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.
Sanger gave testimony on behalf of the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control before the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of S. 1842. The following excerpt includes only Margaret Sanger's testimony and the questions she answered. The chairman of the meeting was Senator Marvel Mills Logan.
Mrs. SANGER. Mr. Chairman, this bill, S. 1842, concerns, in my estimation, the 32,612,792 women of child-bearing age in this
I have had the privilege of coining the term by which this bill is likely to be known, "birth control" legislation. I would like to say that birth control means the control of the birth rate, by means that prevent conception. It does not mean that it interferes with the development of life; it does not mean that it interrupts the process of life nor that it takes life. The prevention of conception is not any more an interference with the process of life than remaining single or living in continence or celibacy. In the control of the birth rate we do not mean that we must limit the birth rate. It means to control the size of the family, but it does not mean limit it to 1 or 2 or to any specific number of children. We want the first consideration to be of the health of the mother; then the consideration of the health of the children that are already here; then consideration of the father's ability to earn a living for his family and the standard of the living that the parents wish to maintain for the cultivation and the education of the family. I would just like to make that definition clear for that is what we are talking about in using the term "birth control," as it may be used by other speakers.
Some years ago as a trained nurse, I found that I could not discuss this question with mothers; that I was unable to get information to assist them, even after they had been told by the doctors that another baby would cost them their lives. We found that the main thing in the way of doing that was
Mr. Chairman, in looking over the record and the history of that law and the way it was placed upon the statute books, I contend and believe that Congress at that time never intended that persons should be deprived of knowledge by which they could reasonably rear and care for their children. The whole law and all the discussion around it at that time, as we find it in the record, has relation to obscene literature coming to this country that was being circulated among young people. The intention of the law was to stop the circulation of indecent literature, and the prohibition of information to prevent conception never was intended in the sense of its rightful use. I cannot believe that any Congress then or today would want to deprive mothers of knowledge they rightfully should have for the benefit of the family and really for the benefit of the community and the country.
The law as it is set forth in sections 211 and 245 makes no exception. It does not exempt the medical profession or permit them to use the mails or common carriers. It make no exception for scientific or medical literature, to permmit such to go through the mails or by common carriers. We feel that the
I have here, Mr. Chairman, the laws to which this bill pertains and a small leaflet that we brought forth on Federal interference with the administration of State laws, with which we contend this law does interfere; and also a brief summary of the State laws which allow an exempton to the medical profession and a general exemption in certain cases. In
If you will permit it, I would like to place this in the record, as indicating what has been done in the way of Federal interference with the administration of these State laws.
Senator Logan. You may do so.
(The statement of the present law and summary of the State law referred to was marked "Exhibit B"; and the pamphlet entitled "Federal Interference with the Administration of State Laws," was marked "Exhibit C"; both of which appear at the close of the statement of this witness.)
Mrs. Sanger. Because of these State laws and under the authority and the right of State laws, people who are interested in this subject and are connected with social and civil work in the communities have established over 150 of what we call "birth-control clinics" throughout the country. Those are legally established centers, but they have to bootleg their supplies from New York and
Section 211 also makes it a crime for anyone to tell anyone else where such information may be obtained. In other words, these clinics that are legally established in various States not only have to bootleg their supplies but also bootleg any proper modern information than concerning contraception. Many of the doctors have no more information than the people had 40 or 50 years ago, which should belong in the ark. In order to get any new, scientific information, they have to bootleg it. Most physicians do not like to put themselves in that position.
Mr. Chairman, I have had a million letters from women in this country, from the time I began this campaign of education up until about 4 years ago. I have had a million personal letters about the hardships of some of these women. I have had to jeopardize my freedom, run the risk of a $5,000 fine and five years in prison for violating section 211, by telling these women where in their own States they could obtain that which they were legally entitled to under their own State laws.
That is what we are fighting for. We want to do away with this bootlegging. Representative
Senator Logan. That may be incorporated in the record.
(The document referred to was marked "Exhibit I", and is printed in full at the close of the statement of this witness.)
Mrs. Sanger. There is no particular avenue or direction for these people to go in which to get the right information. They have to go to the drug store and have it whispered over the counter that this or that will do. And we know from our recent research that many of these products are not effective. We have purchased 100 so-called "contraceptives" and put them through scientific tests. We put them through laboratory tests and had clinical tests, and submitted them to physicians, and we found that 43 out of the 100 were practically of no use whatever. Purchasing those things has caused many women serious injury. We have not gone into that very thoroughly yet, because we have just tested them as to their efficaciousness, and 43 out of 100 were of no use. It means a fraud is being perpetrated upon the public. This is a brief statement of the results of our research that I would like to have go into the record.
Senator Logan. That may be incorporated in the record.
(The document referred to was marked "Exhibit E", and is printed in full at the close of the statement of this witness.)
Mrs. Sanger. If I may stress this, by way of a little explanation when we talk about the question of preventing contraception we claim there are three methods of preventing conception. The first is continence. No one objects to continence. We have no objection whatever to certain religious orders claiming that is the only method the church can sanction. There is nothing in the law against it. They may practice it, and we say that this is their own affair, their own individual right.
The next is sterilization. Sterilization is for people who have to responsibility toward parenthood or toward children. It is becoming more and more prevalent, as you know from reports from
Then there is the chemical or the mechanical means of contraception, which is one that places in the hands of the parties involved the legal right to use means to prevent contraception, and it is around that group that most of the discussion seems to be centered.
There is nothing mandatory about this bill. We are not imposing any method upon anybody. We are not claiming that every family must obtain this information, but we do say for those who wish to use some means they should have the legal right to do it, and those who wish to use one particular means or no means at all should not have the right to impose that upon the whole community. We claim that we have a perfect right to use such method as our Physician indicates is the right one for the individual.
As we have stated, we are making no claim that any one means or method is a panacea for all. Various women differ. They differ as to the number of children, and their physical conditions become different. The economic situation is also different. We want to place the giving of information in the hands of those who can disseminate it properly, so that those desiring it may receive instructions and necessary scientific advice from those who are qualified to give it. It is just the same as the 10-cent pair of glasses in a 10-cent store. That is no way for people who need to have them to have glasses fitted. We want this subject removed from the 10-cent store and the gasoline stations and placed in the hands of those who are qualified in every way to explain the relations of parenthood properly.
