Contraception

“Laboratory research on contraception indicated important unexplored areas for physiological investigation. Social activists, who had encouraged prominent scientists to become interested in both the social value and the genetic implications of birth control, found these investigators revising the goals of their research. . . . The eugenic motivations underlying these studies, which had initially made them theoretically attractive to biologists, were gradually eroded. Concern with ‘human evolution’ ceded its place to interest in physiological mechanisms” (Borell V, 84). . . . With the rise of Hitler, the genetic arguments for birth control rapidly lost their appeal. By that time the scientific problem of how to achieve effective contraception had entered the professional consciousness. . . . Scientific discussion of birth control permanently altered from a question of justification to a problem of method: How could one achieve reliable and safe contraception? . . . The knowledge and control that [biologists] promised lay in understanding the whole reproductive cycle – not merely in evaluating the toxic effects of presumptive spermicides (85).