The Diaphragm Debates: Framing Contraception as a Medical Right at Mid-Century

Today, we find ourselves talking often about how the religious views of conservative Catholics and Protestants impact the access of Americans, often American Jews, to reproductive health care that is allowed, and sometimes even mandated by their religions. As it turns out, those debates are nothing new. This talk considers debates about the diaphragm in the middle of the 20th century. Would available contraception lead to immorality? Could Catholic tax dollars be used to put contraception in public hospitals? Could the Talmud be used to support birth control arguments? Could Jews speak about their support for birth control as Jews or did they need to speak as Americans? How does the middle of the last century foreshadow our current situation, and how was it a unique moment with its own concerns?”

Samira K. Mehta is the Director of Jewish Studies and an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is the author of the National Jewish Book Award finalist Beyond Chrismukkah: The Christian-Jewish Interfaith Family in the United States (University of North Carolina Press, 2018); a book of personal essays, The Racism of People Who Love You (Beacon Press, 2023); and God Bless the Pill: Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion (under contract with University of North Carolina Press). She is the primary investigator on a research project called Jews of Color: Histories and Futures and is working on a history of Jews of color in the United States over the past 100 years for Princeton University Press.

Cosponsors: Department of Classical & Near Eastern Religions & Cultures, Department of History, Department of Political Science, Religious Studies Program, Department of Sociology