A handwritten note attached to this draft reads: "If this can be cleaned up. It will do for our files."
]]>This is a revised version of Sanger's Jan. 18, 1932 speech ""My Way to Peace." It is not clear if this version was ever delivered or published. Handwritten interlineations were made by Margaret Sanger. At least one page is missing. It is possible this is a draft version of Sanger's speech to the Oklahoma Junior League on Nov. 23, 1933.
A handwritten note attached to this draft reads: "If this can be cleaned up. It will do for our files."
Mr. Chairman, Ladies & Gentlemen:
In this day of great world upheaval it is natural that there should be drawn up variousplans and proposals as to the means of world peace. My way to world peace is not the way of moratoriums, reparations, or tariffs; it is not the way of Versailles treaties; my way to peace is the way of the people. My way is to direct and control the populationthrough birth control.
There is probably no other subject that has such a practical significance,which at the same time cuts so deeply into the foundations of social evolution and world peace, as birth control. Birth control is a keynote,-–it is asignal of a new moral awakening; a moral responsibility, not only for those children who have already been born; a responsibility not only for those that are about to be born;but for those who have not yet been conceived. It is not only a health and economic expedient; it is a great social measure principle, and that measure principle is interlocked and interwoven with the spiritual progress of therace, and its future.
The definition of birth control is "the conscious control of the birth rate by means that prevent conception of human lives." When you prevent the conception of human life, you do not have to destroy human life. You do not destroy,-–you do not interfere with the development of human life, because there is no life to interfere with or to destroy. It is no more an interference with life to prevent conception than to remain single orto live in celibacy. We say "control." When you control the birth rate you do not have to limit it, any more than when you control your own furnace; you do not put out the fire. You merely adjust its temperature to the requirements of the weather, (you do not have to put the fire out) considering the time of the day and the season. When you control your automobile, you do not necessarily have to stop the engine. And when you control the size of your family, you do not have to limit yourself to one or two children, but you control it the number; first according to the state of the mother’s health affecting the possible inheritance of the child; second, according to the father’s earning power; andthird, according to the standards of living that you wish to maintain. When we say conscious control-–I wonder if any of us can imagine what it is going to mean when the human voice race is conceived consciously, not just as a result of casual accident--the reckless abandon of the moment--but when it is consciously planned fordesired and consciously conceived consciously. I tell you my friends, we don’t know what iscan only glimpse the wonders that will be be before us, when that possibility becomes a reality.
You hear people say, "Why control the birth rate? There is plenty of room in the world and in this country for unlimited population? What we need is a more equal distribution of the necessities of life, a new social system." The control of nature is not the control that we desire today, because there are only two ways of controlling the population in that way; either by increasing deaths, or by decreasing births.
Let us regard this. Population has always been controlled. From the beginning of time,--back as far as we know anything about the human race, there has been control of numbers population by the control methods of Nature. his is not the control we desire today. There are only two ways to control population-–either increase to decrease the birth rate or decrease to increase the death rate, and all through the history of mankind, population has been controlled by the death method increasing the death rate. Nature has been the most ruthless advocate of birth control through by this method. She has accomplished it through famines, pestilences, diseases, floods and wars. Nature thrusts to the wall the old, the weak, the maimed, the mentally deficient, until she perfects her type. Only the fit and strong are able to survive through the way of nature.
This might have been doubtless is an excellent way for Nature to perfect our civilization. But today, whether we like it or not, we no longer allow control of the population through nature’s method of increased death rates. Civilization has progressed beyond that. Now With the development advance of Christianity; with the development organization of Charity and development of Humanitarianism, we have thrust aside the hand of nature, we have interfered with nature’s methods, we will not allow these methods to operate. Civilization takes into the race care of the old, the feeble, the diseased, the insane, the morons the mentally deficient, and makes it almost imperative for them to exist and increase their numbers and multiply. Defectives are now fast breeders. The feeble minded woman is three times as fast fertile as normal mothers woman. This constitutes a real menace to our civilization. There is no doubt that those privileged to carry on the torch of civilization are comparitively lessening in numbers than those who have become [illegible] on the race while at the same time they carry the financial burdens of the unfit.
We find, according to psychological tests made by Professor William Starr-Meyer a few years ago, that only 15,000,000 out of a population of 165,000,000 could be classified as intellectuals and it was found that 85,000,000 had the minds of juveniles under fourteen years of age, 45,000,000 were just average and 15,000,000 were known to be feeble-minded. The great majority of the feeble-minded, the degenerates and the morons do not live in institutions but are mothers living in homes and multiplying rapidly. Is America then, safe for democracy? In this country, the feeble-minded, if they are twenty-one years of age, have the power to vote and their vote is just as good as that of the fifteen percent who are intellectuals. Isn’t it time to do something about this?
We have today what is scientists call a differential birth rate: or in other words a difference in the birth rate of two groups in our population, For the last two generations perhaps, a certain number of people, mainly the fifteen percent intellectuals have been controlling their birthrate-–that is the group with the small families. They have, perhaps, two or three or four children, but in that group, the greatest number of children achieve maturity. Here, consideration is given to the mother’s health, to the child's education and to the possible development of talents of the children.and It is from this group that we find the most children going to high schools the longest. Their children go to colleges, universities and eventually they fill filling the best positions in society.
The other group of large families struggles in poverty and in ignorance. Here we find that poverty and ignorance lack of birth control go hand in hand. We find the mothers broken on the wheel of poverty maternity. Everywhere they ask what they can do to prevent bringing another human being into this world. The fathers become desperate when unemployed, & discouraged. They become over-burdened and morally unfit. It is in this group that we have almost all the great social problems of the day. You have slums, over-crowding, high maternal and infant morality, child labor, illegitimacy, illiteracy. Many in this group are not only unemployed, but unemployable, I found, while working among this group, that it is not their fault that they have more children than they can decently provide for. I found an awakening consciousness on the part of these women to mothers and a desire to have only the number that they could decently take care of, but, because of their poverty, they have found every door closed against them.
Because these are the mothers who have to go to public institutions, hospitals, etc., for medical advice and care, and when they are taken to the hospital to have their babies or to have abortions performed,when they as what they can do not to have any more and they are told that it is against the law to give them this information; or that it is immoral and against the laws of nature. Yet, allthe time, the wives of the professional classes are obtaining information to enable them to limit their families.
What do we do about these evils of society problems? We do not like them; we try to legislate them out of existence. We have been trying for over fifty years to do away with child labor, yet, have we done it? A few years ago, we had several million children under fifteen years working at gainful occupations in the United States. Mainly, These children are taking the place of adults and competing with their fathers and mothers in industry just mainly for a daily existence. Behind them are more and more children forced out of schools and homes, little children who should be getting their education for the sake of in preparation for the future of the race. It is a long story, that of child labor. Go to the beet fields of Colorado or to the cotton fields of the South and you will see the devastating effects of ignorance on these people of birth control & child labor. The child labor committee worked valiantly to try to legislate this evil out of existence, but it cannot succeed until Birth Control Clinics are in operation in these sections; until the mothers of these children have the proper scientific information necessary to control their power of fertility.
One can go through almost all of these our social problems and you can see at a glance how they are interwoven and how they with and pivot around the question of birth control. Let us consider together two more problems connected with the welfare of the race. Take the simple question of maternal mortality. Every physician will tell a mother who has heart disease or kidney disease that she should not go through child-birth again. If she does should become pregnant again, according to the laws medical ethics, it is legal to interrupt this condition to save her life. But instead of then instructing her in the means of contraception, she is sent back to her home with only a statement that the doctors will not be responsible for her life if she should warning not to get into that condition again. She then goes back to her children home in a fearful and nervous condition with a death sentence hanging over her head. and in a weakened state of mind. Can you imagine the effect that this fear creates in a home and what itmeans to the husband and children? Every sick mother should be protected by the best information available.
We move from the mother problem to the infant problem. There we find conditions just as bad; there the mortality is even larger. Approximately 200,000 little children never reach their first birthday; ninety-five percent of them are unwanted and the large majority of them die from causes of due to poverty and neglect. There is not one person here who believes that we can do away with this problem next year or the following year--and yet the state allows these mothers to remain in utter ignorance of how to prevent the coming of 200,000 more lives next year and the next year, who are doomed in advance to die from causes of poverty and neglect.
