New York, Feb. 16.
Editor Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
In your issue of Feb. 13 a letter from Mr. William A. Blehl needs correction.
The birth control bill S.4436 aims to allow physicians, hospitals and clinics only to use the U.S. mails and common carriers to send and receive such contraceptive articles, books and supplies as are needed.
It is an error to say the bill aims to reduce the population to overcome the present economic condition. The fact of the matter is that the passage of this bill would decrease tremendous misery, worry and anxiety in the lives of the poor mothers who go to hospitals and clinics for their medical advice, because they can seldom afford to consult a private doctor.
Mr. Blehls's childish announcement, "there is an overabundance of food supplies and a further depletion in population would only result in a still more overabundance" does not ring true. If there is an overabundance of food what good does it do the millions of hungry men and women walking the streets looking for jobs to buy it?
Large populations have not thus far in the history of mankind done more for civilization then plunge humanity into wars, hunger, disease, plunder, and crime. To talk nonsense at this time, with the economic facts of history before us is not only an expression of ignorance--it is malicious! Let those who want a big population make it possible for every child born and alive today to have a chance to live before they pratter about "overabundance" and "increase."
MARGARET SANGER Nat. Chairman, N.C.F.L.B.C.New York, Feb.16
(Washington, Feb. 17 AP)--
Mrs. Margaret Sanger, campaigner for a law to legalize dissemination of birth control information, today hailed the results of a poll of the senate judiciary committee as a big advance for her cause and "the best showing thus far made."
The result was nine against, six for, and two not voting.
Listed as voting for such legislation were Chairman Norris, and Senators Robinson of Indiana; Hastings, Schall, Schuyler and Black. Against it were Senators Hebert, Austin, Ashurst, Walsh, King, Stephens,Bill, Bratton, and Neely. Those reported as not voting were Senators Borah and Blaine.
"The poll by the judiciary shows an increasing understanding of what the subject means, and better than all it shows an increase of courage on the part of legislators to publicly go on record for what they think in private," said Mrs. Sanger. "this is the best vote we ever had."
"I have made a most careful check of that committee, all married men, and find that among the seventeen members are thirty-four children, an average of two children each."
"Some have more, several have none, but the low average is a point, I think, that bears on the courage of public expression of personal opinion."
Mrs. Sanger said that in the "long picture" of her cause, she counted the progress she felt she had made in Congress the high point of a "most victorious year."
"No longer can there be a claim there is an overabundance in the land and we need an increasing population to consume it, in the face of the American Federation of Labor estimates that twelve million are jobless, forty five millions inpoverty."
"I confidently predict that within ten years it will be unnecessary for physicians to bootleg information and supplies on which the health and happiness of a whole nation depends."
A summary of an interview Sanger gave before speaking at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.
Present economic conditions and unemployment coupled with the fact that the loss of private fortunes will throw the major burden of philanthropic work on county, state and federal governments, will make birth control clinics throughout thecountry a necessity, believes Mrs. Margaret Sanger, pioneer birth control advocate, who arrived in Richmond earlier today to give a public lecture in the Egyptian building of the medical college tonight.
“It will not be long,” said Mrs. Sanger, “before federal and state governments will come face to face not only with the waste of life caused by the fact that birth control information is not legalized, but by the increasing burden on the taxpayer to maintain the unfortunate and often malformed children which are the result of lack of information on the subject.
"Virginia, which is one of the most progressive states in the Union in her wonderful eugenic laws, and which has accomplished a remarkable achievement in increasing her birthrate while decreasing the death rate, will undoubtedly I believe shortly establish birth control clinics in her borders.”
The slender, auburn-haired, grey-eyed little woman with the soft voice, to whom birth control is "like a religion" for which she sacrificed a famiy and friends in the early days of her campaign when the subject was taboo, has at last lived to see the day when "public sentiment is overwhelmingly in favor of it," she said.
"Only one state in the Union, Mississippi, will not legally allow a physician to give out information onthe subject," she declared. “All the other states have some leeway in the matter.”
"The great need is for the federal birth control laws to be so amended that information may be sent through the mails or sent bypublic carriers,” she declared.
At present birth control information is undoubtedly widely disseminated throughout the country, and there are more than 135 legally established clinics. However, all the literature and supplies are literally “bootlegged” into the states under existing federal laws.
“Birth control belongs with science, preventive medicine, public relief and public health work. It should be treated with dignity andtaken out of the class of things which is practiced only surreptitiously,” she announced.
