Key Civil Rights Laws by Kathryn Ohnaka

Author:Kathryn Ohnaka
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC
Published: 2019-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

Margaret Sanger opened the first US birth control clinic for women in 1916. She believed women should have a right to choose if and when to have children.

Women’s Family and Heath Rights

For most of America’s history, women’s health was largely overlooked, and women were left to their own devices for menstrual and birth care as well as overall health. Birth control was illegal until 1965 for married women and until 1972 for single women, but women often used dangerous or illegal methods before then.8

The first American birth control clinic was opened in 1916 by Margaret Sanger. She argued that poverty and high birth rates risked women’s lives, and they should be able to choose when to have children or even whether they wanted to have them at all. She also founded the American Birth Control League in 1921, which would later become Planned Parenthood. Birth control pills were invented in 1960, giving women much greater control over their own reproductive choices. In 1973, Roe v. Wade was decided, allowing women access to legal abortion. In 2010, the Affordable Care Act mandated that health insurance provide free birth control. The ability to use safe birth control allowed women to have safer pregnancies and childbirth and work as they chose.9

Women are still often subjected to violence, either in domestic situations or as gender-related hate crimes. In 1994, the Violence Against Women Act was passed, which set aside funding for women’s shelters, rape prevention programs, and programs to educate people about domestic violence. It was renewed and expanded in 2013 to cover Native Americans, same-sex couples, and victims of human trafficking. However, it lapsed in 2018 under the Trump administration.

Women’s Education

Schools today are open to women and men taking any classes that please them, but it wasn’t always so. Starting in the 1800s, women could attend school through college, but in practice, many schools found ways to exclude women. High schools often segregated students into “gender-appropriate classes,” such as home economics for girls and industrial arts for boys, and women’s career choices after school were limited.

As the civil rights movement pushed for more rights for women, girls began to insist on having equal access to classes. In 1972, the government enacted Title IX of the Federal Education Amendments. Title IX protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. This means that any school that takes government money must grant equal opportunities to men and women. Title IX helped open many new career fields to women.

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