Mr. Chairman, we have had to go through many difficulties in connection with this subject since 1914. Some of us have served time in jail, We have been arrested time and again, just because we wished to exercise the right of freedom of speech and help educate those who were in need of help. We have been able to get some decisions from the courts that have in a way interpreted these laws in different ways, especially in the States. Members of Congress have said to us:
You will never get anything through Congress. Why do you not go to jail and get your court decision?
I say Congress should be ashamed to compel us to go to such extremes and to resort to such methods for our laws. Why should we have to go to the courts to have our laws made? That is what Congress is for. People have a right to look to Congress and to bring these questions before it. We should not have to go to the expense of lawsuits and go to courts to have our laws made. I think you will all agree with that.
Now, then, as to the clinics: There are 157 birth-control clinics in this country. I have a statement here of the number of those clinics and the location, but I do no know whether I can put that in the record or not. There may be some question of a violation of section 211.
Senator Logan. That may be filed with the committee, and we will treat it as a privileged communication.
(The document referred to was marked "Exhibit F", and is filed with the committee.)
Mrs. Sanger. I want to talk a little about the waste of life, a fact which brought me into this cause more than anything else. First, I was to refer to the terrific number of abortions that are going on, which is a colossal number. I think we can show from the record that it runs over a million a year, and that does not begin to tell the story. There is the waste of women's lives, the waste of child life, and the terrible suffering of women. No woman can keep her health and continue to go through these operations with increasing pregnancy every year, especially when it is done surreptitiously. The condition of those nervous and unhealthy women is something really beyond our belief or understanding, and it is terrible that we should have to make it necessary for the women of America to go into these dangerous conditions and live under those conditions which I would call an underworld of suffering. It seems to me to be a state of barbarism.
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 2 or more persons 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.
I would like to read this little thing about Jimmy. Nobody wanted Jimmy, but he was born anyhow, and died three weeks later. His mother was sick with worry before he came. Childbearing in 1925, 1927, 1929, and 1931 had left her in miserable health, with bad varicose veins. his father was a $25-per-week mechanic working part time. Which of us, under such circumstance, would look forward to the birth of Jimmy? The community did not want him.
Yet this community gave his mother prenatal care, which amounted to $6.75. A social agency boarded his 4 brothers and sisters over 13 weeks, at a cost of $170.50. His mother was in the hospital 20 days, at a cost of $80. The layettte for the baby cost $7. He contracted meningitis at home and was given medical care and nursing by the city, at a cost of $15.25. He died and was buried free by the community, which cost $30. So his short and painful life cost the community $309.50.
Ask yourself, was it fair for Jimmy to be born at this time, with no chance for a happy childhood? Was it fair to his brothers and sisters when the father made enough money for food only, with no money for rent or clothing? Was it fair to the community which is now supporting over 70,000 families?
We believe that a child's first right is to be wanted. We believe that hunger and fear cannot create a wholesome home for a baby. We believe that during this crisis the community cannot now keep in health and decency the children who are here.
I also have some interesting statistics submitted by Prof.
In Weld County,
The county estimated that there are about 200 such cases yearly, making a total cost of $10,000 per year. For $300 it was possible then to save $10,000.
We wish to point out, however, since this clinic is a branch of
I have just two or three letters here that I would like to call you attention to. The first is from
you will only tell me I will do anything in the world for you I can.
PleasI read your address in the Evansville Press, and I wonder if you could help me any. I have two children. My mother has 10. I am only 20 years old, I live in fear all the time for I never know when I will get that way again. My oldest child is hairlipped and we want it fixed; part of it has been fixed but haven't the money to do any more. My husband only makes $10 a week so you see it is all we can do to live. I will never forget it if you will tell me how to keep from having children. I will tell my mother; her youngest child is younger than mine. It is terrible; ife.
Yours truly.
This woman could have been sent to
Here is another letter from
In regard to Birth-control bill S. 1842, how I wish all those people, priest and all that are so bitter against birth control, had to have babies every 9 months and know what it is to see little children hungry and cold, not to say anything about the slave life the poor mother is living and the suffering she goes through. I will do all I can for the cause. I haven't any money--we are sure having a struggle these days to make ends meet. Only hope the bill goes through for we poor women need help if anything or anybody does.
I worry so much. I have such a hard time. Oh, I don't want any more babies--am half crazy - am half tempted to leave my husband, but then how would I get along, and there are the children, and we all love one another, and he doesn't want any more babies either, so write my, dear unseen friend.
Here is one from
I have been married 10 years and during that time have given birth to 5 children: 3 girls and 2 boys. After the third one was born, I suffered a severe breakdown in health. It weakened my heart and stomach to such an extent that I am unable to do a big day's work. Whenever I do, I am so tired and exhausted I cannot sleep for hours. I have lain awake many and many a night, so tired my heart just pounded and thumped. Oh, but it is terrible. No one knows what it is like unless they have it to go through with. The children are so close together. They are all just like babes yet and are so noisy and fight and fuss till I am almost crazy. The oldest one died, so I have only four living but that is enough. I did not act right when the last one was born. I just had to gasp for breath and had such a strangled feeling. If we had lots of money I might get along better than I do, but my husband is a laboring man and there is no money to pay expensive doctor fees and laundry bills, and so forth. If I could do something harmless to keep from raising any more children my husband and I both would consider it a godsend. e cannot take proper care of the ones we have, let alone any more. My baby is 2 months old and I want to find out something to do before I have the chance to get pregnant again.
Miss Sanger, if you know of anything to help me stop all this, please inform me, for I am getting desperate. I have been tempted to commit suicide many a time. If I had good health, it would not be so bad but I wish you could see me. I married when I was 16. I will be 27 my next birthday and I look older than my husband and he is 35. And I feel older than I look. Everybody speaks about how tired I look and I am tired. So tired, nervous, and worn out I feel like I could drop in the floor and die without a single shudder.