“Where clinics have been established, prosperity has increased, the death rate, particularly as regards infant mortality, has been cut, and general conditions have been bettered.”
Mrs. Sanger said that she was much surprised to read in yesterday's News Leader of the attempt of the Catholic Layman's League to prevent her talk here.
“The Catholics block our plans wherever they can,” she said. “However in places where public sentiment is firmly established they can do little. Moreover sentiment among Catholic women I find is changing in favor of birth control, and many individuals in the church are seeking information on the subject.”
The action of the Virginia Federation of Labor, Mrs. Sanger pronounced one of the most progressive things they could have done.
Sanger's actual speech was not found.
In spite of the storm of opposition which has raged around the subject of birth control, remarkable progress is being made in the matter of education, according to Mrs. Margaret Sanger, outstanding champion of the movement in this country, who is a guest at the Ambassador.
“Prejudices are being broken down rapidly,” she said, “and while public opposition has died down to a large extent, unfortunately there still is much organized opposition. Education concerning the necessity for birth control is the basis of our whole problem and then we must have recognition of the movement by governments in order that birth control information will come under the jurisdiction and direction of qualified persons.
Poor women, for instance, must have places where they can go to receive scientific instruction."
“It is important that this movement should make progress, for I believe that civilization soon will be swamped if the birth-control movement fails. It is a fact that there is a larger percentage of incompetents being born now because there is alarger number of them reproducing.”
In this connection Mrs. Sanger said many of the countries of Europe are looking toward California with great interest to see what will be the results and effects of the State’s sterilization law, which is quite generally regarded, she asserts, as one of the greatest forward strides in legislation in the direction of humanitarianism.
Mrs. Sanger said it has been her experience when attending conferences of college students on the subject of birth control that mixed groups approach the subject from a purely scientific angle, with an utter lack of self-consciousness.
At the present time Mrs. Sanger's chief concern is the pssage of the Senate bill designed to amend the Comstock law which first came into existence about sixty yeas ago. Through the proposed amendment the United States mail or common carriers would be available for members of the medical profession to distribute information.
Mrs. Sanger's purpose in Los Angeles to to appear at the hearing on the estate of the late Mrs. Viola Kauffman, who, following her death last March, was to have left considerable money and securities hidden away, although she had been considered a pauper. In her will a bequest was left for Mrs. Sanger's cause.
Following her expeirences as a trained nurse in New York, Mrs. Sanger first bgan her crusade for the birth-control movement in 1916. In 1923 she established a clinic in New York, in which, since that time, 32,000 women have received instruction, she said. A large percentage of this number, she explained, have been young women in their twentie, who already are the others of four or five children."
New York, Feb. 16.
Editor Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
In your issue of Feb. 13 a letter from Mr. William A. Blehl needs correction.
The birth control bill S.4436 aims to allow physicians, hospitals and clinics only to use the U.S. mails and common carriers to send and receive such contraceptive articles, books and supplies as are needed.
It is an error to say the bill aims to reduce the population to overcome the present economic condition. The fact of the matter is that the passage of this bill would decrease tremendous misery, worry and anxiety in the lives of the poor mothers who go to hospitals and clinics for their medical advice, because they can seldom afford to consult a private doctor.
Mr. Blehls's childish announcement, "there is an overabundance of food supplies and a further depletion in population would only result in a still more overabundance" does not ring true. If there is an overabundance of food what good does it do the millions of hungry men and women walking the streets looking for jobs to buy it?
Large populations have not thus far in the history of mankind done more for civilization then plunge humanity into wars, hunger, disease, plunder, and crime. To talk nonsense at this time, with the economic facts of history before us is not only an expression of ignorance--it is malicious! Let those who want a big population make it possible for every child born and alive today to have a chance to live before they pratter about "overabundance" and "increase."
MARGARET SANGER Nat. Chairman, N.C.F.L.B.C.New York,Feb. 16
Washington, Feb. 17 AP)--
Mrs. Margaret Sanger, campaigner for a law to legalize dissemination of birth control information, today bailed the results of a poll of the senate judiciary committee as a big advance for her cause and "the best showing thus far made."
The result was nine against, six for, and two not voting.
Listed as voting for such legislation were Chairman Norris, and Senators Robinson of Indiana; Hastings, Schall, Schuyler and Black. Against it were Senators Hebert, Austin, Ashurst, Walsh, King, Stephens, Bill, Bratton, and Neely. Those reported as not voting were Senators Borah and Blaine.
