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Sanger addressed the Friday Morning Club in Los Angeles. Portions of the article not pertaining to the speech were omitted by the MSPP.
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Start Talk on Taboo Topic.
Mrs. Margaret Sanger, the luncheon guest at the Friday Morning Club yesterday, spoke frankly and clearly on the once-taboo subject of birth control. It was for her activities in this connection that she has been indicted by the Federal authorities.
Mrs. Sanger said that the knowledge essential to birth control should be spread broadcast among the poorer population and that the laws restricting the dissemination of such knowledge should be repealed as unfair and inimical to the best interests of the nation. Her contention was that through lack of knowledge the women of the poorer classes are hearing cruel and unwarranted burdens and bringing large broods of feeble-minded and otherwise seriously-handicapped children into the world, whom they are unable to support and eventually become a burden on the taxpayers.
Mrs. Sanger insists that the scientists and doctors, the majority of the "great thinkers" are in accord with the doctrine of birth control, and that among those classes where the information is obtainable, immorality is less rife and children better cared for, in that people can then afford to marry younger and avoid the production of a family until they are in a position to take care of them. She has had, she said, indorsements of her propaganda from such men as H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett.
Calls It Unfair.
"The women of the working classes seek this knowledge and it is unfair to keep it from them when the higher strata of society, the very ones, in many cases, whose influence keeps the restrictions on the statute books, have long since practiced its advantages," she declared. She cited many cases of women who bear vast broods of children, only to see them die in child-birth or live in feeble health, to whom such knowledge would be an inestimable blessing. The present laws, Mrs. Sanger said, breed an army of harpy abortionists and create an unthinkable state of affairs, which a free dissemination of simple facts would do away with. Women, she maintained, are more than justified in many cases, under so many conditions, in availing themselves of such facts. She had nothing but condemnation for what she insists is a policy of reckless and careless breeding. To this door she laid the responsibility for what she said to be the fact that, in proportion to the population in the United States breeds a few great men. This her hearers considered a weak point in her argument, for, they pointed out, European countries cannot be said to encourage birth-control, but rather to frown upon it even more emphatically than ourselves. They also questioned the accuracy of the comparison.
Mrs. Sanger advocates the distribution of clear, concise pamphlets and clinic lectures for those women unable to read. She mentioned one mining district in which she deliberately violated the law by distributing pamphlets of her own among the miners, who assured her they were disappointed at the small supply which only enabled them to give them to women having more than nine children already.