[Regulation of Fit Children of the World]

Date

1925-01-27

Spatial Coverage

Source

"Mrs. Sanger Says Women Are Slaves; Knowledge Barred," Waterloo (Iowa) Evening Courier, Jan. 28, 1925

Description

Sanger gave this speech before the General Federation of Women's Clubs in Des Moines. The speech was not found. For notes from another speech she gave during this trip, see Des Moines Address Notes, Jan. 26, 1925.

Contributor

Waterloo Evening Courier

Identifier

Text

Mrs. Sanger Say Women Are Slaves; Knowledge Barred

"We who advocate the dissemination of such knowledge do not say there should be no children, nor do we desire to regulate the number any family should have. But we do say that parents should give to their children a sound heritage, a sound body, and a sound mind. We do say that the epileptic, the insane, the feeble minded, should have no offspring. We do say no to the temporarily or permanently diseased. And, too, we do say that the coming of children should be properly spaced out, not one every year, so common in hundreds of families, but not oftener than once in three or four years, so that the mother can properly recover from previous child birth."

"Millions of the women of the United States are in deeper and more dreadful slavery than the negroes of the south, because the distribution of sound, sensible, scientific knowledge of birth control is forbidden. Yet the church and the state neglect them--yes, even cry out against their freedom from the haunting specter over them."

That was the declaration of Mrs. Margaret Sanger, noted birth control advocate, in an address before the Des Moines Federation of Women's Clubs at Hoyt Sherman place auditorium yesterday afternoon. The largest audience which has attended a meeting of the federation heard Mrs. Sanger's plea for "Regulation of the Fit Children of the World."

"This continued refusal to allow the distribution of contraceptive knowledge is the greatest waste of physical and economic vitality the nation permits. It fills our insane, feeble-minded, epileptic and charitable institutions, it causes inconceivable suffering to thousands of women and children who cry out for a fair chance to live as normal beings, and we are paying for the ignorance we are bringing upon the nation in high infant and maternal mortality, child labor, disease and poverty."

"Iowa and the United States," Mrs. Sanger declared, "must attack the great social problems at their roots by preventing the propagation of the insane, the feeble minded, the epileptic, the diseased and other dependents on the state, or social chaos is imminent."