"The poll by the judiciary shows an increasing understanding of what the subject means, and better than all it shows an increase of courage on the part of legislators to publicly go on record for what they think in private," said Mrs. Sanger. "this is the best vote we ever had."
"I have made a most careful check of that committee, all married men, and find that among the seventeen members are thirty-four children, an average of two children each."
"Some have more, several have none, but the low average is a point, I think, that bears on the courage of public expression of personal opinion."
Mrs. Sanger said that in the "long picture" of her cause, she counted the progress she felt she had made in Congress the high point of a "most victorious year."
"No longer can there be a claim there is an overabundance in the land and we need an increasing population to consume it, in the face of the American Federation of Labor estimates that twelve million are jobless, forty five millions in poverty."
"I confidently predict that within ten years it will be unnecessary for physicians to bootleg information and supplies on which the health and happiness of a whole nation depends."
A summary of an interview Sanger gave before speaking at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond.
Present economic conditions and unemployment coupled with the fact that the loss of private fortunes will throw the major burden of philanthropic work on county, state and federal governments, will make birth control clinics throughout the country a necessity, believes Mrs. Margaret Sanger, pioneer birth control advocate, who arrived in Richmond earlier today to give a public lecture in the Egyptian building of the medical college tonight.
“It will not be long,” said Mrs. Sanger, “before federal and state governments will come face to face not only with the waste of life caused by the fact that birth control information is not legalized, but by the increasing burden on the taxpayer to maintain the unfortunate and often malformed children which are the result of lack of information on the subject.
"Virginia, which is one of the most progressive states in the Union in her wonderful eugenic laws, and which has accomplished a remarkable achievement in increasing her birthrate while decreasing the death rate, will undoubtedly I believe shortly establish birth control clinics in her borders.”
The slender, auburn-haired, grey-eyed little woman with the soft voice, to whom birth control is "like a religion" for which she sacrificed a famiy ad friends in the early days of her campaign when the subject was taboo, has at last lived to see the day when "public sentiment is overwhelmingly in favor of it," she said.
"Only one state in the Union, Mississippi, will not legally allow a physician to give out information on the subject," she declared. “All the other states have some leeway in the matter.”
"The great need is for the federal birth control laws to be so amended that information may be sent through the mails or sent by public carriers,” she declared.
At present birth control information is undoubtedly widely disseminated throughout the country, and there are more than 135 legally established clinics. However, all the literature and supplies are literally “bootlegged” into the states under existing federal laws.
“Birth control belongs with science, preventive medicine, public relief and public health work. It should be treated with dignity and taken out of the class of things which is practiced only surreptitiously,” she announced.
“Where clinics have been established, prosperity has increased, the death rate, particularly as regards infant mortality, has been cut, and general conditions have been bettered.”
Mrs. Sanger said that she was much surprised to read in yesterday's News Leader of the attempt of the Catholic Layman's League to prevent her talk here.
“The Catholics block our plans wherever they can,” she said. “However in places where public sentiment is firmly established they can do little. Moreover sentiment among Catholic women I find is changing in favor of birth control, and many individuals in the church are seeking information on the subject.”
The action of the Virginia Federation of Labor, Mrs. Sanger pronounced one of the most progressive things they could have done.
Sanger's actual speech was not found.
In spite of the storm of opposition which has raged around the subject of birth control, remarkable progress is being made in the matter of education, according to Mrs. Margaret Sanger, outstaanding champion of the movement in this country, who is a guest at the Ambassador.
“Prejudices are being broken down rapidly,” she said, “and while public opposition has died down to a large extent, unfortunately there still is much organized opposition. Education concerning the necessity for birth control is the basis of our whole problem and then we must have recognition of the movement by governments in order that birth control information will come under the jurisdiction and direction of qualified persons.
Poor women, for instance, must have places where they can go to receive scientific instruction."
“It is important that this movement should make progress, for I believe that civilization soon will be swamped if the birth-control movement fails. It is a fact that there is a larger percentage of incompetents being born now because there is a larger number of them reproducing.”
In this connection Mrs. Sanger said many of the countries of Europe are looking toward California with great interest to see what will be the results and effects of the State’s sterilization law, which is quite generally regarded, she asserts, as one of the greatest forward strides in legislation in the direction of humanitarianism.
Mrs. Sanger said it has been her experience when attending conferences of college students on the subject of birth control that mixed groups approach the subject from a purely scientific angle, with an utter lack of self-consciousness.
