The Family Planning Association and Contraceptive Science and Technology in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain by Natasha Szuhan (review)

Reviewed by:

• The Family Planning Association and Contraceptive Science and Technology in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain by Natasha Szuhan
• Agata Ignaciuk (bio)

The Family Planning Association and Contraceptive Science and Technology in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain
By Natasha Szuhan. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2023. Pp. 294.

Natasha Szuhan’s objective in this history of the Family Planning Association (FPA), a leading organization in the British contraceptive arena, established in 1931 and absorbed into the NHS during the 1970s, is to highlight the FPA’s role in demystifying and legitimizing contraception and sex as medical and social phenomena (p. 1). Drawing on the archives of the FPA held in the Wellcome Collection and dialoguing with the recent expansive wave of scholarship on contraceptive technologies, markets, and expertise in Britain during the central decades of the twentieth century (including Claire Jones, The Business of Birth Control, 2020; Jessica Borge, Protective Practices, 2020; and Caroline Rusterholz, Women’s Medicine, 2020), the distinctive value of Szuhan’s contribution lies in her crafting of the FPA story as a scientific and, to a lesser extent, social biography. Chapters are themed around the organization’s involvement in developing standards for contraceptive-gynecological care, testing and endorsing specific contraceptive technologies, conducting public health research into contraceptive practices and effectiveness, and lobbying on medical issues. While exploring relations between the FPA and the British government, the contraceptive industry, and medical lobbying groups, Szuhan also highlights the contributions made by individual physicians, researchers, and leading contraceptive firms. [End Page 1035]

Drawing on a vast and meticulously documented source base, The Family Planning Association imaginatively contributes to many key themes in the social history of mid-twentieth-century contraceptive technologies, such as the design of spaces and protocols for birth control clinics during the 1930s (ch. 2), the testing of barrier methods and spermicides (ch. 4), the uneasy relationships between family planning organizations and manufacturers (chs. 3–5), and how contraceptive lobbying groups operated in the intersecting arenas of state regulatory bodies, emerging national health authorities, medical elites, industry, and voluntary organizations (ch. 5). Centered on the professional biography of Helena Wright and including an analysis of her writing for popular and specialized audiences, chapter 3 will particularly appeal to wider audiences interested in contraceptive standards and the transnational biographies and careers of women physicians. The interesting stories of FPA disagreements with contraceptive manufacturers and the British Medical Association are nuanced and well written (ch. 5), as are the final pages dealing with the integration of the FPA into the British National Health Service during the 1970s.

The backbone of Szuhan’s interpretative framework is that the main FPA strategy for legitimizing contraception among the medical profession and wider society was to pursue “laboratory-based sexual science.” This argument would have benefited from more explicit reflections on science as a social activity deeply embedded within its historical context. By applying “pure science” to contraceptive testing and pursuing “applied scientific and clinical investigation” in its clinics, the FPA not only exploited but also transformed the very idea of “scientific research.” Furthermore, the FPA constructed and used a specific, historical meaning of what a “scientific birth control method” would and could mean prior to the commercialization of oral contraception. At the same time, the author somewhat surprisingly labels the pill as “the first undoubtedly scientific birth control method” (p. 228), somehow contradicting the earlier argument about the construction of the prepill contraceptive science. Likewise, the idea of “standards,” another key concept within Szuhan’s approach, also has a history. Bringing this history to the fore and placing it in dialogue with the history of standardization processes beyond the FPA and the British context would have provided vital context to the organization’s endeavors and strategies.

All in all, The Family Planning Association is a valuable and interesting exploration of organizational history, worthy of recommendation to historians of sexuality, contraception, and public health. [End Page 1036]

Agata Ignaciuk

Agata Ignaciuk is associate professor in the Department of the History of Science, University of Granada, Spain. She is currently leading the research project “ABLE: Aborto no punible en España,” on the history of legal abortion in Spain (1985–2010).

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