Our Children’s Bureau tells us that from some of their statistics with that this question of unfit infant mortality has is concerned with three very vital factors. The first is the father’s wage. As it goes up, a larger number of the children survive--if it goes down,a larger number of children die. Second, is the spacing of children in a family. In other words, Where two or three years elapse between the birthdays of children, they have a better chance to survive and develop. The mother has had an opportunity to recuperate and rebuild her health. The family income has been stretched out over the intervening period of years to meet the family needs. We know that the spacing of children determines their chances of survival--that the second child has a better chance to live than the fifth, and the fifth a better chance to live than the twelfth, certainly. We have the astounding statistics that sixty percent of all the twelfth children born in this country are doomed to death before they reach their first birthday. In other words, about six out of every ten children who are twelfth in their family are doomed to die before they breathe their first breath. What a waste of child life! And Waste of mother power! Which Both of these might have been put into the constructive forces in this world of race building instead of making of our women only incubators or child-bearing machines, which is, what women have been throughout the ages become when they are ignorant of birth control.
While We know All of this these statistical facts we know, and we should try to alleviate some of the conditions but our efforts are only palliative. We can correct them only to a certain degree. We give free lunches to children, educational care, do everything possible to keep them alive. You rescue a child to live & bring it through its first years, and then you we have to battle again to carry them it through the succeeding years and then when it becomes fourteen, it secures working papers and starts to compete with his father in industry thereby creating labor problems. Thus all workers become their own rivals in trade the labor market. The law of supply & and demand dominates their existence
How stupid the labor organizations have been to recognize the power of limited numbers in a union, but not to fail to recognize how illogical it is to permit themselves to become their own rivals the same principle in their families.
It seems to me there is no greater cruelty than bringing a child into this world when the parents are diseased or when there is no provision for its care when the parents are diseased. When studying law or when preparing In contemplating to take training the robe of priesthood or entering even law or the least of the professions, you have to one must study carefully to fit yourself oneself for your one's duties. But anyone can become a father or mother. It makes no difference how unprepared or how unfit one might may be-–no difference what one can earn–-one can have as large a any number of children as wanted. Let us consider the children born of diseased parents. If we know we had to pass through other human bodies in order to reach another world, would we not be most particular and careful to choose the kind of parents we should have? We would be more than particular, so why should we not be just as particular about our obligations to the children we expect to bear?
It is not only a personal question; not only a question affecting family welfare but it is also a question affecting world affairs.
In 1924, the United States Government came to the realization that there was a serious population problem in this country. We were not so much concerned about the number of people as about the quality of the population. The United States Government therefore put a ban on immigration. No alien could enter who had certain diseases or was feeble-minded, or illiterate, or who came here for the practice of prostitution. There is a very long list of undesirable aliens who cannot come into qualities which ban aliens from this country. Furthermore, in case If in case some of them who do get in, these undesirable qualities are indicated within five years, these individuals can be deported. This is a good law. We do not want undesirable types to stain the blood stream of the Nation, but, if it is right that undesirables, that they shall not come into the country from without, then why isn’t it equally important that they not increase and multiply from within the country? They propagate the same undesirable qualities that we are trying to keep out of by our immigration laws. These laws of the United States Government caused a great upheaval in Europe and have disturbed the flow and flux of population throughout the whole world. Since we have had a selective quota of population, you can imagine what it has meant to some of those countries that had free entry into our country for so many years. Let us consider two countries that are no longer able to find a place for their surplus population in the United States.
There are two countries that we must call danger spots in the world: Italy and Japan. These two countries have a very acute population problem. Japan is a country mostly mountainous with a population of 67,000,000 of people and with a territorial area not quite as large as California. She cannot possibly feed her population and has never tried to reduce her birth rate and density of population which is very heavy indeed. There are only about 148 square miles and over 400 human beings are crammed into each square mile. It means that Japan, not being able to expand in other countries who would not have her people, had to look for other outlets for her large over-population. South America was willing to take care of part of thissurplus population, but not all the ships that Japan has could take her surplus population to South America. Japan cannot accommodate them all at home and South America can only accommodate a small percentage.
Japan has an inadequacy of the most important natural resources, but and although she has a good water power and a large textile industry which however, is even these are insufficient for that great population for which she must provide. Manchuria had all that China wanted and lacked in raw materials, and at the first opportunity she marched right into Manchuria at the psychological moment when the rest of the world was busy at home with its own problems, and it seems that there she will stay. She has acclaimed proclaimed that "Might is Right", and says: "What are you going to do about it?"; and it is now indeed too late to do much about it.
Now let us look at Italy who has 119 square miles with a population of 41 millions of people, with over 340 people to a square mile. In 1921 the population was 28 millions at the rate of 156 people per square mile, and in 1922 the population was 40 millions at the rate of 548 people per square mile. The birth rate in 1921 was 30.4, and in 1927 it was 26.4. On top of this population which she could not provide for with the world against her immigration, she had 4 to 5 thousand additional human beings being born into her population annually. Over 25% of Italy’s natural increase was coming into this country every year. France received 6 or 7 percent of Italy’s increase, but France has curbed this percentage because of her unemployment problems. Italy is unable to till her own home areas. She has low standards of living and a slight margin of life. Her water power might be developed but at a great expense. She has very little iron ore and other raw materials. If she would should build up her textile industry she would have strong competition in from Japan.
Neither the industrial nor the agricultural possibilities of Italy can provide for her people, yet we know that Italy is increasing; that her dictators call upon her to increase and multiply; and I read that there is now a law in Italy providing that every woman must report to a health station periodically to show cause why she has not had a baby every two years. However, this condition of population today have has not been brought about by dictators alone and although we have only recently become conscious of the importance of birth control and its relation to over-population, with the facts of science and knowledge that we have today, it seems to me that any dictator who insists upon increasing the population by force, such a person should be made to account for it at the world court of human justice.
Other countries are doing their best to adjust their populations. Germany is today doing all possible to keep her birth rate down and avert a re-occurrence of the conditions of 1914. France is now trying to compete with Germany by boosting up her birth rate. France increases her numbers fearing that Germany will come across the border to invade her. It is absurd for France to thus compete with Germany whose proportionate majority is so great that France will not catch up to her even in 10 years. France’s death rate--both infant and maternal--is very high, and she should decrease this death rate instead of trying to increase the present population.
England also had an acute problem of over-population and unemployment, so she decided to send her surplus people to some of her colonies in order to remedy the situation. But it did not work out properly. These people were not happy in the wilds of Australia and Canada because of the different environment and climatic conditions. They did not have the resistance and vigor to withstand the climate. The colonies were therefore obliged to send them back to England saying: "We can’t use your slum population. They can’t stand the rigors of the climate."It all comes back to the "quality" of the human being.
My way of peace is a way of birth control. It can be applied in three ways: First, by continence--not marrying. This however, should not be recommended because it implies the abandonment of the natural marriage relationship which and very often results in the break-up of family life. Second, by sterilization. This method is recommended by physicians only in extreme cases where other forms of contraception are not possible. It is for those who have not the mental equipment or moral character to use means of contraception, and yet who should be given help to prevent their bringing more children into the world. There you have chemical and mechanical methods over which the whole controversy on birth control has been waged.
It is to these methods that the Roman Catholic Church objects. An analysis of the Pope’s recent Encyclical, "On Chaste Wedlock" reveals that they countenance intercourse marital intimacies only for propagation or under certain conditions wherethere can be no possibility of conception.
Now, my way to peace is to apply the same constructive knowledge to this subject that has been applied to industry and to the world of life itself.
This is part of the program that we are trying to bring about now. We hope that a falling birth rate will do its part to avert future wars, and to maintain world, as well as international, peace. We want to make it possible for people to have the best scientific information available. We want the medical profession to take this responsibility and to distribute information in their public and private practice. We want women to be free from the fear of pregnancy. We want children to beconceived and born in love, and to be given heritage of a sound body and a sound mind.
We believe that through Birth Control, untold millions can be relieved of misery andunhappiness. We believe this is the first and most important step we must take if we would bring peace on earth and good will to men and scatter it over the face of the world.
The general aim of the birth control movement is to legitimatize the practice ofcontraception through scientific and hygienic methods, and to educate the adult public as to its advantages from the personal and social points of view. International in scope, the movement has been known under a number of names; in the British Empire as “neo-Malthusianism”; inFrance as “conscious generation”; and occasionally as “voluntary parenthood.”
