In the 1962 case Planned Parenthood Committee of Phoenix v. Maricopa County, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that Arizona Revised Statute 13-213, which banned the public advertising of contraceptive or abortion medication or services, was constitutional. However, the court also ruled that that Arizona Revised Statute 13-213 did not apply to Planned Parenthood's distribution of contraceptive information, allowing Planned Parenthood to continue distributing the information. Following the case, the Arizona law was challenged several times and eventually deemed unconstitutional in the 1973 case State v. New Times INC. The case Planned Parenthood Committee of Phoenix v. Maricopa County established that Planned Parenthood's distribution of medical literature was not advertising as described in the law, and it initiated a decade long discussion about the constitutionality of the laws preventing the distribution of materials related to contraception or abortion.

In the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court ruled that laws banning abortion violated the US Constitution. The Texas abortion laws, articles 1191–1194, and 1196 of the Texas penal code, made abortion illegal and criminalized those who performed or facilitated the procedure. Prior to Roe v. Wade, most states heavily regulated or banned abortions. The US Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade secured women's rights to terminate pregnancies for any reasons within the first trimester of pregnancy. It also sparked legal discussions of abortion, fetus viability and personhood, and the trimester framework, setting a landmark precedent for future cases including Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989), Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), and Stenberg v. Carhart (2000).

“Program of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development” comprises the majority of context within the twenty-year sustainable development plan, International Conference on Population and Development Program of Action, hereafter POA, published in 1994 by the United Nations Population Fund or UNFPA. Given the rising global population, the goal of the POA was to outline the steps governments around the world were to take to achieve sustainable development by 2014. Under leadership of the United Nations Population Fund, 179 countries met in Cairo, Egypt, to debate the best way to address the growing global population and the need for sustainable development. The debates began on 5 September 1994 and ended on 13 September 1994, resulting in all 179 participating countries endorsing the Program of Action. The Program of Action encouraged participating countries to prioritize human rights, reproductive rights, and women’s empowerment during all future sustainable development plans and programs.

Breast augmentation involves the use of implants or fat tissue to increase patient breast size. As of 2019, breast augmentation is the most popular surgical cosmetic procedure in the United States, with annual patient numbers increasing by 41 percent since the year 2000. Since the first documented breast augmentation by surgeon Vincenz Czerny in 1895, and later the invention of the silicone breast implant in 1963, surgeons have developed the procedure into its own specialized field of surgery, creating various operating techniques for different results. By having varied incisions, implant placements, and improved ways of treating surgery-related complications, advanced technology has enabled women to undergo breast augmentations for aesthetic, medical, or reconstructive reasons. Trans women may also benefit from breast augmentations. Having the option of a breast augmentation gives women more control over their physical appearance, which may improve their self-image and boost their confidence.

In the 1960s, two plastic surgeons from the United States, Thomas Dillon Cronin and Frank Judson Gerow, collaborated with the Dow Corning Corporation, which specialized in silicone products, to create the first silicone breast implant. Surgeons used the implant, named the Cronin-Gerow implant, to improve the look of a woman’s breasts, by correcting for asymmetry, augmenting the size, or creating a more uplifted profile. Surgeons began widely using the breast implant almost immediately after it reached the US market in 1964, and breast augmentation quickly became one of the most popular cosmetic surgeries in the country. The creation of a silicone breast implant not only established a new branch of cosmetic surgery, but it also enabled women with breast cancer to receive reconstructions to improve their aesthetic appearance after cancer treatment and removal of the cancerous breast tissues.

In the late nineteenth century, the Comstock Act of 1873 made the distribution of contraception illegal and classified contraception as an obscenity. Reflecting the predominant attitude towards contraception at the time, the Comstock Act was the first federal anti-obscenity law that targeted contraception. However, social acceptance of birth control changed at the turn of the twentieth century. In this thesis, I analyzed legislation, advocates, and literature pertinent to that social change to report on the events leading up to the decriminalization of contraception.

Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering, or MAGE, is a genome editing technique that enables scientists to quickly edit an organism’s DNA to produce multiple changes across the genome. In 2009, two genetic researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, Harris Wang and George Church, developed the technology during a time when researchers could only edit one site in an organism’s genome at a time. Wang and Church called MAGE a form of accelerated evolution because it creates different cells with many variations of the same original genome over multiple generations. MAGE made genome editing much faster, cheaper, and easier for genetic researchers to create organisms with novel functions that they can use for a variety of purposes, such as making chemicals and medicine, developing biofuels, or further studying and understanding the genes that can cause harmful mutations in humans.

Light therapy, also called phototherapy, exposes infants with jaundice, a yellowing of the skin and eyes, to artificial or natural light to break down the buildup of bilirubin pigment in the blood. Bilirubin is an orange to red pigment produced when red blood cells break down, which causes infants to turn into a yellowish color. Small amounts of bilirubin in the blood are normal, but when there is an accumulation of excess bilirubin pigment, the body deposits the excess bilirubin in the layer of fat beneath the skin. That accumulation of bilirubin causes the skin and the white areas of the eye to appear yellowed, a common symptom of jaundice. Buildup of bilirubin typically occurs when the immature liver of a newborn infant is unable to efficiently breakdown the bilirubin molecule into products that the body can excrete. High levels of bilirubin, a phenomenon called hyperbilirubinemia can be toxic and can lead to a brain dysfunction called kernicterus, which may result in permanent brain damage. The relative simplicity of phototherapy treatment has made effective neonatal jaundice treatment nearly universal, almost completely eliminating the risk of infant brain damage from hyperbilirubinemia.

The Mustard Operation is a surgical technique to correct a heart condition called the transposition of the great arteries (TGA). TGA is a birth defect in which the placement of the two arteries, the pulmonary artery, which supplies deoxygenated blood to the lungs, and the aorta, which takes oxygenated blood to the body are switched. William Thornton Mustard developed the operation later named for him and in 1963 operated on an infant with TGA, and ameliorated the condition, at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. Afterwards, the Mustard Operation became the primary form of corrective surgery for TGA, until the arterial switch operation largely replaced the Mustard Operation by the late 1990s. The Mustard Operation enabled surgeons to correct TGA in infants born with the life-threatening anomaly, increasing their life spans and quality of life.

The Malthusian League, founded in London, England, in 1877 promoted the use of contraception to limit family size. Activists Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant established the Malthusian League after they were arrested and exonerated for publishing a pamphlet describing techniques to prevent pregnancy. Founders based the league on the principles of Thomas Malthus, a British nineteenth century economist, who wrote on the perils of a population growing beyond the resources available to support it. The Malthusian League advocated for limiting family size voluntarily through contraception to avoid the overpopulation and poverty cautioned in Malthus’ work. After fifty years, the Malthusian League closed due to the increasing disapproval for Malthus’s economic theories of population and poverty. However, the Malthusian League’s activism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to more tolerant views of contraception and family planning in Great Britain in the twentieth century.