What would this law do? In the first place, it would place the proper responsibility for the giving of information upon the medical profession and hospitals where women go to have their babies, and to these maternal wards in the hospitals. It would give the poor women, who are unable to go to the hospital, the opportunity to go to some member of the medical profession, who has a right to judge such matters. If she could go to the hospital to have her baby, she should be able to get proper information there. It gives the poor woman the right that only the well-to-do have had.
We should like to do more than this law asks for, and I hope before long we can ask for more an appropriation for this work in various States, especially in mountainous sections where women have a difficult time getting to a hospital. We would like to have regular Federal birth-control clinics, maternal-health clinics, where these women may get advice and where they may get proper attention. We hope before long that we may ask for just such an appropriation from the Federal Government.
In closing, may I saw there are many aspects of this question that are beyond our scope to deal with today. in my estimation, the placing of information in the hands of qualified persons and permitting them to give out such information would be very beneficial. I would like to see such information given out, regardless of whether there is overpopulation or underpopulation; regardless of whether there is a high birth rate or a low birth rate; regardless of whether there is going to be more or less baby carriages or baby bottles sold.
Regardless of all these commercial and material interests, I would like to see the mothers themselves receive consideration, and we must trust the mother that she is, going to use that advice, not only for the benefit of her child and her family but for the benefit of the community and the country. I believe that we should consider, under the Constitution of this country, that every woman should have the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and I ask you favorable consideration of this legislation. [Applause]
Senator Logan. Thank you, Mrs. Sanger.
Mrs Sanger. Mr. Chairman, I would like to cover just one point of rebuttal and, if you will allow me, I would like to have
Mr. Chairman, there seems to be a good deal of confusion concerning this law and the amendment that is proposed. As
All the conditions our opponents claim would happen in case this bill or this amendment passes are taking place with the law as it is now and as it has been for over 60 years. All that we ask is that this amendment exempt the medical profession, hospitals, and clinics from the penalties of the law. The amendment is simple, it is comprehensive and it is in plain English, so it seems to me any one should understand it.
Now, the reason, in my estimation, that there is this confusion and all the conflict going on that none of us like to see is because there has been such confusion between the State and Federal laws. Forty-seven States allow the physician to give the contraceptive instruction for the "cure or prevention of disease;" other States do not mention the physician at all or do not mention or limit the giving of information to the physicians; and other States allow the medical colleges to instruct.
And so it varies in all of the States. In 24 States they have no restriction whatsoever. We claim that the licensed physicians, hospitals, and clinics are proper sources of information in every State, and we are trying to educate the public accordingly.
All that we are trying to do, I repeat, is to pass this amendment, which affects only the United States mails and common carriers in regard to physicians, hospital and clinics all licensed by their respective State laws. It does not affect these circulars and these things that are already in existence and that have already been forwarded through the mails. We all are opposed to these objectionable things. But one of the reasons they are circulated is because there is no control over this particular kind of literature.
No physician is going to give contraceptive advice on the telephone nor is a physician going to use the United States mails to instruct a patient. It is absurd to even think of it. What the physician is going to do, is to get through the mails and common carriers better instruction and information himself, as well as necessary supplies, which he has not been able to have because of this law. As we have shown in the hearing, medical publishers will not publish articles in medical magazines nor in books, nor will they print textbooks on contraception for the medical profession, because of this law. they will not distribute copies or circularize copies of their magazine which might get them into a row by publishing something that is against the law. The consequence is that the medical profession has not, so far, had the advantage of obtaining up-to-date contraceptive information that is freely permitted them in other countries. Not only that, we know from our experience in clinics and our studies and research that advice alone is not enough, there must be some device, either a mechanical or medical means to carry out the doctor's instruction for the patient as he prescribes.
I don't know anything else I can say about these laws. This bill will not permit information to be given indiscriminately, to make it more clear and definite. We must go back to the States and place the responsibility squarely up to the States as to the physician who misuses the law. We will have nothing to do with that. That is a matter for the physicians themselves, to control, and, as the bill states, he must be a legally licensed physician to practice medicine. Now, if the State or Territory is going to license that physician, it is supposed to find out what kind of a doctor he is, and if they give him the right to practice medicine within the proper limits of the law then certainly he should have the same right to use the mails and common carriers.
We have already put into the record the laws, so I won't discuss them in detail, but bear in mind that they have already been admitted. They have gone into the record to show exactly what the State laws are.
The confusion seems to be that because there are obscenity laws in the various States, that they must include also the prohibition on contraceptives, which is not true. We are placing the information in the hands of physicians who are licensed to practice under the State laws. I wish we could get that clear, because I think it is very much to the advantage of all to understand this point.
The other day there were a good many questions asked about the other countries. I think it might be of interest to state that there are two other countries in the world that have laws concerning or prohibiting the dissemination of birth-control literature -
The same may be said about England. Very recently there was a bill before the
Senator Hastings. I suppose it is you contention, Mrs. Sanger, that freedom in England has not destroyed the morality of the youth of the nation?
Mrs. Sanger. That is my contention. It is the same with
There are one or two points which I would like to include, among which are the following:
Here is a book that has been brought out entitled Sex Rhythm published with "ecclesiastical approbation" by the
Question. Are all Catholic doctors in agreement as to the serious physical consequence of contraception?
Answer. Very few have had the occasion to express themselves on this subject in print. Probably the majority of Catholic practicing physicians would subscribe to Dr.
And so on. I would like to include that, if I may. It says:
"Hence, however great our forebodings as to the physical evils which may be associated with birth-control practices, we cannot decently initiate an active medical campaign against them, and remain inactive and silent where a much greater evil obtains."
Then, under the heading of procreation in the same book it says:
"Question. Are married people obliged to bring into the world all the children they can?
Answer. Far from being of obligation, such a course may be utterly indefensible. Broadly speaking, married couples have not the right to bring into the world children whom they are unable to support, for they would thereby inflict a grievous damage upon society."
I would also like to include that.
I would also like to present a statement by Dr.
Senator Neely. You may do that; you may put them all in.
[The statement by Leo Wolman was omitted by the MSPP editors.]
Senator Neely. Your time is getting short; 15 minutes has gone.