In English-speaking countries the present movement derives from Malthus. In the second edition of his famous Essay on Population, published in 1903, the English clergyman first enunciated his law of the pressure of population upon the means of subsistence. The only solution he suggested for overpopulation was the practice of celibacy and late marriage. In 1826 Dr. Charles Knowlton, a Boston physician, was prosecuted for publishing a small book, The Fruits of Philosophy, advocating mechanical and chemical methods of contraception. In 1876-1877 Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant were prosecuted and convicted for distributing that book among the working classes of Great Britain. Their conviction led to the foundation of the Malthusian League in 1878 by Dr. Charles Drysdale and his wife, Dr. Alice Vickery Drysdale. A Dutch League was founded in 1881. The neo-malthusians differed from Malthus in advocating contraception to prevent overpopulation and to reduce the birth rate.
The period between 1914 and 1921 in the United States was one of militant agitation and widespread publicity, partly as a result of several convictions of persons active in the movement for challenging federal and statelaws. In New York City in 1914, Mrs. Margaret Sanger began to advocate contraception on feministic and libertarian grounds,coining at that time the term “birth control.” The interest awakened in the whole question of contraception resulted in 1921 in the foundation of the American Birth Control League and of the Voluntary Parenthood League; also in the publication of a monthly periodical, the Birth Control Review, edited by Mrs. Sanger. The two organizations were subsequently combined under the name of the former.
Activities of the second period of the American movement, from 1921 to 1925, included the organization of local leagues, the education of public opinion, and campaignsfor the amendment of statutes which class the practice of contraception with obscenity and criminal abortion. During the third period, 1925 to the present, advocates of birth control have concentrated upon the establishment of clinics and research bureaus, and upon enlisting the interest and activities of physicians,biologists, biochemists, and social scientists generally. Results of these efforts are seen in the fact that no less than 55 clinics and bureaus are now operating legitimately in the United States (covering 23 cities and 13 states), dispensing contraceptive information to all persons legally permitted to receive it. InNew York State it is given to married people for the cure or prevention of disease. In California there are 12 clinics; there is one each in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Newark,New Haven, and Philadelphia; there are six in Chicago; and New York City has eight in hospitals and one operating independently. In addition, a branch for colored women has recently been established in the Harlem section of New York City by the Clinical Research Bureau.
The year 1929 was marked by the establishment of 27 new clinics. The successful operation of such clinics and research bureaus, under medical direction, makes possible the scientific analysis of individual cases, and also statistical studies.Through the latter material is being developed for the replacement of untested theory with impartial analysis. Social agencies are beginning to cooperate with suchclinics. Owing to the widespread change in public opinion, physicians are more willing to give advice in private practice. Over 10,000 of them have expressed willingness to do so.
The birth control movement is exerting a noticeable influence upon eugenics and giving a new direction to programs for race-betterment; it has resulted in renewed consideration of the problem of the legal sterilization of the unfit; and has influenced programs for the control of the dependent, delinquent, and defective groups in society. It has been given consideration by many social agencies seeking to decrease maternal and infant mortality rates, particularly by the Committee on Maternal Health of New York City. Financial support of the birth control movement has been from independent and anonymous sources, with the exception of temporary support from the Brush Foundation of Cleveland. During 1929 a study of 10,000 cases was made by the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, and a study offertility and sterility by the Committee on Maternal Health.
No laws on the subject were passed during the year. Bills to amend the laws which prohibit contraceptive instruction were defeated in New York and Connecticut.
Sanger spoke to reporters after her application for a visa to lecturein Japan was denied by the Consul General in San Francisco.The text below comes from the New York Tribune, with additional portions taken fromthe Oakland (CA) Tribune and thethe San Francisco (CA) Chronicle.
San Francisco, 17 Feb. 1922
The Japanese Consulate here late to-day announced that instructions had been received from Tokyoto refuse a visa to a passport of Mrs. Margaret Sanger, of New York, of the Birth Control League, who is in San Francisco preparing to start on a tour of the Far East. Lack of the visa will prevent her landing in Japan, it was said.
The Japanese Department of Home Affairs, through the Foreign Office, issued this order according to Consul General S. Yada. He said Mrs. Sanger would be allowed to book passage upon a Japanese steamship, but that she could not set foot on Japanese soil.
Mrs. Sanger to-day, not having the proper passport visa, was refused a ticket on the Japanese steamer Taiyo Maru, sailing from this port February 21. Mr. Yada indicated to-night there was no objection to the steamship company selling her a ticket.
Mrs. Sanger announced that she intends to sail aboard the Taiyo Maru whether her passport is vised or not, and take chances of being able to effect a landing in Japan.
"Without a doubt the Japanese government feels my lectures in their universities would be in direct opposition to their theories of militarism which they have fostered in the past and still continue to foster," Mrs. Sanger said.
Consul General Yada asserted that the Japanese government for some time have been opposed to propaganda "of the sort Mrs. Sanger is reported to spread." He said he presumed that was the reason he had been ordered not to vise her passport.
A few days before departing for San Francisco Mrs. Sanger gave out a statement here in which she said the Japanese government had decided to take steps against "the yellow peril" by instituting a national birth control policy. Mrs. Sanger said she had been in conference with Dr. Kato, chief of the Department of Medical Affairs of the Japanese government,who had been making a study of the birth control movement in the United States, England, Holland, and Germany.
"Dr Kato told me," Mrs. Sanger said, "that the Japanese government is convinced it must establish birth control as a nation-wide movement or at once fight a war of aggression on the next generation. Dr. Kato points out the population of Japan is now 57,000,000 in an area the size of California and that it is increasing at the rate of 800,000 a year."
"For more that a year I have been receiving visits from representative of the Japanese government sent out to study birth control. There have been twenty-five of these visits in all, representing various departments of the Japanese government."
"Dr. Kato told me last week that the majority of the Japanese government were nowconvinced of the wisdom of birth control and that it only remained for the principle to be intelligently communicated to the Japanese people. It has been recognized that over-population is the basis of 'the yellow peril.'"
[Additional quotes from the Oakland (CA) Tribune.]
The Kaizo, an organization of young Japanese thinkers, modern to their very finger tips, invited me to visit Japan. They are the same faction that invited Bertrand Russell here. They realize as I do that Japan with 67,000,000, as opposed to our 110,000,000 has her most serious menace in over-population.
This tremendous population is crowded into a country about the same size as California. Added to this handicap, their increase far out totals their death rate. Such advanced thinkers as Baroness Ishimoto, who have sponsored my teachings in Japan and who have asked me to lecture to the Japanese social workers, realize just what this over-population means. It means war, nothing more or less.
[Additional quotes from the San Francisco (CA) Chronicle]
"'The entire circumstance of that government refusing to allow me to visit their country has arisen through misunderstanding. I feel quite sure,' the lecturer said, and when the real aim and underlying purpose of my teachings are understood by the Japanese I am certain that my tour will not be interrupted."
"At any rate, I shall sail on schedule time and if I am not allowed to land in Japan I can at least go to China and India and present my lectures there," she continued. "Those governments have placed no obstacles in my path, but signed my passports this morning."
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.
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."
The following is an excerpt from the hearings, including only Margaret Sanger's testimony and her direct responses.
New York City
Mrs. Sanger. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, first may I thank you in the name of our committee for your kindness and consideration in giving us so much of your valuable time this morning.
I also wish to assure you that were it not for our deep conviction that the bill we are trying to persuade you to enact into law, means so very much to millions of women in the country, we would not worry or trouble you to give us time at this particular period of mental distress, in the hurry of your own work.
This bill directly affects 25,000,000 married women of child-bearing age in this country. It indirectly affects the health and the future development and the education of 45,000,000 children in this country, of which 10,000,000 are handicapped, mentally or physically, according to the reports given at the White House conference called by President Hoover last year.
More than 1,400 experts reported that those 10,000,000 handicapped children were handicapped because of conditions of poverty, ignorance, or neglect. And yet, Mr. Chairman, no fundamental cure was offered to prevent the coming of 10,000,000 more children who will eventually be handicapped, from causes of ignorance, poverty, and neglect.
Because of the controversial nature of this subject, commonly known as birth control, I wish to tell you something about its general application.
This movement in its modern state began in this country in 1914. I myself, as a mother of 3 children, a member of a large family of 11, and a trained nurse, early came to the conclusion from my own experience in the slum districts of New York City, that this was one of the most vital factors in maternal health and in the health of children.
I found everywhere women who were seeking some means, some knowledge of what they could do to prevent the coming of other children whom they knew, owing to their physical defects, they were unable to bring into the world in a healthy condition; or, owing to their husband's economic circumstances, they would be unable to provide for.
