While the Federal Government will give you a truck load of information on how to raise pigs and chickens, they will give you give years in Atlanta and a fine of $5,000 if you even tell anybody, through the mail, about birth control clinics operating legally in Virginia, Mrs. Margaret Sanger, founder of the modern birth control movement, told a large audience here last night in protesting against what she said was discrimination against mothers and children.
Because more than 1,600 Richmanders came early to the Egyptian Building of the Medical College, for the lecture, the meeting had to be moved to the old First Baptist Church at Broad and Twelfth Street.
Mrs. Sanger set forth many arguments why birth control information should be made readily accessible, but gave no information on how to accomplish such control. Dr. Fred Wampler of the Medical College of Virginia presided and presented the speaker.
Summarizing the case, Mrs. Sanger gave seven reasons why birth controlshould be practiced. They were: 1. By parents who have transmittable disease. 2. In cases of women who have tuberculosis, heart disease or some temporary ailment. 3. Where parents, though normal themselves apparently, already have brought into abnormal and defective children. 4. Adolescents. Early marriage, she said, was desirable, but the young should not become parents. The girls should be 22 year sold, the boys 23 for complete development. 5. For the purpose of spacing children so there will be two or three years between births. 6. The economic side of the question; the father’s earning power. It is unfair, she argued, for parents to have children they can do nothing for or for older children to have to stunt their youth working to feed their brothers and sisters, “their parents’ children.” 7. What she said was the necessity for young people after marriage to postpone at least two years after marriage the having of any children because they need the time for mental and spiritual adjustment. Premature parents, she said, found it harder in modern times to get along. Therefore contraceptive information should be available to young married people because individuals should be able to say what size their families should be.
Birth control, Mrs. Sanger said, can be accomplished in three ways, one, continence or celibacy, the method approved by the Catholic Church. This method, however, should not be forced on most people as religious dogma, particularly, she said, because psychiatrists have found continence was not good for most people. The second method was through sterilization by radium or x-ray, a method approved by Virginia and thirteen other States for epileptics and other persons who would transmit their physical and mental handicaps to children.
The third was by chemical or mechanical contraceptives, the description of which now is classed by Federal law as “obscenity.”
She stressed the advantages of small families–-the longer school terms possible; better nourishment, and lessovercrowding, low wages and unemployables. Birth control information, she found was generally denied the poor even when accessible to more prosperous people.
“No matter what laws we may make or what we may do, there will always be some kind of child labor in large families,” she said, telling of 3-year-olds seen in Colorado and California beet fields.
Only Chile has a worse maternal mortality rate than this country, although in 1929 we spent nine billions on maternal and child health. About 22,000 mothers a year die of preventable causes usually resulting from pregnancy and more than 200,000 infants die as a result of poverty and neglect.
She quoted studies by the Children's Bureau in Washington which found fathers' wages and spacing between children potent factors in the matter of survival of childrn. The second born has a better chnce than the fifth in a family and 60 percent of twelth children everywhere are doomed at birth.
The Hoover child health conference reported ten million handicapped, six million at least partly due to undernourishment.
"They will not attack the problem at the root,” she said. "Children should have passports to give every child a sound body and mind. Our immigration laws forbid idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, psychopathic and insane or diseased persons, prostitutes and so on. Why should the same types come in through the birthrate?"
Discussing the larger view of population control she quoted John Maynard Keynes, the English economist, the the effect that there can be no peace without such control and explained her belief that Japan's warlike gestures and conquest of Manchuria are die to the fact that she has 85,000,000 population in a territory smaller than California. Italy she found faced with somewhat the same problem.
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.
While the Federal Government will give you a truck load of information on how to raise pigs and chickens, they will give you give years in Atlanta and a fine of $5,000 if you even tell anybody, through the mail, about birth control clinics operating legally in Virginia, Mrs. Margaret Sanger, founder of the modern birth control movement, told a large audience here last night in protesting against what she said was discrimination against mothers and children.
Because more than 1,600 Richmanders came early to the Egyptian Building of the Medical College, for the lecture, the meeting had to be moved to the old First Baptist Church at Broad and Twelfth Street.
Mrs. Sanger set forth many arguments why birth control information should be made readily accessible, but gave no information on how to accomplish such control. Dr. Fred Wampler of the Medical College of Virginia presided and presented the speaker.
Summarizing the case, Mrs. Sanger gave seven reasons why birth control should be practiced. They were: 1. By parents who have transmittable disease. 2. In cases of women who have tuberculosis, heart disease or some temporary ailment. 3. Where parents, though normal themselves apparently, already have brought into the world abnormal and defective children. 4. Adolescents. Early marriage, she said, was desirable, but the young should not become parents. The girls should be 22 years old, the boys 23 for complete development. 5. For the purpose of spacing children so there will be two or three years between births. 6. The economic side of the question; the father’s earning power. It is unfair, she argued, for parents to have children they can do nothing for or for older children to have to stunt their youth working to feed their brothers and sisters, “their parents’ children.” 7. What she said was the necessity for young people after marriage to postpone at least two years after marriage the having of any children because they need the time for mental and spiritual adjustment. Premature parents, she said, found it harder in modern times to get along. Therefore contraceptive information should be available to young married people because individuals should be able to say what size their families should be.
