The Mother's Health Clinic opened in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1937 and provided women in central Arizona with contraception and family planning resources. A group of wealthy philanthropic Phoenix women founded the clinic under the guidance of birth control activist Margaret Sanger. The clinic was the second birth control clinic to open in Arizona and the first to serve the central and northern Arizona residents. In 1942, the clinic affiliated with the national organization Planned Parenthood Federation of America and eventually formed the Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona. The Mother's Health Clinic provided Arizona women with contraception and family planning at a time when birth control was not widely accepted or available.

Margaret Goldwater advocated for birth control and reproductive rights in the United States during the twentieth century. Goldwater was a socialite and philanthropist and was married to Barry Goldwater, US Senator from Arizona. She spent much of her life working to further the women's reproductive rights movement, which sought to expand women's legal, social, and physical access to reproductive healthcare, including contraception and abortions. Goldwater, with guidance from birth control activist Margaret Sanger, helped establish the second birth control clinic in Arizona, the Mother's Health Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona. She conducted large fundraising events and authored articles in local newspapers on the need for contraceptives and family planning. Goldwater's advocacy helped launch and sustain The Mother's Health Clinic, which became the largest provider of women's reproductive healthcare in Arizona, and it later became Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona.

Barry Morris Goldwater was a Republican Arizona Senator and US presidential candidate in the twentieth-century whose policies supported the women's reproductive rights movement. Goldwater, a businessman and Air Force reservist, transitioned into politics in the 1950s. He helped align popular support for a conservative Republican Party in the 1960s. Throughout his life, he worked to maintain personal liberty and to limit governmental intrusion into citizens' private lives. Goldwater, influenced by his wife Margaret (Peggy) Goldwater, supported women's rights to abortions. Goldwater's advocacy and support for reproductive rights assisted in the foundation of the Planned Parenthood chapter in Phoenix, Arizona, and for national policies promoting birth control and abortion rights.

Margaret Higgins Sanger advocated for birth control in the United States and Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although people used contraceptives prior to the twentieth century, in the US the 1873 Comstock Act made the distribution of information relating to the use of contraceptives illegal, and similar state-level Comstock laws also classified discussion and dissemination of contraceptives as illegal. Sanger helped to repeal the Comstock Act and similar laws so that women could legally use contraceptives to control their fertility and the sizes of their families. In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the US in New York City, New York. Later in life, Sanger formed several advocacy organizations that promoted access to contraception, including the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Sanger's advocacy increased women's access to contraception and helped change the United States' social and legal perceptions of birth control.

The American Eugenics Society (AES) was established in the US by
Madison Grant, Harry H. Laughlin, Henry Crampton, Irving Fisher, and
Henry F. Osborn in 1926 to promote eugenics education programs for
the US public. The AES described eugenics as the study of improving
the genetic composition of humans through controlled reproduction of
different races and classes of people. The AES aided smaller eugenic
efforts such as the Galton Society in New York, New York, and the
Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan, and it influenced eugenic policy set by the US Supreme Court in cases
including Buck v. Bell (1927) and Skinner v. Oklahoma
(1942). The AES was renamed the Society for the Study of Social
Biology in 1972.

In 1914, Margaret Sanger published “Family Limitations,” a pamphlet describing six different types of contraceptive methods. At the time Sanger published the pamphlet, the federal Comstock Act of 1873 had made distributing contraceptive and abortion information through the US postal service illegal. The Comstock Act classified contraceptive information as obscene and limited the amount of information available to individuals about preventing pregnancies. In 1915, Sanger’s husband was charged with violating the Comstock Act for distributing “Family Limitations” and was sent to jail for 30 days. The case sparked many birth control activists to lobby for the repeal of the Comstock Act. By inciting controversy during a time when the Comstock Act limited contraception access, Sanger’s pamphlet “Family Limitations” increased women’s knowledge about various methods of preventing pregnancy.

In the early twentieth
century, birth control advocate Margaret Sanger published eight
issues of a feminist magazine called The Woman Rebel. During
this time, discussion of sex education, birth control, and
abortion were illegal. The magazine featured literary pieces on
topics like women’s rights, love and marriage, women in the
workplace, reproductive and sexual education, and contraception.
The Woman Rebel was one of the first magazines that discussed
issues that working class American women faced. Through the
magazine, Sanger sought to convince female readers to reject
their oppression and become what she called women rebels. The
Woman Rebel generated attention and controversy around the birth
control and feminist movements in the United States during the
twentieth century, advancing those movements and creating a
community of women with the common intent to rebel against
apparent injustice.

In the 1936 case United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City, New York, confirmed that physicians had the right to distribute contraceptives to patients for medical purposes. In January 1933, US Customs confiscated a package of contraceptives imported from Japan by US physician Hannah Stone. They claimed that the package violated section 305 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which, like the 1873 anti-obscenity Comstock Act, granted the US government authority to seize contraceptive materials imported into the country or sent through the mail. The court ruled that US Customs was not justified in confiscating the package and ordered its return to Stone. United States v. One Package exempted physicians from the restrictions surrounding the distribution of contraceptives and contributed to the subsequent dismantling of the Comstock Act in later court cases.

The Planned Parenthood Committee of Phoenix was established in 1942 to expand Arizona women's access to family planning resources. The Planned Parenthood Committee of Phoenix was formed through the merging of The Mother's Health Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, with the national Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The clinic was primarily based within the Phoenix Memorial Hospital campus but expanded to other locations in the late 1960s. Until it became Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona in 1978, the Planned Parenthood Committee of Phoenix provided Arizona women with contraception, initially in the form of diaphragms and spermicide, and later including the birth control pill. It also provided educational information on relationships, sex, contraception, and infertility.

Anthony Comstock was a US postal inspector and politician who advocated for the suppression of obscenity and vice throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Comstock considered any sexually explicit material like pornography and literature related to birth control and abortion as obscene. In 1873, Comstock lobbied US Congress to pass an anti-obscenity law titled An Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use, also called the Comstock Act. The law penalized individuals for sending material classified as obscene through the US postal services, which Comstock, as a special agent of the United States Post Office, could enforce. Comstock’s role in passing and enforcing the Comstock Act influenced the social and political restriction of birth control, hindering women’s access to contraceptives.