Mrs. Sanger. I have 20 minutes?
Senator Neely. Yes; but you have used 16 minutes now.
Mrs. Sanger. I only have a little more.
Here is a ruling from the Post Office Department for a booklet called Contraceptive Practices addressed to
Mrs. Sanger. Thank you very much. Those are some of the various statements [handing papers to Senator Neely].
The patient is a white woman in late middle life who gives her age as 43, though her physical characteristics are those of a woman at least 10 years older. She states that she hs given birth to 12 children and has had two miscarriages.
I find it goes on to tell the condition of this woman, and the doctor says:
"I have seldom seen such a deplorable pelvic condition in any woman. Unquestionably it is due to her too-frequent bearing of children."
Mrs. Guthrie must be, without delay, subjected to extensive pelvic surgery. Above all things her precancerous condition must be remedied at once. In addition to her rectocele should be repaired, her uterine support reestablished, and a surgical sterilization should be performed in order that the bearing of more children may not undo this extensive work of surgical repair.
Here is a woman who came here to testify on behalf of the other miners' wives, and she was found to be in such a deplorable state of condition. We have a letter from this woman today, who pleads for the support of this bill, and concludes her letter as follows:
As the mother of 12 children I will have to close and get ready to go to the hospital, asking the prayers of every religious person. As I believe in
Mrs. L. R. GUTHRIE"
Father Ryan stated:
"I call attention to the obvious fact that unemployment and depression could not be attained to any appreciable extent through birth-control practices for 15 or 20 years."
He overlooks the factors of human distress and mental anguish of millions of mothers living in constant fear of pregnancy, which could be immediately removed by the passage of this bill. Furthermore, families who are at present on the relief rolls of this country, of which there are approximately 4,000,000 today, and those now on the border line, who would be placed on relief if another child were born into that family, could secure immediate relief, if able to go to public-health care clinics and secure information to limit the size of the family during this period of depression and unemployment.
To quote further from the book Rhythm, by
"Burdens that test human endurance to the utmost limit and to which all too many succumb will be lightened. I speak of economic burdens, the burden of poverty, of inadequate income, of unemployment which make it impossible for parents to give their children and themselves the food, the clothing, the housing, the education, and the recreation they are entitled to as children of God."
Father Ryan says:
Every well-informed person is aware that the change in the Penal Code proposed by this bill would not substantially increase the knowledge or the use of birth control by any class of the population. Prof.
I quote the passage referred to:
"I do not believe that keeping the laws as they are will have any appreciable effect in preventing the decline of the birthrate. * * * I regard contraception as one of those great movements toward human freedom and the rationalization of life. * * * If the Members of Congress could only be made to feel the inevitability of this great movement toward human freedom they would certainly not oppose it."
Obviously there is nothing in Professor Thompson's statement to warrant Father Ryan's assumption.
When Father Ryan stated that there was a decline in the birth rate from 1921 to 1932 he failed to mention that during these very years the population increased nearly 20 million in the United States. As the population grows larger, the rate of increase must slow down. This has been true for the last 100 years. He should take into consideration the decrease in the general death rate and the infant-mortality rate, lessening human suffering and waste of human life.
Father Ryan challenged the statement that the general practice of birth control would stimulate the birth rate in the educated classes. We reply, it has been shown in the cities of northern and western Europe that the democratic practice of birth control has stimulated the birth rate of the educated classes, and they are now having more children per family than the poorer classes (
Father Ryan criticized our criticism of
Yes, we do contend that self-respecting people "poor" or "near poor" prefer to help themselves and keep free from public or private charity, by bringing into the world only the number of children they can decently provide for. The practice of birth control through the passage of S. 1842 will enable such families to live normal sex lives. It will make possible the natural relations of family life by bringing a family of 10 or 15 children to become a public charge on the community often becoming inmates of prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, or public institutions.
When Father Ryan claims that a change in the law now would be tantamount to a public declaration that the long-established legal attitude and policy were wrong, he made the weakest point in his long chain of weak arguments. We believe that it was never right to couple contraception with abortion, indecency, and obscenity. Congress made that blunder 60 years ago. It will amend this law as it repealed the eighteenth amendment, when public opinion demanded it.
Finally, Dr. Ryan says:
"We oppose any change in the law which we believe and know to be intrinsically and profoundly immoral--the natural law which forbids contraception."
To what law does he refer? It is a natural law for man to use his reason, his intelligence, and "inborn" intuitive faculties, drawn from Nature herself. It is natural to desire children. It is natural to desire only the number of children one can decently provide for. It is also natural for people endowed with a sense of responsibility for their children to use their natural intelligence to apply scientific knowledge to their problems, for the welfare of their children, the community, and the country as a whole. Intelligence is a part of nature as well as the animal function of reproduction.
She stated that she had borne four children in 6 years. For 20 years she has had an ophthalmic goitre, and has had no further pregnancies, her physician having advised her how to avoid further childbearing. How selfish and hypocritical to oppose the granting of similar information to other mothers. Mrs. Gibbs is fortunate to live in
Canon Chase infers the
If there is a good moral reason why the way of abstinence should not be followed, we cannot condemn the use of scientific methods to prevent conception * * *
First, it will give the doctors, hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, public, State, and county health agencies the right to order and receive, through the mails and common carriers, the articles needed to protect the health of these women who need such protection.
It will place the giving of this information in the hands of qualified persons who will be responsible for its dissemination.
The opponents did not refute nor can they refute the scientific facts, medical and economic, as presented by the proponents of this bill. They did not deny that maternal health is jeopardized by too many births; that abortions are the result of too frequent pregnancies,; that physicians should have the legal right to give contraceptive advice when necessary.
They admit that 47 States allow the dissemination of contraceptive information.
They admit that the laws as they stand today are violated on a wholesale scale.
They admit that the whole subject is out of control of the law, contraceptive articles being scattered promiscuously, regardless of their need or proper use.
On all major facts we are in agreement.
To the proponents it is a question of national health, economic responsibility, and individual liberty.
The opponents have thus far not produced a distinguished scientist, either economist or sociologist, eugenicist, or population authority, at any of these hearings, nor have they had representatives of any non-Catholic organizations, except Mr. Ralph Burton, their chairman.