Birth control, Mrs. Sanger said, can be accomplished in three ways, one, continence or celibacy, the method approved by the Catholic Church. This method, however, should not be forced on most people as religious dogma, particularly, she said, because psychiatrists have found continence was not good for most people. The second method was through sterilization by radium or x-ray, a method approved by Virginia and thirteen other States for epileptics and other persons who would transmit their physical and mental handicaps to children.
The third was by chemical or mechanical contraceptives, the description of which now is classed by Federal law as “obscenity.”
She stressed the advantages of small families–-the longer school terms possible; better nourishment, and less overcrowding, low wages and unemployables. Birth control information, she found was generally denied the poor even when accessible to more prosperous people.
“No matter what laws we may make or what we may do, there will always be some kind of child labor in large families,” she said, telling of 3-year-olds seen in Colorado and California beet fields.
Only Chile has a worse maternal mortality rate than this country, although in 1929 we spent nine billions on maternal and child health. About 22,000 mothers a year die of preventable causes usually resulting from pregnancy and more than 200,000 infants die as a result of poverty and neglect.
She quoted studies by the Children's Bureau in Washington which found fathers' wages and spacing between children potent factors in the matter of survival of childrn. The second born has a better chnce than the fifth in a family and 60 percent of twelth children everywhere are doomed at birth.
The Hoover child health conference reported ten million handicapped, six million at least partly due to undernourishment.
"They will not attack the problem at the root,” she said. "Children should have passports to give every child a sound body and mind. Our immigration laws forbid idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, psychopathic and insane or diseased persons, prostitutes and so on. Why should the same types come in through the birthrate?"
Discussing the larger view of population control she quoted John Maynard Keynes, the English economist, the the effect that there can be no peace without such control and explained her belief that Japan's warlike gestures and conquest of Manchuria are die to the fact that she has 85,000,000 population in a territory smaller than California. Italy she found faced with somewhat the same problem.
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 scheduled lecture at the Medical College of Virginia's Egyptian Building was forced to move to the First Baptist Church because of an overflow crowd. Dr. Fred J. Wampler presided.
While the Federal Government will give you a truck load of information on how to raise pigs and chickens, they will give you give years in Atlanta and a fine of $5,000 if you even tell anybody, through the mail, about birth control clinics operating legally in Virginia, Mrs. Margaret Sanger, founder of the modern birth control movement, told a large audience here last night in protesting against what she said was discrimination against mothers and children.
Mrs. Sanger set forth many arguments why birth control information should be made readily accessible, but gave no information on how to accomplish such control. Dr. Fred Wampler of the Medical College of Virginia presided and presented the speaker.
Summarizing the case, Mrs. Sanger gave seven reasons why birth control should be practiced. They were: 1. By parents who have transmittable disease. 2. In case of women who have tuberculosis, heart disease or some temporary ailment. 3. Where parents, though normal themselves apparently, already have brought into the world abnormal and defective children. 4. Adolescents. Early marriage, she said, was desirable, but the young should not become parents. The girls should be 22 years old, the boys 23 for complete development. 5. For the purpose of spacing children so there will be two or three years between births. 6. The economic side of the question; the father’s earning power. It is unfair, she argued, for parents to have children they can do nothing for or for older children to have to stunt their youth working to feed their brothers and sisters, “their parents’ children.” 7.What she said was the necessity for young people after marriage to postpone at least two years after marriage the having of any children because they need the time for mental and spiritual adjustment. Premature parents, she said, found it harder in modern times to get along. Therefore contraceptive information should be available to young married people because individuals should be able to say what size their families should be.
Birth control, Mrs. Sanger said, can be accomplished in three ways, one, continence or celibacy, the method approved by the Catholic Church. This method, however, should not be forced on most people as religious dogma, particularly, she said, because psychiatrists have found continence was not good for most people. The second method was through sterilization by radium or x-ray, a method approved by Virginia and thirteen other States for epileptics and other persons who would transmit their physical and mental handicaps to children.
The third was by chemical or mechanical contraceptives, the description of which now is classed by Federal law as “obscenity.” She stressed the advantages of small families–-the longer school terms possible; better nourishment, and less overcrowding, low wages and unemployables. Birth control information, she found was generally denied the poor even when accessible to more prosperous people. “No matter what laws we may make or what we may do, there will always be some kind of child labor in large families,” she said, telling of 3-year-olds seen in Colorado and California beet fields. Only Chile has a worse maternal mortality rate than this country, although in 1929 we spent nine billions on maternal and child health. About 22,000 mothers a year die of preventable causes usually resulting from pregnancy and more than 200,000 infants die as a result of poverty and neglect.“
"They will not attack the problem at the root,” she said. "Children should have passports to give every child a sound body and mind. Our immigration laws forbid idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, psychopathic and insane or diseased persons, prostitutes and so on. Why should the same types come in through the birthrate?"