["Statement at the Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles"]

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Birth Control Gain Explained

Visiting Los Angeles for the first time since 1916, Margaret Sanger, president of the American Birth Control League, known for her books on the subject, arrived here yesterday on the Union Pacific Los Angeles limited for a month’s stay on the Pacific Coast.

"I am particularly interested in the attitude of Southern California on the subject of birth control," she said at the Biltmore. "When I was here before the very words, birth control, were taboo and were mentioned in whispers. But the movement which we feel is for the good of humanity and American citizenship now is commanding the attention of all classes of people and is soon to be called before Congress. I refer to the fact that while there are twenty-two clinics legally established in the United States the Federal law still makes it unlawful to use the mails to state where these clinics are located. We expect to ask at the next session of Congress than an amendment be passed which will abolish this Federal legal technicality which we feel is blocking a humanitarian movement."

"Please do not misunderstand me; birth control does not mean the resorting to illegal operations and procedure to curtail birth. The public must be educated to the fact that control means supervision of the problems of reproduction along clean, scientific lines in the interest of human welfare. It may mean prevention where the facts justify the adaptation of diet and science to obtain that end but birth control as we are advocating it does not mean violation of existing laws or distortion of nature."

"Could the public know the facts as they exist in New York City among the foreign element where children are being born into families already beyond rational lines of maintenance, the public would understand that the American birth Control League is only endeavoring to minimize poverty and want. The subject is being carried further into all walks of life on the basis that dependable offspring is the very life of the nation and that there are as many reasons why women who want children should have them as there are reasons why women to whom children are an illogical menace should not have them."

"We do not look on the consideration of this all-important subject as a violation of modesty of public decency, but rather as the most important home science of the age in which we live. We feel that conditions have reached a point where in the interest of public welfare the subject should be handled with open frankness demanding the fullest co-operation of citizenship and legislation. To effect this will mean cleanliness in body and soul, curtailment of crime and a higher standard of human life in this nation. I believe that one generation will effect the change from veiled misunderstanding to safe and sane living."

Margaret Sanger will speak at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, tomorrow at 4 p.m. and at the Trinity Auditorium, Los Angeles, December 3. Her latest book, "Motherhood in Bondage" came from the press just a week ago.

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