So I began to wonder if we could not do something about this law, which was passed by Congress in 1873, nearly 60 years ago. With all the advance that women have made and with all the advance of our charities and our philanthropies and with all the billions that are spent upon disease and defects, delinquency, and dependency, we still allow-–in fact we almost force married persons who continue in their normal, marital lives, to bring into the world children for whom they themselves could not provide.
So, in order to stir up interest in this question and to get this law changed, it was necessary to organize public sentiment, which has now grown into the birth-control movement.
Birth control is the conscious control of the birth rate by means that prevent the conception of human life. We emphasize “prevent”; not interrupt, not destroy. It does not mean abortion. It does not mean the interruption of life after conception occurs. There is no more an interruption of life or a destruction of life in preventing conception than in remaining single or living in abstinence or celibacy. Physiologically speaking, there is no difference.
We say “control.” When we control, we do not have to limit any more than when you control your furnace you have to put the fire out. We control the furnace according to the heat that we desire to maintain in the home, according to the season, according to the hour of the day or night. You control your motor car, but you do not have to stop the engine.
So, in controlling the size of the family or controlling the birth rate, we control it in accordance with the mother's health, in consideration of the quality of inheritance that we are going to pass on to our children, in consideration of the father's income and his earning capacity.
This law, Mr. Chairman, was put upon the statute books at a time when there was very little recognition of the value of the practice of family limitation, when there was very little knowledge of the technique of contraception.
Birth control or prevention of contraception was classed in the obscenity clause with abortion, pornography, and indecency; and it does not belong there.
There was no exemption for physicians. There was no exemption for hospitals or dispensaries.
Mr. Chairman, when that law was passed, it practically closed the avenues of knowledge to the medical profession in this country; it closed out knowledge of research that has been going on in other countries.
It has left us, in so far as the control of child bearing is concerned, practically as in the days of barbarism or savagery. Furthermore, to all intents and purposes, the day that law was passed, women were placed into the category of child-bearing machines. Under this law they practically become conscript mothers.
President Hoover in his address before the White House conference said:
“Let no one believe that these are questions which should not stir a nation; that they are below the dignity of statesmen or government. If we could have but one generation of properly born, trained, educated, and healthy children, a thousand other problems of government would vanish. We would assure ourselves of healthier minds in more vigorous bodies to direct the energies of our Nation to yet greater heights of achievement. Moreover, one good community nurse will save a dozen future policemen.”
There are altogether seven very definite reasons-–perhaps more--but I shall take up only seven, why we claim that birth control should be practiced.
First. Wherever there is a transmissible disease, either the husband or wife suffering from insanity, feeblemindedness, epilepsy, or any other form of transmissible disease, neither of those persons should consider being a parent.
Second. In conditions where the mother or the woman has a temporary disease, such as tuberculosis or a heart or kidney disease, pelvic deformity, goiter, and various other conditions, pregnancy becomes a great hazard to the woman's life. We claim that mother should be protected by having contraceptive information so that she can regain her health before she takes upon herself the burden of pregnancy.
Third. Where parents though seemingly normal themselves, yet have already given birth to defective children, children with cleft palates, children that are subnormal, that are deaf and dumb, we claim that just for the good of the State those parents should refrain from further child bearing, even in spite of the great desire and hope for a normal child.
Fourth. Every mother should safeguard her health as well as that of her unborn child by spacing the births of children for a period of from two to three years.
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, the days are past when it was a very easy matter for women to give birth to children, as it was two or three generations ago. Today it is known that the whole organism of a woman's life, her nervous organism, is quite different from what it was in her grandmother's days, and child bearing is a greater hazard today than it ever was before. In many, many cases, it leaves her not only in a precarious condition at the time, but often in a damaged condition for the future.
We ask that she be able to recuperate from that ordeal, to take the time to enjoy her baby and to take the time to prepare herself physically and mentally and spiritually for the coming of the next child she may wish to have. That means a spacing from two to three years between children.
Doctor Woodbury, of the United States Children's Bureau, published some very interesting data where he clearly shows that too short an interval between childbirths markedly affects the infant death rate. Where the interval between births is three years, the infant death rate is 86.5 (per 1,000 births); when the interval is two years, the rate is 98.6; and when it is only one year, the infant mortality goes up to 146.7. Certainly a very striking increase.
Fifth. There are economic considerations. We believe that it is unfair, that it is not right, for people to have children for whom they cannot provide, and it is just as unfair for a man and a woman to have children that society or the community or their older children have to provide for as it is for one country to spill over the other country's border. It is just the same morally.
We know that in our work we have had women come to us who 10 years ago were unable to provide for 4 or 6 children and who today have 12 or 15 which the community has been providing for and taking care of.
Mr. Chairman, we found in our records that most of these children have to go out to work, have to compete with their father in the labor market just as soon as they get old enough to get a labor certificate from the community.
We claim that our young people, while they may marry, and it might be advisable for them to marry early, should wait until they are fully complete in their development, through the adolescent period, before they become parents. We believe it would do away with a great many questions of immorality, promiscuity, and various other questions that concern us all today if this were more encouraged on the part of society.
Sixth. The adolescent period must be considered. We are learning a great deal about the adolescent boy and girl. In the old days the Greeks advised their young men not to marry until their twenty-fifth year. There was something very important in that. Perhaps they did not know it scientifically, but today we know that a man does not become really a man until his twenty-fifth year and that the woman does not become a woman, she is a girl, practically, until after the twenty-third year.
This is illustrated by other findings of Doctor Woodbury. In homes, for instance, where the average number of persons per room is less than 1, the infant death rate is 52.1; where it is two or more per room, the death rate is 135.7. Furthermore, in families where the per capita income from the father's earnings was less than $50 the infant mortality rate was 215.9, as compared with a rate of only 60.5 where the per capita amount averaged $400 or over. These figures clearly and strikingly indicate the influence of family over-crowding upon family well being.
Seventh. Adjustment.-– A point on which many may disagree with us. I believe it is very important to our young people's future that they should take at least two or three years after marriage just to get acquainted. Marriage is more today than just a question of providing for children. When there is a fine companionship in marriage between men and women, a spiritual development results. We believe that if two people have a chance to get acquainted, a chance to adjust themselves mentally and spiritually and physically, before they become parents, we shall have happier homes, more permanent marriages, and eventually, when the fear of pregnancy is removed from the home,we shall have larger families. That is our belief, Mr. Chairman. We have seen it come true in the past 16 or 17 years since we have been advocating this idea.
There are three main methods of contraception or birth control.
The first is continence. There are no laws against it. Anyone who wishes to practice continence or to live in celibacy is legally free to do so. No one disagrees with their right to live in this way, if they wish.
The second is sterilization. There are 14 States in the Union today where there are sterilization laws. These provide for sterilization of certain types of persons who are morally irresponsible, who are able to bring into the world only progeny that will be a detriment to society.
The third is chemical or mechanical means of contraception around which most of this controversy is waged.
As you will see from this bill, we want the medical profession to direct the practice of contraception. We want no promiscuous distribution or scattering of knowledge of supplies as there has been in the past and there is today.
We want, for all time, to have this knowledge properly controlled and we believe that this bill provides for that. It places the responsibility of giving such information upon the medical profession. We have further found in the 28,000 cases that we have advised at the Clinical Research Bureau in the city of New York, which operates legally under the laws of the State of New York, which permit a physician to give information for the cure of prevention of disease, that knowledge of anatomy and physiology is necessary to instruct a woman properly according to her individual need. We have had 28,000 women who have come to us and who have been benefited by the advice given them, as their homes will show, as their children will show and as their own health will show.
We have found from these 28,000 cases, that every woman differs. You can no more claim that continence is the one and only method that should be practiced than you can say that every one should be sterilized. Every woman is different physiologically. Family conditions are different in each case and so it takes the trained physician with his knowledge of anatomy and physiology to advise that person, just as it takes a trained oculist to advise as to the proper fitting of eye glasses. We do not send our people to the 10-cent store nor to the corner druggist to get their supplies for contraception over the counter.
We want this thing to be put on a decent basis, to be handled in a scientific way. That is what we are asking.
This bill does not compel anyone to use such information. It does not compel any physician to give information. It simply permits contraceptive information and supplies to be sent to doctors or to hospitals and clinics from other countries and through the United States mails or by common carriers and permits supplies to be sent to druggists for use in their legitimate prescription business.
