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When soldiers returned from World War II in the mid-1940s, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America was ready for them. With educational programs and materials, such as the pamphlets “The Soldier Takes a Wife” and “For the Man Who Comes Back,” the organization targeted long-separated couples and men eager to spend time with real-live American women instead of paper pin-ups. Whether a wife, a sweetheart, or a dedicated correspondent, one pamphlet read, “you don’t need to be told, any one of them in the flesh is better than a million pictures on a wall.”

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