While non-Catholic individuals have opposed this bill, they each and every one have proclaimed they represented no organization. Mrs. Rufus Gibbs; Dr.
We could respect and understand, though profoundly disagree with, our opponents, if they came here and said:
This is our conception of morality. It is our religious belief that birth control is wrong. We cannot concede to any interference with the laws of Nature and we prefer slums, overcrowding, disease, filth, maternal, and infant mortality, child labor, prostitution, illiteracy, unemployment, crime, imbecility, national decadence, and wars to any change in these laws--
But we cannot respect the attitude, the loose thinking, and the hypocrisy of those who oppose birth-control practices and offer no practice alternative to take its place.
They base their entire case on Catholic morality, and would impose this upon the American people, which is an arrogant assumption of authority.
I wonder if Dr. Wilson would tell us something of the medical conditions, or the consequences.
[Statement of Dr. Prentiss Wilson, M.D. was excluded and not transcribed]
Mrs. Sanger. Dr. Cattell mentioned in his letter the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, as to their stand on birth control. Here is a pamphlet that was brought out by the Committee on Marriage and
Senator Neely. If it is in the record, we will not duplicate it. It apparently seems to have been lost. Is that all, Mrs. Sanger?
Mrs. Sanger. Yes.
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.
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.
Speech delivered at Auditorium Theater, Oakland, California on December 19th 1928. Handwritten additions are by Margaret Sanger.
It was Victor Hugo who said there was no force in the world so great as that of an idea whose hour had come. Some of` us believe that the hour for Birth Control has come. There are very few subjects of so which have so large a practical a significance which go cut so deeply into the foundations of social welfare evolution as Birth Control. There are few other subjects that have been left so long in obscurity while, at the same time, there are few that can so demonstrate their importance as Birth Control has done in the past few years.
George Bernard Shaw said that Birth Control is the most revolutionary idea of the twentieth century. H. G. Wells says it is the most momentous fact of modern living. I claim that Birth Control is a the keynote of a new moral responsibility, a new social awakening. It is not only a health and economic safeguard expedient but a great social expedient principle interlocked with the spiritual progress of the human race & its future.
To define Birth Control, we say it is the conscious control of the birth-rate by s not mean to interfere. It does not mean to destroy. There is no more interference with life through birth control than there is to remain unmarried or to live a celibate life. We also say “to control.” Control does not mean that you limit. When you control your furnace you do not have to put the fire out. When you control your motor you do not necessarily stop your car. To control the birth rate means that there shall be the same right for those who do not wish to have children as for those who do wish to have them. There are no objections to those who wish to increase the size of their families, but on the other side there seems to be a great deal of question and controversy as to the right of those who wish to limit or control the number of their children. Why, they say, should there be any necessity to control or limit population in this great land and especially out here in the west where there are so many large spaces acresof unused territory.
Civilization is confronted with two problems--pressure of population on the food supply of the world and the reconciling of humanitarian efforts with the greatest improvement of the race improvement. I believe birth control is the key to both. Statistics tell us that from fifteen to twenty millions of persons are born in this country world every year. That means fifty thousand a day. Certainly we must believe that something must should be done with this enormous group increase of new population. It must be controlled. There are only two ways of controlling it. INCREASING the death rate or DECREASING the birth rate. Which shall it be? History records the fact that population has always been kept down by war, by famine, by disease by floods and pestilence. Nature is most ruthless in extermination; she crushes to the wall the old, the sick, the demented, the diseased, the inefficient, and through these means was is able to perfect her type. But civilization today will no longer permit those methods to operate. With the hand of charity and philanthropy, democracy and Christianity, we reach out and grapple with Nature. We take to ourselves these inefficient, demented, or feeble-minded persons and we tax the normal, the fit and the healthy members of the population for their care. Through these methods we are bringing civilization to a queer pass. William Sanger Starr Meyer of Princeton University tells us that out of our one 105,000,000 hundred and twenty five million people, only twenty million can be classified as intellectual. From the 85 million thru psychological, biological and other tests it is found that 45-million are sub-normal, with intellects equal to juveniles of fifteen years; fifteen million were definitely feeble-minded, with eight year old minds; while 25-million could at best be classified as mediocre. Of course we all hope that we belong to the 20-million class. It is that enormous group of feeble-minded that gives concern to those of us who are socially minded.
Many of us remember the two famous families, the Kallikaks and the Jukes. The first started by a feeble-minded man marrying a normal woman. We know that two feeble-minded persons have never been known to bring to birth a normal child, but here we started with a normal woman. 470 of their descendants were normal: 143 were feeble-minded: 36 were illegitimate; three were epileptics: 83 died in infancy: three were criminals and twenty-four died in houses of ill fame.
The Jukes family had 1200 descendants; of these 130 were professional paupers; 135 were common criminals; 70 were thieves; the expense of maintaining this family was $1,300,000--and that too, was in the days when we did not have to count the high cost of living. Today we know for a fact that the high proportion of feeble-minded in our population is one of the great problems of civilization.
All over the country we find that institutions are not numerous enough or large enough to take care of our feeble-minded population. California has been one of the few States advanced enough to take hold of this question and try to solve it through sterilization. Reckoning three children for each feeble-minded couple, out of six thousand sterilized, California has saved herself eighteen thousand feeble minded persons.
It is not sufficient to take only the feeble-minded who are in institutions; only a small proportion of them are there. Millions live with us--with no regard whatever for the coming race. They continue to make our problems and to bring numerous children into the world.
Our insane question is almost as serious. In New York State a few years ago there was a great deal of pride on the part of the Governor and Legislature because they came before the public and said they had been able to appropriate the sum of twenty-five million dollars for the care of the insane. No one seemed to ask what they were doing to decrease the numbers of the insane. New York has, and I presume California also, the practice of allowing inmates of asylums suffering from certain types of insanity to return home periodically on what is called the parole system. A man confined in an asylum after for a certain period of time is allowed to return to his family on certain occasions; also a mother or woman. There is no responsibility on the part of the State to see that anything is done, or any knowledge given to that inmate or his family to see that children do not come from that individual.