Many of you may say, “Well, is there not everything in this country that we may wish?” And I wish to say, “No.” There is a great deal of research going on in other countries, in Oxford and Cambridge in England, and in Edinburgh University in Scotland; a great deal of research is going on there which, according to the laws, can not come into this country.
I have here today a letter from the customs official of New York City saying that certain things were sent to me from Germany, two articles, that will be destroyed. I have sent a letter and asked that they be readdressed to the physician who is the medical director of our research bureau in New York City, stating that though they may articles to prevent conception, they also fulfill another function of preventing the spread of disease or protecting health. I asked that they be sent to one of our physicians. The answer was that they could not be sent to anyone and I would like to offer this letter, Mr. Chairman, if I may.
The Acting Chairman. You may put the letter in the record.
[The correspondence between Margaret Sanger and H. C. Stuart of the United State Customs Service was omitted.]
Mrs. Sanger. The law, section 305 (a) of the tariff act does not allow any article of that kind to come into this country, and we are thus denied the results of research. We are denying our medical profession the benefit of knowledge obtained in various other countries where a great deal has been going on in the way of research, where they are unlimited in their research. There are only two countries in the world that have laws such as ours and they were patterned after our laws, unfortunately. Those countries are France and Italy.
We have in this country nearly 100 clinics, birth-control clinics, that are legally operating in the various States. Forty-seven States allow the physician to protect the woman's health and to give contraceptive advice as he sees fit. At the same time these physicians, while they may give information orally, have to bootleg their supplies from New York or Chicago or some place where they are manufactured in order to do what they should to protect the health of the woman in their own State.
In the State of California, in Los Angeles, under the county medical department 11 birth-control clinics have been established. If I should write and tell a woman in Los Angeles where one of those clinics is, or send her the address or name of the director of those clinics, I subject myself to the possibility of five years' imprisonment and $5,000 fine under section 211; even to write her where she may go to obtain that information.
It is preposterous; it is absurd. This whole situation is preposterous. Our laws are tangled and confused and as long as they remain as they are on the books, the situation will continue to be as it is.
I myself have received over a million letters, a great majority of them from mothers. I am going to conclude by asking you if you will listen patiently to just a few of them, because I want to analyze them, to show you what the real condition is.
Here is one that says:
"I am the mother of 12 children, 6 of which are living. I have had 8 miscarriages in 20 years. I have been married and have a husband that does not support his family like he should. If you can and it is in your power, please tell me something to keep me from getting pregnant. I think I will die if I ever have another baby. So please help me if you can. And may God bless you as long as you live."
Now, that is a 50 per cent loss. That woman has had 12 children and only 6 of them are living. She has had 8 miscarriages. Think of the wasted time, think of the loss to that woman; think of the loss of the power of motherhood when we make this woman go through such a ghastly ordeal.
Here is another letter:
"I have six children, my youngest 2 months old, and I am just scared to death for fear I will get that way again, for I never can live to go through with it again. I came near dying this time. For three months before my baby was born, I could not get any shoes on my feet and I could hardly get my eyes open to see. I was bloated up so bad. The doctor wanted to take the baby away when I was 8 months, but I said no, I did not care if I lived or died and I did not have the least idea of living, but the Lord spared me probably so I could go through it all again. But I live on the banks of Lake Erie and just as sure as I get in a family way again I will end my troubles and be at rest. Now, if you can tell me of any way, I would bless your name forever."
That is another one. You can imagine that mother with that fear in her mind, with that sword hanging over her head.
I want to say, Mr. Chairman, that since this law was passed, 1,500,000 mothers have passed out into the great beyond from causes due to child bearing.
There is just one more that I want to read to you, because these are the women who are urging us to pass these laws to give them some relief from the evil condition from which they have been suffering.
"I just passed my 21st birthday August 5th (this year). I am already the mother of five little children, the oldest six years, and the baby three months. My husband has been out of work over a year and a half now. We would have starved to death long ago but for our relatives who, among them, gave us $5 a week. It's awful hard, Mrs. Sanger, to live like this, and my husband got so down and blue when he found I was that way last time, that he wanted to go away and live in another place, but his folks wouldn't let him do that. My children are well, thank God, but I'm awfully weak, only weighing 90 pounds. I do all the work, and if only I could get strong and not have any more babies, I'd take hope and so would my husband. Won't you help me, please? I know that God will bless you if you do."
One more. This is a classic:
"I am only 34 years old and have given birth to 12 children, only 3 of them living. They die so quickly after they are born, it seems they don't have strength to live long. My husband is a good hard-working man, but the best he ever made was $1.50, and never for long. We're poor people, Mrs. Sanger, and the coffins of the last two are not paid for yet. It's hard on a woman to see them go like that, and I think that if I did not have any for a while I could keep the three I've got and give them better than we had."
Is there any man in the world that would continue a business that shows a 75 per cent loss? Of course not. And yet these mothers are not only losing live babies, but they are interrupting pregnancies, thereby sapping their health and strength.
One woman is only 34 years old, the other is only 21. Can you see, gentlemen, what it means to look ahead? Can you see that these women have years and years ahead of them of child bearing, of hopelessness, of despair? Why, the very entrance of a smiling, loving husband is a terror to these woman. Is it any wonder that homes are broken up? Some of the speakers will tell you something about the attitude of men. The young husbands have their problems too. They are trapped. They do not know what it is all about. They do not know what to do. They do the best they can, and yet the only thing they can do when they find their wives in a pregnant condition, with their hopelessness for the future, is to abort. In many of our cases we have brought them back again so that we can teach the husband and wife that it is not necessary to continue to bring children into the world that they can not take care of, and we have made many of these homes happier by proper instruction.
These are the facts. These are the conditions; and there is just one thing that we must realize: The United States Government has already recognized that there is a population problem, at least as far as the quality is concerned, for you know that the Government has claimed the right to exclude immigrants whose condition is likely to be a serious danger to the well-being and happiness of the country. A very important law was passed, and there are now excluded by the immigration act of February 5, 1917 (39 Stat. 874), regulating immigration of aliens to and residence of aliens in the United States, which reads as follows:
Sec. 3. That the following classes of aliens shall be excluded from admission into the United States: All idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, insane persons; persons who have had one or more attacks of insanity at any time previously; persons of constitutional psychopathic inferiority; persons with chronic alcoholism; paupers; professional beggars; vagrants; persons afflicted with tuberculosis in any form or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease; persons not comprehended within any of the foregoing excluded classes who are found to be and are certified by the examining surgeon as being mentally or physically defective, such physical defect being of a nature which may affect the ability of such alien to earn a living; persons who have been convicted of or admit to having committed a felony or other crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude; polygamists, or persons who practice polygamy or believe in or advocate the practice of polygamy; prostitutes, or persons coming into the United States for the purpose of prostitution or for any other immoral purpose; persons who directly or indirectly procure or attempt to procure or import prostitutes or persons for the purpose of prostitution or for any other immoral purpose; persons who are supported by or receive in whole or in part the proceeds of prostitution; persons likely to become a public charge.
There are also provisions for the exclusion of illiterates, or of persons 16 years of age, physically capable of reading, but who cannot read English or some other language. All are refused admission into the United States of America.
Mr. Chairman, I think it is a good law, and all that we are asking is, that if such persons and such types are not good for the country, to come in from the outside, that they also, by birth control, be prevented from coming into the world. If these types are not good for a country, and are a source of danger to our well-being and happiness, then I say, shall we not have the right to have these types of persons in this country excluded from birth?
I thank you.
The Acting Chairman. Are there any questions?
Mr. McCormack. Mrs. Sanger, I was rather interested in your statement that you think a married couple should wait two or three years just to get acquainted after marriage. What did you mean by that--a probationary marriage or trial marriage? I think you ought to explain that.
Mrs. Sanger. No; I mean a permanent marriage. I think marriages would be more permanent if there were a proper adjustment and opportunity for getting acquainted at the beginning.
Mr. McCormack. Suppose they do not become acquainted?
Mrs. Sanger. Of course we are going to give them a better chance to become acquainted; far better than they have today. If I may just digress a moment, what opportunity is there for young people to get acquainted? In the first year after marriage a woman's whole physiological condition is changed. There may be some opportunity for the man--he does not have to have his whole physiological condition changed, but for the woman who comes back from her honeymoon with headaches, morning nausea, and a new nervous strain-–not only is marriage a new condition for her, but the process and the possibility of motherhood entirely changes her whole being.
