 1905-1942

Abstract

How do leaders of social movements leverage resonance and radicalism to achieve movement goals? As eugenics gained prominence from the end of the 19th century through World War II, feminist leaders of contraceptive access movements pushed for the acceptance of birth control simultaneously as a right for women and as a tool to further racist, ableist and ethnonationalist eugenic interventions. This paper analyzes the trajectories of two feminist birth control activists in the United States and Germany to trace the development and divergence of their movements alongside eugenics through three general framings over the first half of the 20th century: advocating the individual, advancing humanity, and augmenting the state. This research uses personal papers and social movement records to show that these cases present a kind of double resonance through which movement leaders could reframe reproductive control as a solution not only to the problems of their audiences, but also legitimize their politics and identities. By contextualizing eugenics alongside neo-Malthusianism, birth control, abortion, and reproductive governance, this analysis helps to map reproductive control as a device historically wielded by white feminists to organize broader political support to fit varying and contradictory ideological projects.