At the present time Mrs. Sanger's chief concern is the pssage of the Senate bill designed to amend the Comstock law which first came into existence about sixty yeas ago. Through the proposed amendment the United States mail or common carriers would be available for members of the medical profession to distribute information.
Mrs. Sanger's purpose in Los Angeles to to appear at the hearing on the estate of the late Mrs. Viola Kauffman, who, following her death last March, was to have left considerable money and securities hidden away, although she had been considered a pauper. In her will a bequest was left for Mrs. Sanger's cause.
Following bher expeirences as a trained nurse in New York, Mrs. Sanger first bgan her crusade for the birth-control movement i 1916. In 1923 she established a clinic in New York, in which, since that time, 32,000 women have received instruction, she said. A large percentage of this number, she explained, have been young women in their twentie, who already are the others of four or five children."
Sanger's speech to more than 400 at the American Women's Association Clubhouse was not found, but press coverage provides some excerpts. Henry Pratt Fairchild also spoke at the meeting which was presided over by Ida Haar Timme.
The recent tentative approval of birth control by a committee of the Federal Council of Churches marked woman's victory in her fight for "biological emancipation," Margaret Sanger, leader of the birth control movement, told an audience of 400 persons last night at the American Women's Association Clubhouse... The meeting was held under the auspices of the Clinical Research Bureau. Another speaker was Professor Henry Pratt Fairchild, sociologist, of New York University, who declared birth control to be a remedy for war."I have often felt sad about one aspect of Christianity since it dawned upon me that it had set the clock of women’s progress back for centuries,” Mrs. Sanger said. "Now
with the amend made by the Federal Council of Churches, woman has achieved justice at length through the recognition of birth control as a means of making happier homes and happier marriages. I believe that every woman’s organization in the country should give thanks for the forward stand taken by the council looking toward woman’s freedom and women’s progress."
She went on to assert that the government should offer a life pension to every feeble-minded person who would consent to be sterilized.
Professor Fairchild urged that human genial laws" be substituted for the "cr
uel ruthless laws of nature," so bringing about "
an era of peace more certain than all the disarmament conferences can bring about." Exercise of birth control was the use of "human" rather than "natural" he explained.
"Birth Control," he asserted,
"is the very greatest agency for the introduction of world peace."
Mrs. Walter Timme, eastern regional chairman of the Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, of which Mrs. Sanger is the national chairman, presided. The meeting was preceded by a dinner.
This article addresses the arrest of Kitty Marion and Margaret Sanger for publishing the article entitled "Birth Control or Abortion" in the Birth Control Review,, 2:11, Dec. 1918, pp. 3-4. For duplicates see Margaret Sanger Microfilm Edition: Smith College Collections, MSM S70:815 and Collected Documents C16:121.
The year 1919 is a year of victory. The work for Birth Control is bearing fruit beyond our hopes.
Something more than a mere personal escape from the toils of an outworn legal fiction was involved in the dismissal of "obscenity" charges against Kitty Marion and myself by Magistrate Eilpern in New York City, January 18th. Our arrest on December 31st, marked the end of the old year-- the end of a day that is gone. Our dismissal means it will no longer be so easy for a timorous adherent to worn out dogmas, masking himself safely behind an anonymous communication, to interfere with Birth Control propaganda.
This means a freer sweep for our efforts; it means a wider circulation for THE Birth Control Review">BIRTH CONTROL REVIEW, more co-operation, new courage, new effectiveness. In itself, it is enough to bring about for the Birth Control movement a new day.
Part of the evidence submitted to show why we should not be held to trial in a higher court consisted of several series of pamphlets on sex matters and venereal disease, issued by the War Department, the Navy Department, the United States Public Health Service, which is a branch of the Treasury Department; the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A. and the American Social Hygiene Association. These pamphlets, distributed by the millions, were designed for soldiers, for young men, for parents, and for young women! And some of them discussed sex matters with far more frankness than did the article which was complained of. Many others looked as if they might have been in large part rewritten from the book, "What Every Girl Should Know," which covers exactly the same ground as the article which caused the arrest of Miss Marion and myself.
"The so-called obscenity statute is of no effect without a standard," Attorney,J. J. Goldstein, told the court," What was called obscene yesterday may in the greater light of today be found to be clean and pure. The United States government's own publications may assuredly be accepted as a standard. Some of these pamphlets are a good deal plainer spoken than is Margaret Sanger's article."
Since it is not in conflict with the principle of the "obscenity" laws for the federal government to print and distribute millions of copies of pamphlets which discuss plainly the physiology of sex in men and women in connection with venereal disease, it can hardly be in conflict with these statutes to discuss the same matters in connection with Birth Control.