Now, I say that those young people have not the first chance to get really acquainted. The man never knows his wife as a woman. He only knows her as a girl before marriage, and then he knows her as preparing for motherhood. I say it is unfair to the relationship of marriage. It is unfair to the child that is about to be born, and we know that it makes a great difference, and that marriage can be more permanent if there is the opportunity to become adjusted.
Mr. McCormack. You made reference to some statements made by President Hoover. Did you intend thereby--I am sure you did not, but I would like to have it in the record one way or the other--did you intend thereby to let the inference be drawn that he was supporting this movement?
Mrs. Sanger. Not at all. I simply made a statement that he believes in a healthier childhood, and that children should be given the opportunity to be born well.
Mr. McCormack. Continence is the exercise of the affirmative mind, is it not?
Mrs. Sanger. Not always.
Mr. McCormack. What was that conference at which President Hoover made that statement?
Mrs. Sanger. The White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, in 1931.
Mr. McCormack. Continence is the exercise of the affirmative mind by the individual; that is true, is it not?
Mrs. Sanger. Not always the affirmative mind. It may be an exercise of a negative mind.
Mr. McCormack. But in an affirmative direction?
Mrs. Sanger. Not altogether. I think it is negative just as it is affirmative. It is denial.
Mr. McCormack. Well, denial. It has to be an exercise of an affirmative mind to deny themselves something that their inclination desires, does it not?
Mrs. Sanger. Well, it is a denial of a positive function, I should say.
Mr. McCormack. Now, as to the chemical means of contraception, what is meant by drugs, or the use of drugs?I notice this bill says:
"Any article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing that may be used for the prevention of conception."
What kind of drugs do you have in mind?
Mrs. Sanger. Chinosol, quinine, and various other things that may form a suppository which will kill the spermatozoa.
Mr. McCormack. What kind of instruments has this bill in mind?
Mrs. Sanger. Condoms and pessaries of various kinds.
Mr. McCormack. Of course, the purpose of those is for use prior, with the purpose of preventing conception?
Mrs. Sanger. Absolutely; no interference afterwards.
Mr. McCormack. In other words, it is a means of affording self-satisfaction and preventing the consequences thereof by the use of artificial means?
Mrs. Sanger. If you wish to put it that way.
Mr. Canfield. Mrs. Sanger, in your statement you referred to “this law.” Which law do you refer to?
Mrs. Sanger. Sections 211, 245, and 312 of the Criminal Code and section 305 of the tariff law.
Mr. Canfield. Is that the Comstock law which Congressman Hancock referred to?
Mrs. Sanger. Yes. They were enacted by Congress at the instigation of Mr. Comstock in 1873.
The Acting Chairman. We thank you, Mrs. Sanger, for your presence and your contribution to the hearings.
[The material submitted by Mrs. Sanger was omitted by the editors.]
Further Statement of Mrs. Margaret Sanger
Mrs. Sanger. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I wish it had been possible, without going into the personalities, to take a vote and to have shown the number of children born to and reared by those who appeared for and against this bill. It would be amusing were it not tragic in its significance to see a childless woman who is a Member of Congress appear here against this bill when she herself, were she obeying the laws of nature, would probably be at home attending to her 10 or 12 children.
I have found in the arguments presented here that it as been a case of personal opinion against facts, theories against practical knowledge.
For instance, I can illustrate that with some of the remarks made by Dr. Howard Kelly. When he was asked about contraceptives he mentioned the use of a douche as a contraceptive. Why, everybody knows--everybody who knows anything at all about this subject--that a douche is not a contraceptive but a cleansing agent, used more for hygienic purposes than for contraception. It is an old fogey theory that a douche is a contraceptive. It means simply that Doctor Kelly has not been in school in the last 20 or 30 years, where he might have learned something of the modern technique of contraception.
That is a case illustrative of the point I wish to make, the opponents of this bill do not know the facts. Here is a man like Doctor Kelly who has made his reputation in medicine, through long years of great achievement, coming here and talking not on the merits of the bill, but on a defense of “morals.” That is amusing, particularly when taken in conjunction with the statement of Dr. John Ryan, who is a theologian, a representative of the Catholic Church, who comes to theorize on economics and the population aspect of this question.
That is all very right and proper. They may express their opinions, but, Mr. Chairman, the merits of the bill have not been discussed by the opponents of the bill.
As a matter of fact, when you weed out the personal opinions expressed, no one has said that the physician should not have the right to use the United States mails and common carriers. No one has dared to say that the physician has not the right to give contraceptive information where he sees that it is right and where he sees that a woman really needs it.
That is the sum and substance of what this is all about.
Canon Chase made a statement for which I think he owes and apology to the Federal committee, when he said that this is a “crook's bill.” I am not going to take the time to refute these stupid, senseless, futile, personal accusations. I want to say that he did say one good thing. He said, “No sensible person can oppose giving the trustworthy physician freedom to do what is necessary to protect the lives of women which would be endangered by another pregnancy if their husbands can not control themselves.”
I thank him for that statement.
Some people have said here that this bill would infringe upon State rights. That is not true. We included a statement in the proceedings yesterday to show that there are 47 States that give the physician the right to give information on the prevention of conception. About 24 States do not classify the prevention of conception in the obscenity laws at all. That is, there are 24 States where any one could give information. We are trying to direct public opinion so that it shall look to the physician to get such information and we are trying to make it possible for the physician to have the best information to give. There is only one State where there is any doubt about it.
Mr. Canfield. What State is that?
Mrs. Sanger. Mississippi. This bill does not open the mails to promiscuous distributions so that anyone can have information. It simply asks that the physician shall have the right of the United States mails and the common carriers, and that licensed clinics and the hospitals shall have the same right.
Mr. Chairman, I do not know whether the bill as it has been amended has been offered or not. Mr. Hancock made some changes.
The Acting Chairman. Those changes are a part of this testimony and as the committee considers this measure they will consider all that has been said with reference to it.
Mrs. Sanger. I want to say that the physician will not use the United States mails to advise or prescribe for patients. Let me try to make that clear to you. Every physician who knows his job at all will see the patient, will study the indications. He will advise her as to her personal needs and personal requirements. He will take into consideration not only her health but her whole gynecological formation and condition. He will take into consideration her economic situation, and he will advise her then, and that will come under the State law. But before he can advise he must have information, he must know what is available in the world in this regard. The medical schools of the past have not given this knowledge to him.
Not only shall the doctor advise the patient orally, but he must then give her a prescription by which she can get the articles recommended. That is why he must use the United States mail.
In many cases he himself will give her the article or device and in some cases he will give her a prescription for the drug store.
In my estimation this is the only way that the present promiscuous scattering of information and devices can be corrected. I consider this the sanest way of trying to correct the misuse of knowledge or misinformation that has been and still is so prevalent throughout the country and which both proponents and opponents deplore.
There are 150,000 physicians in the United States who belong to the American Medical Association. There is some difference of opinion among them. The American Medical Association as a whole has never gone on record for or against this measure, but a few years ago the section on obstetrics and gynecology and abdominal surgery did go on record by a resolution to the effect that they recommended “the alteration of existing laws whenever necessary so that physicians my legally give contraceptive information to their patients in the regular course of their practice.” That resolution, Mr. Chairman, was submitted in record yesterday and is printed elsewhere in full.
To give you a brief idea of how the medical profession regards this question, I shall cite from a questionnaire sent out by the Medical Journal and Record in 1927. Two hundred and seventy-three doctors replied and out of the 273, 248 were in favor of birth control or proper legislation leading thereto; 19 were against; 2 of them said they were unable to express an opinion. One said that he thought that contraceptive methods would be abused. One said that methods shall be advised only after consultation with a physician, with the sanction of the United States Government, and the Bible; and one thought that this generation knows too much about such things, and that the poor would not avail themselves of this information.
Those in favor represent a pretty large proportion of the number that expressed themselves in this symposium.
Following that up, the Medical Journal and Record in 1929 sent out another questionnaire, and 118 doctors replied to that, of which number 99 said that they were in favor and only four said that they were not informed sufficiently to express an opinion. Fifteen were opposed.
I just mention this to show you that there is a division of opinion, but there is a very much larger number of physicians who are for this than are against it.
Evidence was presented yesterday of the large number of county and city medical organizations in favor of this particular legislation and also of many who are in favor of the principles of birth control.
