President and Chief Executive OfficerSt. Louis, MO The institution that is today's Planned Parenthood began in the early 1900s with a movement to abolish laws prohibiting dissemination of information about sexuality, contraception and human reproduction, leading to the country's first birth control clinic in 1916.In 1932, at the height of the Depression, a group of prominent, forward-thinking St. Louis citizens — doctors, ministers, rabbis, and social service workers — gathered to address the issue of "maternal health among the poor." Concerned about the widespread poverty and suffering of the era