Contraceptive technologies

The history of contraception is complicated and contested. Fertility and its control - the prevention and termination of pregnancy - are central to some the of the twentieth century's major stories of social and technological change, not only in the affluent West, but also in the Global South. Though patterns of use have varied enormously in time and space, eve, between otherwise apparently similar nations, most accounts focus on a single technology, or a single nation, or both. Furthermore, the material dimensions of manufacture, testing, and distribution are often black-boxed in accounts that emphasize the fraught social, cultural, political, legal, moral, and religious ramifications of contraception and abortion. Historians still lack an integrated approach that would consider the production and consumption, supply and demand - from both men and women - of multiple technologies across national boundaries in the same analysis.