Two ex-presidents of the American Medical Association have made statements in our favor--Dr. Abraham Jacobi and Dr. Allen Pusey.
It has been stated that contraceptive measures or practices left a harmful effect upon the pelvic organs upon the nervous system of those who practiced it.
Again these statements are made by people who have an opinion but who have not the facts. We have the facts. We have been following up cases not only in New York but throughout the country where there are a hundred or more clinics. There have been 28,000 patients in one clinic in New York, the Birth Control Clinic Research Bureau, whose case records reveal facts to the contrary. We have had the patients come back to us, and we have a detailed study and analysis made of the first 10,000 of those cases, a record which is too voluminous to bring here today; but we have the actual facts from which to substantiate our conclusions.
I am going to ask, Mr. Chairman, if I may, to present one case that I took at random as an illustration.
An Italian woman, 29 years old on first visit (married at 15 years). Diagnosed as “high-grade moron” with husband classified as “mental case.” Three children, youngest an infant; two miscarriages, both due to overwork. Five pregnancies in all. Clinical contraceptive advice now successful for four years. This family able to carry on without help from social agency by whom she was referred to us.
It seems to me that that tells something of what the actual practice of contraception can do; how it will relieve the tremendous and growing burdens of charity now resting on society.
Here is a report by Dr. Lily C. Butler, medical officer of the Walworth Woman's Welfare Center, presented before the Seventh International Birth Control Conference held last September in Zurich, which reads as follows:
"So much is stated by opponents of birth control as to contraceptives subsequently producing sterility that the figures we have obtained on going through our cards at Walworth and East London are interesting. We note that 101 patients have wanted another child after periods varying from one to five years, and in 98 of these cases they have become pregnant on discontinuing the use of the contraceptive."
That shows that when proper means are applied to protect the individual woman there is no question that it is helpful to her and that it does not make her sterile.
To answer Mrs. Norton's challenge regarding my statement that 1,500,000 women have died from causes due to childbearing since this Comstock law was passed, I wish to state that this estimate was based on the figures of the United States Census Bureau, Department of Vital Statistics.
I wish to refute directly one other statement made by Mrs. Norton. In a reference to the sale of contraceptives, Mrs. Norton used the words “commercially profitable to their advocates.” Never have I, nor to my knowledge have any members of the committee, of which I am the national chairman, been interested in contraceptives for commercial profit. Mrs. Norton has seen fit to say that several of the statements made by me and other witnesses appearing for this bill were not supported by fact. I wish to say the same regarding her statement which I have quoted.
There is one other phase of this matter that is rather amusing. I think it was briefly stated yesterday that the geniuses, the flower of the family usually came at the end of a long line of children in large families.
I have here a study of over 700 persons of personalities who have come down to us through history.
I will mention these briefly, and then if I may, I will put this list in the record.
Acting Chairman. You have that permission.
Mrs. Sanger. Ninety-six of these were the only child; 204 were the first child; 113 were the second; 64 were the third; 50 were the fourth; 43 were the fifth. This goes right on down until you get to the eighteenth and nineteenth. John Wesley was the fifteenth and Caruso was the eighteenth, but a pitiful number of the other children in these families had died in infancy.
There are only two or three among those men and women who can be classified as “great” who were born late in the family's life, while those that were second or third make up a much larger portion.
Insert Genius Study pdf
The further we look into these things, Mr. Chairman, the more there is to be said for the care and the consideration that parents can give to 1 or 2 children or 3 or 4 children according to their means, according to their health. Further evidence is found in the Bible:
Isaac, in whose seed all the nations were to be blessed, was an only child, born after long years of preparation. Sarah, his mother, was a beautiful, talented woman, whose counsel was highly valued. Isaac's only children were twins-– Jacob, the father of all of Israel, and Esau. Isaac's wife, Rebecca, was also a lovely woman of fine character, whose opinion was sought and valued. Joseph, the child of Rachel, was born late in her life, and she had but one other child. Samuel, who judged Israel for 40 years, was an only child, born after years of prayer and supplication on the part of Hannah. John the Baptist was an only child and his parents were well along in years when he was born.
Jesus was the first born of Joseph and Mary and had no children.
So that even on the question of the place of great men in the family, our position is much stronger than that of our opponents.
Mr. Chairman, I want to yield the rest of my time to Doctor Meyer, because of the statement that has been made by the opponents with regard to the question of continence. Continence, Mr. Chairman, is something on which there has been recent study by a large group of medical men. They have come to know something about continence and its effects upon the human being and I now ask Dr. Adolf Meyer, professor of psychiatry in Johns Hopkins University, to take up that part of our presentation.
Mr. McCormack. Mr. Chairman, if Mrs. Sanger is yielding to Doctor Meyer because of the limitation of time, I ask unanimous consent that she be given an additional five minutes.
Mrs. Sanger. Thank you, Mr. McCormack, but I think I have finished my statement and I would rather the committee heard Doctor Meyer.
The Acting Chairman. Thank you, Mrs. Sanger, for your statement. We shall be pleased to hear Doctor Meyer.
The statement by Dr. Adolf Meyer was omitted by the MSPP editors.
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.
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."
After all, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. California authorities are so busy keeping Tom Mooney in jail, fighting labor unions, rounding up I. W. W., arresting and deporting Hindus and chasing Bolsheviks, that they don't have time to stand guard over advocates of Birth Control. That was the reason, perhaps, why two lectures in which information concerning contraceptives was given, were not interfered with by these same authorities.
California women are anxious for practical knowledge of Birth Control. They do not care so much for the theory--what they want to know is how to avoid having children. I have visited a number of cities and towns in the state and have found the same feeling prevailing everywhere. There is a weariness of indirect methods. There is a lack of interest in legislative measures. Only women who are the heads of clubs are still hopeful of having the laws changed. The rest simply refuse to think about laws any more. They want the information.
The attitude of a group of workers in San Francisco is an accurate indication of the attitude of women generally in the state. I was invited to lecture before this body and did so on the night of April 26th. It had become plain to me that these women had lost faith in legislation, just as they had lost faith in courts. They demanded something more than they demanded four years ago or two years ago. Then they had been satisfied to know the relation of Birth Control to life's social problems. Now they want the relief that Birth Control can bring and they don't want anything less.
It was suggested that I might be arrested for giving information regarding contraceptives from the public platform.
"Go ahead," said the women, "we're with you--not behind you ."
That spirit was reflected everywhere.
In the period allotted for answering question, ten or fifteen women were upon their feet at once--not to discuss generalities, but to ask advice upon their own practical problems. Four years, and two years ago, when I lectured in California, hardly a woman would rise in public to ask for personal advice about Birth Control.
The demand for actualities rather than theories exists not only in regard to Birth Control but in regard to other matters as well. For example, the decided shift to direct action indicates how thoroughly they have put aside their faith in the machinery of law making and law enforcement.
California women know what they want from the Birth Control movement and they are not afraid to demand it. They will stand by any person, group or organization in action. And they are interested only in action.
Margaret Sanger most likely gave this speech in Berlin, Germany. No published version has been found. Handwritten interlieations by Sanger.
Berlin, GErmany"
There is probably no other subject of equal importance which cuts so deeply into the foundations of social evolution as birth control. There is no other subject of equal importance that has been kept so long in equal obscurity, not only by the scientists but by the medical profession as well, yet none which has leapt so suddenly upon the horizon of international thought as this subject has done within the past ten years. George Bernard Shaw says that it is by far the most revolutionary discovery of the 19th Century.
The prominence of this subject has been brought forward, not only by the economic and social pressure of the age, but because it signifies a new moral standard, a new social and moral responsibility. It signifies a new responsibility of parents toward their children, of men and women toward the race. Birth control may be defined as the conscious control of the birth rate by scientific means that prevent the conception of human life.
Why, you may ask, is it necessary to control human life? Because the population of the world must from now on be controlled consciously and intelligently. It has previously been controlled by the forces of nature, such as by disease, pestilence, floods, famines and wars. These have been called “Nature’s checks”, and according to the Darwinian theory it is against these means that man has struggled, thereby strengthening and perfecting the human type.
With the development of science man consciously began to control the population by such means as infanticide and abortion. It is interesting to recall the fact that infanticide was the prevailing custom in Middle Europe in the greater latter part of the 18th Century, while all the punishments and tortures that were inflicted upon women for this crime did not avail, and it was not until knowledge and the technique of abortion became generally known that infanticide generally gradually went out of practice.
