ASU professor provides historical perspective for Supreme Court ruling on birth control

Donald T. Critchlow, director of the ASU Center for Political Thought and Leadership and professor of history in ASU's School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, provides historical perspective for the recent Supreme Court ruling on birth control on NPR's Morning Edition with Scott Horsely.

After World War II, U.S. policy experts – convinced that unchecked population growth threatened global disaster – successfully lobbied bipartisan policymakers in Washington to initiate federally-funded family planning. In his book, "Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government in Modern America," Critchlow chronicles how the government's involvement in contraception and abortion evolved into one of the most bitter, partisan controversies in American political history.

“Obviously the issue became politicized," Critchlow says. "Republican strategists saw it as a wedge issue to go after Democrats.”