High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The birth control movement in the United States was a social reform campaign to make contraception legal in America. The movement began in 1914 when a group of radicals in New York City, led by Emma Goldman, Mary Dennett, and Margaret Sanger, became concerned about the plight of poor women, who often suffered due to frequent childbirth and self-induced abortions. The targets of the activists were the Comstock laws, which outlawed the distribution of information about contraception, which was considered to be obscene. Hoping to provoke a favorable legal decision, Sanger deliberately broke the law by distributing The Woman Rebel, a newsletter containing a prohibited discussion of contraception. In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States.