Choice or Coercion: The Biography of Norplant

This episode examines state lawmakers’ efforts to implement programs that would pay welfare recipients to use Norplant. The politicians proposing these programs argued that no woman would be pressured into choosing Norplant. Conversely, reproductive justice activists maintained that paying poor women to choose one contraceptive over another took the choice out of their decision. This episode also features some of my conversation with the reproductive justice activist, Brandi Collins-Calhoun.

In 1992, Baltimore's health commissioner initiated a program that allowed some public school's health clinics to prescribe Norplant to their teenage students. The local government hoped this program would lessen the city's high teenage pregnancy rates, but they failed to predict the contentious debate it would produce. This episode features portions of my conversation with six UNC Greensboro students. To see visuals related to this episode, please follow us on Instagram at @choice_or_coercion.

One month after Norplant’s FDA approval, in January 1991, Howard Broadman, a California county judge ordered Darlene Johnson, a twenty-eight-year-old African American pregnant mother of four, to have Norplant inserted into her arm for three years as part of her probation.​ This episode examines Johnson's case and the complicated national debate it generated. 

Thank you to Frank Licata for lending his voiceover skills to this episode. 

Norplant was the first subdermal implantable contraceptive device. It consisted of six silicone rubber rods filled with a hormone. When inserted under the skin of a woman's arm, Norplant prevented pregnancies for up to five years. In this first episode, historian, Justina Licata, looks at Norplant's development and testing trials leading up to the drug's FDA approval in 1990. It focuses on Norplant’s early connections to the population control movement.

Norplant was the first subdermal implantable contraceptive device. It consisted of six silicone rubber rods filled with a hormone. When inserted under the skin of a woman's arm, Norplant prevented pregnancies for up to five years. This podcast examines Norplant’s history, and more specifically the way governmental institutions used the contraceptive device to control certain populations of women’s bodies. Please subscribe and start listening on May 14.