(The Conversation) — Mother’s Day seems like a strange time to celebrate birth control, which, on its most basic level, is about helping people to not become mothers – or not become mothers again. But in the mid-20th century, much of birth control’s growing support came from attempts to support American women not as feminists, but as mothers. This is the story that I focus on in my 2026 book, “ God Bless the Pill: The Surprising History of Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion .” Many religious leaders and U.S. politicians were looking for ways to strengthen the nuclear family, based around a homemaker mother and working father. Expanding legal access to contraception served as a way to make that happen. Thought leaders who pushed to make birth control more available did not necessarily do so out of a desire to help women control their own bodies.…