Reproductive Knowledge / Contraception / Abortion

Paper Assignment
Reproductive Knowledge / Contraception / Abortion
Your assignment is to write a paper explaining how the history of contraception / abortion / reproductive knowledge has influenced the current debates about contraception and abortion. You can also consider what history has been ignored or purposely obscured in current debates.
Put Another way : what in our history explains the disagreements Americans have on this ?
Use your knowledge of history on this topic to show how that history is embedded in current debates, and / or how the history you now know is elided (ignored) in contemporary debates on this topic.
You must use specific details of historical fact to support your points. These are to be taken from the primary documents we’ve read, the essays by historians assigned as readings, and the lectures.
Your paper must utilize material from each of the historical eras we studied: early America (17th and 18th centuries), the Nineteenth century, and the Twentieth into the Twenty-first centuries.
For the current debates, you should draw on the news reports that were assigned reading for week 1.
Your paper should be approximately 8 pages in length, double line spaced, 12 pt font. You must use footnotes to cite the sources you use.
Papers are due Friday March 12th turned in via Elms by 5PM.
Footnotes for the Papers:
You must use footnotes to reference the sources used in the papers for this course. (So footnote the ideas you take from the articles, books and lectures, footnote summaries of the documents, and footnote all direct quotations.) You must use proper form for historical writing, which is “Chicago Style.”
The best source on proper footnote form is in Kate Turabian, A Manual for Writers which is presented in abbreviated fashion
through McKeldin Library’s web pages at https://lib.guides.umd.edu/c.php?g=1005490