We have had many cases where women, having been informed that the husband is returning, have come to our social agencies and begged that something should be done, often stating they already have two or three feeble-minded children or idiots. Often the women in these families are the bread-winner and she has begged the organizations, who are there to protect motherhood, to do something about this problem. In no case, in New York city, have I known that these women were ever helped in a fundamental way. They have been told not to worry, have been cheered as much as they could be cheered, and told that when such a condition arose they could come to the pre-natal clinic and care given them--and that is all. That seems to me a very short-sighted policy on the part of the social agencies and other groups, well-meaning, no doubt, but nevertheless very sentimental.
Not only the feeble-minded and insane deserve consideration. There are two groups of people in the world--not only in the United States but in almost all large cities of the civilized world. One group is what I term the small family group; the other is the large family group. When you look at the small family group you will see they have by far the best of it. It is there we find health, wealth, culture, education, intelligence. It is where there are few children, well spaced, that those few are brought up to full maturity. The children of this group are not sent to factories but to school, because of the desire of the parents to give them the best opportunities. They go to high school, to colleges, to universities. It is from this group that the best positions in the community are usually filled. It is from this group that those who desire to see large populations desire they should come.
On the other hand is the large family group; it has a hard time. You find there poverty. Poverty and large families almost always go hand in hand. You find mothers bearing children far too frequently, without regard to her health or the father’s earning capacity. It is there we find slums, overcrowding, not only in homes but in the community. We find there, too, terrible infant and maternal mortality, ignorance, disease, unemployment, child labor, and all the problems we are trying today to solve.
I know this group fairly well and I know the mothers here are not desirous of frequent child-bearing any more than the mothers of the other group. But seek and ask where they will there is no way for them to get advice or instruction on how to control the size of their families. All agencies are turned against them; they must turn to the interrupted pregnancy or bring unwanted children into the world year in and year out.
We are known in America to be a very generous hearted people; we are known throughout the world as being very large spenders. We have in the past ten years spent NINE BILLION DOLLARS on what are called the four D’s--DISEASE: DEFECTS: DELINQUENCY: DEPENDENCY. I have no quarrel even with that enormous amount if we could only be assured that it was not going to increase the next year and the following year. But we have no such assurance. In fact, judging by the past ten years, we have no reason to believe anything, except that we will be paying, not nine or ten but perhaps fifteen billion dollars to take care of the four D’s in the next ten years.
Will all you who are interested in social work follow me for a moment to see how we really attack one or two of these questions.
Take Maternal Mortality. It is really a disgrace that this country, which has so many splendid social organizations and institutions, should yet have its maternal mortality increased during the last few years. Twenty thousand mothers passed out from causes due to pregnancy during the past year. Twenty thousand mothers means two mothers for every hour, night and day. We know that tubercular women, or women with heart or kidney trouble should never be allowed to take the risk of motherhood. We know, too, that even tubercular women die, not from tuberculosis but from pregnancy. We know that the medical profession has every right, legally and morally, to interrupt that condition. Then what? They send her back to her home, to face the same conditions, in utter ignorance and with a death sentence hanging over her head.
With Infant Mortality we have done better. It is today I believe down to two hundred thousand infants who died before reaching their first birthday. We have reduced it but oh, at such a cost, not only in money but a whole group of individuals have devoted the best part of their lives to keeping alive children who never should have been born.
We do everything to keep our children alive but in most cases it is like locking the door after the horse is stolen. We have our Milk Stations, our Maternity Centers; we have Nurseries; we send nurses into the homes to tell the mothers of eight or nine children how to have their tenth child. What those mothers really want to know is how not to have that tenth or eleventh baby. Worst of all, we allow the 200,000 mothers and fathers of these children to remain in ignorance of how to prevent the birth of two hundred thousand children next year.
The Children’s Bureau of the Labor Dept. at Washington throws a light on the infant mortality of this country by telling us that the father’s wage has much to do with it. As his wage goes down, his family goes up. They also tell us that the spacing of children in the family has much to do with infant death; if there is an interval of two, three or four years that child has a better chance to live. They tell us also that number of children in the family has much to do with infant mortality and that the second child has a much better chance to live than the tenth or twelfth. For every second child born there is less than 100 deaths per thousand; for the fifth child, about 350; for the twelfth it is 600 out of every thousand. Sixty per cent of twelfth children born do not live to see their first birthday. What useless waste of womanhood and motherhood. What an orgy of agony!
I maintain that if we are ever going to do anything about infant mortality we have got to stop the unending stream of unwanted babies. We cannot sweep back the tide with the broom of organized charity or palliative legislation. We have to stop it at the source by safe and sound information to control birth.
Another question concerns us. Child labor. Most of us believe there is no such thing. We think children are protected by the laws of this country from work. But that is not true. For fifty years the Child Labor Commission has been trying to do away with Child Labor. They have not been successful. There are seven million children under 14 years of age who are engaged in gainful occupations. Have any of you seen children in the Southern mills going to work before the sun is up and returning after sunset? If you knew the conditions where these children are, you would know they are doomed to it. Fathers in many cases remain at home, doing much of the housework because he cannot get an adult man’s pay. Little ones of 6 or 7 are standing on boxes or benches because the machinery was made for their parents; here you find these little ones crowding so closely into the family that it is absolutely necessary for each of them as soon as they can to get out and compete with father and mother just for their daily existence. The same applies to children toiling in the fields, for instance, of Colorado. I went myself into the wheat fields of Colorado and it was astounding to me that we cannot have a little more fundamental attitude toward child labor; children of three and four were crawling on the ground like animals, putting fruit into baskets, their little backs permanently bent. To look into the faces of the parents of these twelve or fifteen children was to know that they were not capable of taking care of themselves, to say nothing of a large family,--which should never have been brought into the world. I’d like to see the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children begin a little further back and prevent the cruelty of children being born in misery and disease. I should like to see the time when the United States Government would have to guarantee a passport of health for every child born in this country.
