The birth control movement before Roe v. Wade

This essay synthesizes the history of the birth control movement in the US and describes changes in sexual behavior, social values, and public policy in order to provide a context for the changes in human reproductive public policy. After an introduction, the essay outlines the history of contraception from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Part 3 covers the period of World War I to the Depression when civil libertarians and eugenicists began to question the suppression of contraception and Margaret Sanger organized her clinics. The fourth part of the essay carries the history forward to the end of World War II, a period in which Dr. Clarence J. Gamble began to expose the marketing of defective contraceptive methods and to illustrate the willingness of poor women to accept contraceptives. The social changes which began in the 1950s are the subject of the fifth section of the essay. During this period, Roman Catholic opposition to contraception lessened, and social scientists began to focus world attention on overpopulation. Frank Notestein was appointed the first head of the Office of Population Research at Princeton, and John D. Rockefeller III founded the Population Council which conducted research into the IUD and began to attempt to influence population growth in nonindustrialized countries. This period also saw the development of the oral contraceptive. The changes of this era were institutionalized in 1967 when the federal government took a positive stance towards family planning in its Social Security Amendments. The decade of the 1970s is the subject of the last part of this essay. This period saw the Supreme Court assign a constitutionally protected right to abortion and Congress pass the Helms Amendment which denied the use of foreign aid funds for abortions. Challenges to the right to individual birth control practice continued during this period, and debate centered around the specter of overpopulation, the threat of adolescent pregnancy, and perceptions of "family values."     

On Neolithic Origins in Western Georgia

The emergence and distribution of a production economy in western Georgia remains a contentious issue. To date, no Neolithic sites have provided evidence of sedentism or animal domestication. This conclusion is upheld by findings of new excavations carried out at a number of sites – Anaseuli I, Gurianta, Urta, Kobuleti, Odishi, and Paluri attributed to the Neolithic.     

Land Privatization and Enterprises in Georgia

An American attorney directing a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) program supporting privatization of urban and industrial land in Georgia since autumn 1997 describes the procedure whereby previously privatized enterprises can acquire the land beneath and surrounding those enterprises. This program, incorporating experience derived in commercial land privatization elsewhere in the former USSR and designed to emphasize transparency and minimize fees and paperwork, is compared with alternative approaches utilized in other republics. A procedure whereby enterprises not meeting land privatization criteria may lease land from the state, and whereby local authorities may sell vacant land, also is described. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: D23, R33, R52. 20 references.     

JURY DECISION MAKING MODELS AND THE SUPREME COURT: THE JURY CASES FROM WILLIAMS v. FLORIDA TO BALLEW v. GEORGIA*

This article analyzes recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions in cases relating to the size and unanimity of juries as an example of the use (and abuse) of social science by the Court in the realm of policy analysis. The four cases reviewed “cast an unflattering light on the U.S. Supreme Court's ability to integrate social science findings into public law.”