The womb veil was a 19th-century American form of barrier contraception consisting of an occlusive pessary, i.e. a device inserted into the vagina to block access of the sperm into the uterus. Made of rubber, it was a forerunner to the modern diaphragm and cervical cap.Janet Farrell Brodie, Contraception and Abortion in Nineteenth-Century America (Cornell University Press, 1994), p. 216 online; Andrea Tone, Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America (MacMillan, 2001), p. 14. An illustration of occlusive pessaries of the womb-veil type may be viewed in Vern L. Bullough, Encyclopedia of Birth Control (ABC-Clio, 2003), p. 206 online. The name was first used by Edward Bliss Foote in 1863 for the device he designed and marketed.Robert Jütte, Contraception: A History (Polity Press, 2008, originally published in German 2003), p. 154 online. "Womb veil" became the most common 19th-century American term for similar devices,Brodie, Contraception and Abortion, p. 212. and continued to be used into the early 20th century. Womb veils were among a "range of contraceptive technology of questionable efficacy" available to American women of the 19th century,Jeffrey D. Nichols, Prostitution, Polygamy and Power: Salt Lake City, 1847–1918 (University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 69 online. forms of which began to be advertised in the 1830s and 1840s.Brodie, Contraception and Abortion, pp. 190 and 212. They could be bought widely through mail-order catalogues; when induced abortion was criminalized during the 1870s, reliance on birth control increased.Esther Katz, "The History of Birth Control in the United States," in History of Medicine (Routledge, 1988), vol. 4, pp. 89–90 online; Andrea Tone, Controlling Reproduction: An American History p. 215 online. Womb veils were touted as a discreet form of contraception, with one catalogue of erotic products from the 1860s promising that they could be "used by the female without danger of detection by the male."Donna Dennis, Licentious Gotham: Erotic Publishing and Its Prosecution in Nineteenth-Century New York (Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 215–216 online.