If we could imagine it I think the children would like to take a look at their parents before being born and to ask them a few questions. If parents had to apply for children as they do for cooks and chauffeurs, the children might ask them for their health certificate. They might say: “What is the idea of having me? How do you live? What kind of table do you set? What are your plans for bringing me up? Am I to spend my childhood in a factory or a playground?” It might even say: “Ah, Mr. Father, I am a potential genius: what do you know about the development of a genius? What kind of society have you constructed for my gifts to adorn?” It might ask how many children there were already and if the answer was eight in two rooms and on twenty dollars a week, we can fancy it would say “I’ll stay where I am” and interview the next applicant.
The Government is concerned about the kind of people who come here from outside. Up to 1914 Uncle Sam was rather negligent about the kind of folk who emigrated here; he was like the parents who, although they scarcely know what they will do if their family is increased, yet do nothing to prevent it. Not until 1914 did the U.S. Government do anything much. We did not encourage emigration but did nothing to stop it. Not until 1924 was it necessary to recognize that there was a population problem and that SOMETHING must be done for the future of the country. So bars were put up at the entrance of the United States. Let me read you what the Government thinks likely to be a menace and source of disease to her people, to the happiness and well-being of her population. Feeble-minded persons, epileptics, idiots, imbeciles, insane people, tubercular, those with any loathsome or contagious disease, paupers, professional beggars, those likely to become a public charge, criminals, prostitutes, or for purposes of prostitution in any form; illiterates, those over 16 years unable to read English or any other language--all are refused admission and procedure for the enforcement of these measures is mandatory. I think it is good legislation. Unfortunately it is merely negative and not selective legislation.
If it is necessary to keep such types out of the country why is it not just as important to stop their breeding? it seems to me a very short-sighted procedure to make laws to keep them out and laws that increase and multiply them within. Immigration throughout the world is causing a good deal of stir; the countries of Europe have looked upon America for years as the solution of their problems. There is a good deal of bitterness at the United States taking this attitude and concern as to what they shall do. Europe claims that she has sent into the United States some of her best stocks, equipped us with artisans, with man made ready material. She claims she has depleted her own stocks by so doing, also that in order to do this in the past she has now made an enemy and a rival more powerful than all Europe combined. Many of the countries, like England, are trying to solve their over-population problem by sending them into the Colonies; but the Colonies in turn say they cannot use the slum population which England wants to get rid of; they must have men of health, vigor and initiative--so say New Zealand, Australia and Canada. The slum population England has sent has been sent back and England today has over a million unemployed. I am glad to say nevertheless that the British Government has been thinking seriously about the birth control; two years ago the House of Lords went on record and passed a resolution asking the Government to instruct mothers throughout the British Empire in methods of contraception at Infant Welfare Stations. It is an astounding thing that it was the Labor Party that refused to endorse that legislation.
Germany has also attempted to attack this question. When I was in Berlin I was astonished to find there was legislation going on, backed up by aggressive organization both labor and medical, as well as women's organizations, trying to terminate pregnancy, up to the third month. They have already endorsed sterilization. Women interrupted pregnancy and then remained to be sterilized. Out of 80 women who came, 75 remained, asking to be sterilized. These women had already had two or more children. In almost all cases something was wrong with their health of the mother, heart, kidneys or other troubles. Sterilization on a large scale is taking place in Germany. I consider that rather harsh and there may be some regret later on but nevertheless Germany is face to face with the problem of the future and she feels that is the only emergency she can at present attack.
Italy is making a great deal of increasing population. Mussolini has said: No babies, no votes. I do not know that the women particularly mind that; they might retort: No votes, no babies. I think Mussolini needs babies more than the women need votes. Italy is over-crowded. Everyone in Europe knows that. Italy cannot take care of her own population. Just two years ago six hundred thousand Italians and sixty thousand Poles went into France--and France herself has begun to consider population and immigration, as we have the last ten years. Anyone can go into France regardless of their condition. Not even today does France bar out of her country even persons with a transmissible disease. I think only one is not admitted--traucoma.
Japan has seven or eight hundred thousand new souls born every year. Crowded into a territory the size of California is a population equal to half of our population. All countries, except South America, have put up the bars against the Japanese. South America alone has the open door for Japan’s surplus population. Japan, to me, is like the chick inside the shell. Something has got to happen. As we all know, expansive populations of the world have caused wars over and over again. The economists of Europe are convinced that the peace of the world can never be solved until each country takes up the question of population. Until this is solved intelligently they may as well throw their peace treaties in the waste basket. This question of birth control is not only an individual, a national, and a racial problem but international. Many people believe that we who advocate birth control do not believe in having any children at all. It is not necessary to deny that to this audience; you know it is not true. Nevertheless, there are conditions in which it would be better for children not to be born at all. I maintain there are seven conditions under which children should never be born.
First: Not of parents with a transmissible disease; with insanity, feeble-mindedness, syphilis or epilepsy.
Second: Not of mothers with heart or kidney disease, until such disease is cured.
Third: Not of parents who already have a sub-normal child.
Fourth: I claim there should be an interval of two to three years between children. The mother should have an opportunity to recover from the ordeal of one birth, to enjoy her new baby and a period of time to prepare herself mentally and physically for the coming of the next child.
Fifth: No woman should have children until she has finished her adolescent period, from 14 to 23 years. While we all know many fine children born of young mothers I maintain that is no longer necessary. There should be an ideal time for parenthood and that should be at the close of the adolescent period, when the physical, nervous and mental organism is developed but not yet interlocked.
Sixth: There should not be more children than can be brought up decently and properly provided for. We have people for ten years who have been dependent upon social agencies, not only for the maintenance of themselves and the children they had years ago but for an increasing number ever since. I maintain that this is immoral in every sense of the word--to have children they cannot take care of and to make their neighbors and others bear the consequences of their acts.