Miss Marion and myself were arrested December 31st by Sergeant Mooney of the Thirty-first street police station, New York. He explained that he had received complaints, which he afterwards said were anonymous, against the sale of the magazine on Broadway by Miss Marion and other women, and against its display upon the newsstands. The basis of the formal complaint was the article in the December number entitled ""Birth Control or Abortion?."
In that article it was urged that since women limit their families by abortion if by no other means, a free, unhindered spreading of the knowledge of scientific Birth Control would do away with the appalling number of abortions occurring annually in the United States. One authority says there are 1,000,000 each year and another puts the figure even higher.
We were arraigned before Magistrate Eilpern and were released in custody of our attorney. Arguments were heard at our next appearance in court and the case taken under advisement for a few days. At our third appearance, the magistrate announced that he needed more time to consider the case.
January 18th he dismissed us.
"I dismiss the charges upon a strict legal ground" said he "I am not passing upon the merits of Birth Control propaganda. The Appellate Division held in the Mindell case that Margaret Sanger's book, "What Every Girl Should Know" was not obscene, reversing the decision of the Court of Special Sessions, which had convicted. This is the same matter that is involved in the present article. On that ground alone, I dismiss these charges."
The case would seem to dispose of the "obscenity" statute so far as Birth Control propaganda in the state of New York is concerned. The issuance of the "venereal disease" pamphlets by the federal government--the same pamphlets are also being distributed by the New York state department of health--answers objections of masculine-minded puritans who still believe that women can be kept pure through ignorance. At last the state and the nation have come to a more enlightened standard.
Not only have they come to accept this standard, but, alarmed by the terrible results of ignorance to the individual and the state they are insisting upon the light.
They want the light through pamphlets, magazines, the public schools--through all the means of getting light upon sex matters.
In a pamphlet entitled "The Problem of Sex Education in Schools" issued by the United States Public Health Service, distributed by both that service and the Bureau of Venereal Disease of New York state health department, this statement is made:
"It (sex education) includes the whole process of reproduction and nurture of children, the meaning of marriage, prostitution, venereal diseases, illegitimacy and hygiene of sound recreation. These cannot be taught at any one time or place."
In the same pamphlet, bearing as it does the imprint of the United States government and of the State of New York, this indictment of the ban on sex knowledge is set forth:
"In planning to include sex education in the school curriculum it should be realized that sex in life is not isolated as an experience or as a group of facts. It winds through many kinds of experiences at different ages and is a part of many kinds of facts. Few branches of knowledge or feeling do not touch sex problems. Few subjects can be taught properly with the sex aspects left out. An examination of the curriculum shows that society has had an official censor deleting sex from all classroom work under the orders of a now outworn prudery. We find sex left out of all subjects no matter how much the omission weakens or even falsifies them. In nature study begin with the baby animal and end with the death, giving no account of the renewal process; in anatomy while three bodily cavities are named, the organs in only two are fully enumerated; in contagious diseases venereal diseases are omitted; in the selections from literature the sex motives are suppressed; in history and civics their significance is ignored."
If any word of rebuke to the suppressors of sex knowledge remained to be said, it was contained in "Facts for Young Women," a pamphlet issued by the New York State Department of Health, under the signature of Dr. Hermann M. Biggs, the commissioner. After describing some of the horrors that have resulted from ignorance of sexual functions, the writer says:
"Is it not time, with our knowledge of these facts, that something should be done to change this deplorable condition? Is it not time that women should look the sex problem squarely in the face, devoid of mystery and so-called 'moral issues.' from a practical and common sense point of view? Is it not time that all girls and young women, the future mothers of the race, should know the truth about the reproductive organs and the diseases which may effect them, so as to preserve their health and that of their offspring?
It is the object of this booklet to teach young women some of the facts which they should know about these vital things."
The world moves and America moves with it. Six or seven years ago the post office department held up copies of "What Every Girl Should Know" as unmailable. Only after a considerable difficulty were the department authorities convinced that there was no violation of the federal laws in sending these books through the mails. Now these are court decisions upholding our contention as to the character of such books.
There are still federal laws against the mailing of contraceptive information. Many states have laws too against communicating this information. Reactionaries still use these statutes to prevent the enlightenment of women and the freeing of them from the burden of too frequent child bearing. But the time is coming--perhaps sooner than some of us can believe-- when these mediaeval legal monstrosities will follow others of their kind to the dustbin.