[Ads-l] Major Antedating of "Birth Control"

[Shapiro, Fred]

The term _birth control_ has long been attributed to Margaret Sanger, indeed that coinage is often considered to be one of her most important accomplishments.  The OED has disproven that attribution with a 1906 citation.  Here is a still earlier citation:

1876 G. A. Gaskell _Letter to Charles Darwin_ 18 Nov. in _The Malthusian_ Feb. (Gale Primary Sources)

The judicial law ... is necessarily evolved in the mind by the interaction of reason and sympathy, and its development proceeds on the fact of artificial birth-control, unopposed to the force of sexual passions which otherwise would, with the weaker individuals, most certainly be too powerful to permit its action.

Fred Shapiro

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