Seventh: I maintain children should not be born until the young couple have, say, two years of married life. I would like to see young people take two or three years to play together, to build up and develop their common interests before parenthood. I believe it is harder today for two young people to become adjusted to each other than it ever was in the past. We imagine they are going to live happy ever after, but we know their problems have just begun. It is not, after all, an easy thing for love to grow into the fine thing which it can be. It is not easy to strengthen the bond of love and to submit to that bond of marriage, unless there is time for mutual adjustment. If couples had two years alone together I maintain there would be more happy homes, fewer divorces and the possibility of the girl developing her womanhood before taking the responsibility of motherhood. We really see very little of the love-life of individuals. They are married--and the next year become parents. The girl goes away on her honeymoon and comes back pregnant, physically and mentally disturbed. The husband has never an opportunity to know her as a woman; he knows her as a girl and then as a mother. I believe it would make for more happy marriages and more permanent ones if the fear of pregnancy could be removed or delayed, and parenthood invited instead of being an unwelcome accident.
There are three groups of methods of preventing conception. The first is continence. The only organized religious body that opposes Birth Control does not condemn continence, but regards it as the only permissible method of birth control. The second is sterilization. The third, mechanical means of preventing conception. In our studies of the past five years we have found that continence cannot be a means of general application. Self-control, or continence, is a matter of one’s evolution. Sterilization is bound to play an important part, especially where there are transmissible diseases. This remedy is largely in the hands of the medical profession.
It is about four years since we had the first birth control clinic in this country. To date, more than ten thousand women, whose histories we have on record, have come to us. Today we can say we know something about birth control. Ten years ago we could not say that. We could only say it had been practiced in Holland and amongst the well-to-do in almost every country, but we had no positive information. We can today say that birth control clinics are doing a splendid thing, not only in giving children a better chance of life but in protecting mothers and reducing the enormous number of abortions. In our records we have 85 percent of the families going upward in the social scale. We know if we can get a woman before she has her fourth child there is every possibility of the husband bettering himself and the children going up the scale, instead of applying for work certificates before the age of fourteen. We know today, on a small scale (for, after all, ten thousand is a small scale) what birth control can do. There are twenty-five clinics in the United States, two in Germany, twenty in England. As to California, there are two in Los Angeles, one in Pasadena.
In the past thirteen years I have received over a million letters, written mostly by women, sometimes on scraps of wrapping paper. They have found my name somewhere and written to beg for information and help. I have recently taken a cross section of these letters and put them in a book called “Motherhood in Bondage.” If, after reading those letters, you still do not believe in birth control, I think such a person would be hopeless of reason. These are mothers who are asking for means to control the size of their families. And what, after all, are they asking for? For the right to live. For the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For the right to know their children and to bring them up decently. For the right also to understand their husbands and to help him, too. These letters tell strange and dramatic stories of life in America, a side of life that is full of suffering and difficulty and that does not reach the public. And have not we paid a tremendous price for their ignorance? Have not these poor mothers paid a price that is staggering? Yet where is the information they need? We are paying for their ignorance in child labor, in infant and maternal mortality, in feeble-mindedness and with the large numbers of the unfit. I think it is time for us to wake up, to make it a right and easy thing for these mothers to obtain information and help of the right kind. We want women to have a chance to develop their own personalities, to rest from incessant child-bearing, to live with the fear of pregnancy removed from marriage. We want children to be born of love and conscious desire and given a heritage of sound bodies and sane minds. We want them to have and to have ourselves bodies that are beautiful, holy, fit instruments for progress towards perfection, temples in which the soul may take its place in the mystery of material being.
Sanger's scheduled lecture at the Medical College of Virginia's Egyptian Building was forced to move to the First Baptist Church because of an overflow crowd. Dr. Fred J. Wampler presided.
While the Federal Government will give you a truck load of information on how to raise pigs and chickens, they will give you give years in Atlanta and a fine of $5,000 if you even tell anybody, through the mail, about birth control clinics operating legally in Virginia, Mrs. Margaret Sanger, founder of the modern birth control movement, told a large audience here last night in protesting against what she said was discrimination against mothers and children.
Mrs. Sanger set forth many arguments why birth control information should be made readily accessible, but gave no information on how to accomplish such control. Dr. Fred Wampler of the Medical College of Virginia presided and presented the speaker.
Summarizing the case, Mrs. Sanger gave seven reasons why birth control should be practiced. They were: 1. By parents who have transmittable disease. 2. In case of women who have tuberculosis, heart disease or some temporary ailment. 3. Where parents, though normal themselves apparently, already have brought into the world abnormal and defective children. 4. Adolescents. Early marriage, she said, was desirable, but the young should not become parents. The girls should be 22 years old, the boys 23 for complete development. 5. For the purpose of spacing children so there will be two or three years between births. 6. The economic side of the question; the father’s earning power. It is unfair, she argued, for parents to have children they can do nothing for or for older children to have to stunt their youth working to feed their brothers and sisters, “their parents’ children.” 7.What she said was the necessity for young people after marriage to postpone at least two years after marriage the having of any children because they need the time for mental and spiritual adjustment. Premature parents, she said, found it harder in modern times to get along. Therefore contraceptive information should be available to young married people because individuals should be able to say what size their families should be.
Birth control, Mrs. Sanger said, can be accomplished in three ways, one, continence or celibacy, the method approved by the Catholic Church. This method, however, should not be forced on most people as religious dogma, particularly, she said, because psychiatrists have found continence was not good for most people. The second method was through sterilization by radium or x-ray, a method approved by Virginia and thirteen other States for epileptics and other persons who would transmit their physical and mental handicaps to children.
The third was by chemical or mechanical contraceptives, the description of which now is classed by Federal law as “obscenity.” She stressed the advantages of small families–-the longer school terms possible; better nourishment, and less overcrowding, low wages and unemployables. Birth control information, she found was generally denied the poor even when accessible to more prosperous people. “No matter what laws we may make or what we may do, there will always be some kind of child labor in large families,” she said, telling of 3-year-olds seen in Colorado and California beet fields. Only Chile has a worse maternal mortality rate than this country, although in 1929 we spent nine billions on maternal and child health. About 22,000 mothers a year die of preventable causes usually resulting from pregnancy and more than 200,000 infants die as a result of poverty and neglect.“
"They will not attack the problem at the root,” she said. "Children should have passports to give every child a sound body and mind. Our immigration laws forbid idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, epileptics, psychopathic and insane or diseased persons, prostitutes and so on. Why should the same types come in through the birthrate?"