Prescribing the Diaphragm: Protestants, Jews, Catholics, and a Changing Culture of Contraception - La Prescripción del Diafragma: Los Protestantes, los Judíos, los Católicos y una Cambiante Cultura de Anticonceptivos

Abstract

Prescribing the Diaphragm explains the cultural understandings of contraception on the eve of the FDA approval of the birth control pill. Using fictional depictions of unmarried women seeking diaphragms and a debate about whether diaphragms should be available in public hospitals, it explains how society understood contraception in the late 1950s. Taken together, they show how different public debates framed the disciplinary technology of the diaphragm. These conversations demonstrate that the diaphragm, and its acceptability, were firmly linked to marriage, such that liberal clergy could present contraception as functionally a marital and medical right that should not be limited by class. That linkage to marriage proved so strong that the decision to acquire a diaphragm had the potential to take on a veneer of commitment more significant than the decision to have sex itself.