The same forces that underlie the practice of infanticide underlie the growing practice of abortion, not only in Central Europe, but throughout the civilized world today. And it is my belief that these practices will continue to increase unless knowledge to prevent conception is made accessible and available to all adult men and women.
Modern civilization is confronted with two problems: 1) that of the pressure of population upon the food supply of the world and, 2) that of reconciling humanitarian and democratic practices with race improvement. Modern and progressive scientists say that birth control is the solution of both. Lord Dawson, that distinguished English surgeon, who had the courage to take this question into the Church Congress of Bishops a few years ago, said that birth control was here and was here to stay, that the churches and other opponents might just as well try to sweep the ocean back with a broom as to forestall its development.
Let us look at this question more closely: if you look with an unprejudiced eye, you will realize that there are two groups of people in every country, the one group have practiced and continue to practice birth control. They have limited the number of children in the family according to the health of the mother, the income and earning capacity of the father, as well as the accepted social standards of life. We see in this group that perhaps only two or three children are born into the family over a long period of years. But we see also that the number of children born are usually, in the majority of cases, brought up to full maturity. It is from this group that there is the lowest infant mortality and the lowest maternal mortality. It is from this group that the children not only attend the best schools, but also enter the colleges and universities, and later fill some of the most lucrative positions in society.
On the other hand there is another group where birth control has not been practiced,--not because the parents do not desire the knowledge; not because the parents are less disciplined in their sexual habits than those in the other group; not because their desire to have innumerable children is any stronger than that of the parents in the first group, but simply because knowledge to prevent conception is in most cases denied them and is generally made inaccessible and difficult for their practice. It is in this group that mothers are over-burdened, not only with living children, but with the ordeal of pregnancies too frequent for their health and for human endurance. It is here that we find the highest percentage of infant and maternal mortality. It is here that we find more than 50% of the children born that are doomed to die before they reach their first year of age. It is in this group that we find over-crowding, slums, unemployment, lack of educational opportunities, child labour, disease and most of all of the social problems that confront our civilization today. It is in this group that the mothers are broken in health, spiritless, and their young lives turned to drudgery and toil before they arrive at full maturity. It is here that motherhood does not know its greatest joys nor ever comes into its full flowering.
It may be comforting to some of us to feel that some assistance is given to this group through legislative measures and philanthropic activities. But there is perhaps no country in the world where there has been greater philanthropic expenditure than that lavished on palliative measures in the United States. In 1923, $8 billion were expended on disease, defect, delinquency, and dependency. In 1924 this sum had increased to $9 billions, and in 1925 the sum had gone far beyond $9 billions the budget, and we have every reason to believe that within the next ten years this amount will be trebled and not just doubled, because such philanthropy makes it possible for individuals with transmissible disease, such as insanity and feeble-mindedness, not only to live themselves, but to perpetuate and to multiply their types and their ailments tenfold. These philanthropic activities can not be reconciled with racial improvement. They are dysgenic and anti-social in the long run. The feeble-minded and the insane are increasing far out of proportion to the normal increase and it is known that the feeble-minded mothers give birth to three times more children than the normal women in the same class.
If we take as an instance the problem of maternal mortality, and analyze it closely, we will see how important a part birth control (that is, prevention of conception), should take in this reprehensible condition. There are in the United States--I cannot speak for Germany--25,000 women who die each year from causes due to pregnancy. That means that every hour the clock strikes in the day or the night, two mothers pass out of life into the great beyond. These lives have been unnecessarily sacrificed, and deaths could have been avoided in seven cases out of ten by the prevention of conception.
We know further that the danger of the idea disease of tuberculosis is increased by pregnancy. We know that women suffering from heart and kidney diseases should not be allowed to become pregnant. We know that four women out of seven who have tuberculosis die, not from tuberculosis, but from pregnancy. This is criminal in the deepest sense of the word, for every mother who has any of these diseases and who consults a physician is always told that she must not become pregnant again. And under our laws in the United States, as well as the laws of England, a physician has the right to interrupt the pregnancy in such cases where the woman’s life is in danger. But after that she is sent back to her home, to her husband, to the same conditions, without accurate instruction of how to prevent pregnancy,--but, with a death sentence hanging over her head!! No woman can endure the continued strain of curettage, no matter how surgically performed. We also know that a woman is more receptive to pregnancy immediately after curettage, consequently it is most imperative that she should be protected.
Infant mortality is even more deplorable. While we have reduced the infant death rate in the United States within the past ten years, it could have been reduced far quicker and with less cost in suffering and energy had instruction been given to the parents of the children who die. We have 250,000 infants who die each year before they reach one year of age. It is said that 90% of these die from causes due to poverty and neglect. We know, and the most optimistic of us would not contend that either poverty or neglect will be eradicated from the world next year; and yet we allow the same 250,000 mothers and 250,000 fathers of these children to bring into the world the next year another 250,000 children to die of poverty and neglect. It is true that we are lavish with free milk stations, free food, free medical supplies, free dental attention, free everything in the material sense of the word, but not in the one essential thing that would enable these parents to help themselves and to stand on their own feet and better their condition and to make face independently their future.
Birth control information (that is, methods of the prevention of conception), could help many of these parents to solve the problems of infant mortality themselves. Children who die under one year do so from various causes, but it is generally recognized by specialists that three underlying causes are important factors in the infant death rate:
One could go on analyzing in this way every social problem existing today, but these cases are sufficient to illustrate the necessity for fundamental application of knowledge rather than palliative measures.
I wish there were time to dwell upon the subject of child labour, for there is nothing that so wrings my heart and makes me feel the importance of fighting on until the end of time, for this cause, when I see little children forced into fields and factories and workshops to spend their childhood days. I sometimes wish that the venerable societies for the prevention of cruelty to children could prevent the cruelty of children being born in conditions that make cruelty inevitable. If we could prevent the cruelty of children being born in disease and misery, immorality and poverty, we would, within a generation, re-make the world.
In advocating the practice of birth control, that is, the prevention of conception, I do not say that all parents should be compelled to limit their families, but I do maintain that there are certain conditions when, for the benefit of children that might be born as well as in consideration of future generations, that no children should be born at all. There are some cases where sterilization should be applied as the solution of this problem, but in the great majority of needy cases contraception could very well be practiced. I maintain that birth control must be practiced,--
The form method of control must depend upon the individual case. We who have studied this subject in its entirety for the past ten years recognize that there are three groups of practices: 1) abstinence, or continence, where coitus does not take place at all; 2) sterilization, which does not mean castration, but is applied to the man or woman through surgery or irridation--this of course renders a permanent condition of sterility which may not always be in normal cases is seldom advisable; 3) the temporary application of chemical or mechanical means to prevent conception.
There is a good deal of research going on in America and in England in regard to these three methods. I myself have been director of a Birth Control Clinic in New York City for the past five years where we have had about 6,000 cases to whom we have given either chemical or mechanical appliances and instruction as to their use. We have three physicians in charge, as well as three nurses and a social worker who goes into the homes to follow up the cases to see if perfect satisfaction is given and, if not, to report back to the Clinic what is the cause. I am pleased to say that while the methods that are available for our use today are by no means perfect, nevertheless in our last report we can say that we have had not more than 2% of failures when the instruction given has been followed.
In New York City, while we have only one clinic and we are studying the science of methods, in Chicago there are five clinics under the direction of Dr. Yarrow, and in California there are two clinics, one in conjunction with the Stanford University Hospital. In England there are 22 Clinics run under private auspices, and the women of England are now waging a fight on the Government to allow contraceptive advice and instruction to be given at the maternal and infant welfare centers. The House of Lords has already passed a resolution that this should be done, and now the women plan to bring a motion before the House of Commons and have this instruction available in every Health Center as woman’s normal and natural right. I am strongly in favour of this information being given by the medical profession, in their public and private practice, but I especially recommend that until such time as the methods are perfected that special Clinics be established where this information is given, not only as a corollary of diseases, but for economic and social reasons as a special means of ascertaining facts and data whereby the methods may be eventually more perfected.
Briefly, this is the case for Birth Control in its individual and social aspect. It is my belief that woman must free herself from the forces which have made them her child-bearing machines throughout the ages. She must choose the time to be a mother or not to be a mother, as she sees fit. Women, through knowledge of Birth control, will not only free themselves, but will also free the children from social conditions which otherwise will remain inevitable. As they free themselves and their children, then can they come go forward with men , toward that greatest of all goals--the emancipation of the human race.