American Jewish women were involved in every aspect of the early twentieth-century birth control movement. From the outset they functioned as activists, consumers, and distributors. Across class divides, many Jewish women wanted the freedom to choose upward mobility over large families and to make economic decisions about having children. Some of them also made a moral argument, connecting the personal and the political, that women should exert private control over their own fertility and not delegate public power over their bodies to the state. An important cadre of Jewish women doctors found in the birth control movement both a professional specialty and a personal calling. American Jewish society and culture generally supported birth control, enabling a distinctive Jewish women's activism.

Melissa Klapper is an associate professor of history at Rowan University. She is currently a fellow at the U-M Frankel Center for Judaic Studies.