"Mrs. Sanger's Birth Control War Carried Around the Globe"

Editorial

New York City

When Margaret Sanger attempted to establish the first Birth Control clinic in America a few years ago, the New York police came down on her with a heavy hand. Mrs. Sanger and her assistants were arrested and lengthy legal battles ensued. Undaunted and undiscouraged, Margaret Sanger set out to change current opinion. From the Brownsville district in Brooklyn she has carried her message of fewer but better babies completely around the world, and finally into the legislative halls of Albany.

Next week, April 10, there will be a hearing in the Assembly Chamber of a bill to amend the laws of the State so that Mrs. Sanger may be enabled to open as many Birth Control clinics as she pleases. It will surely be a triumphant moment for her should this bill be enacted. For Margaret Sanger has challenged Federal and State governments. Her books have been burned in London, barred from the United States mail. The Imperial Japanese Government refused her a passport to the land of the cherry blossoms. The Japanese people protested, and Margaret Sanger made a triumphant entry into Tokiyo."

Her name is a household word in Japan and China, as it is in England and the United States. Sentenced a few years ago to a month's term for distributing Birth Control information, she has eventually won the support of such wealthy and prominent society folks as Mrs. Thomas Lamont, Mr. Thomas L. Chadbourne, and Mrs. , Mrs. Otto H. Kahn and others prominent in the social and financial world."

"When we started our educational campaign ten years ago, advocating fewer but better children," "declared Margaret Sanger the other day in the offices of the American Birth Control League, No. 104 Fifth Avenue," we were almost childishly naive. We didn't know there were laws which practically conscripted the poor mothers of the State of New York to the unceasing toll of compulsory maternity."

"Our efforts were all to aid the poor, overburdened mothers of the East Side and the congested districts. To my surprise I discovered that there was the blindest and most unreasoning prejudice of officialdom against the theory or the practice of Birth Control. Thousands and thousands of women appealed to me for help. Twenty-five thousand women were dying every year because this knowledge had been refused them. Yet every effort to break down the bars of prejudice and ignorance was hampered. Birth Control was immoral; it would break up the home. Such were the arguments used against it."

"I found out that I could not reach the poor women who were crying to me for Birth Control information, until the whole current of public opinion had been changed."

Since then, says Margaret Sanger, all her efforts have been to awaken public opinion, not only at home but in Europe and in the Orient as well, to the benefits and the morality of Birth Control. The first step in this gigantic task has been to educate the educators, to mobilize the moulders of public opinion.

"We have discovered that there were four steps to our goal: agitation, education, organization and legislation. In view of the enormity of the work confronting us, a small band of earnest and disinterested women, our progress has been rapid. Whatever the outcome of the bill that has been introduced at Albany, which comes up for a hearing early this month, its educational value cannot be underestimated."

"Great and discouraging as the obstacles have been, we have succeeded in enlisting the whole-hearted support of the finest intellects of the English-speaking world. With such eminent English thinkers as H. G. Wells, Havelock Ellis, Dean Inge of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, Lord Dawson, the King's physician; John Maynard Keynes, the distinguished economist, and Bertrand Russell, throwing the weight of their authority into our cause, enlightened public opinion in Great Britain is with us. England leads the world in hospitality and fairness to new ideas. I say this despite the fact that an early pamphlet of mine has been ordered burnt by a London Police Magistrate."

"Such efforts at suppression are, however, boomerangs; they are invaluable to our cause as propaganda. Instead of suppressing, they arouse widespread interest and support."

It was a study of the Birth Control clinics of Holland which have been functioning for many years, that convinced Margaret Sanger that personal, hygienic instruction should be given by physicians to women applying for Birth Control information instead of attempting to teach through the printed word. This conviction led to an investigation of the State laws concerning contraceptives. Mrs. Sanger discovered that even duly registered physicians were forbidden by law to offer contraceptive advice, even parents with inheritable diseases were refused such advice in hospitals and public dispensaries.

"It may be wrong to speak of these as clinics. We would like to establish free and friendly bureaus where the overburdened mothers of the poorer classes might come for advice and sympathy. Licensed physicians alone would be permitted to take charge of the technical and medical part of the work."

"But that would be but one aspect of the many benefits to be derived from such motherhood centres. We would give these mothers not merely contraceptive advice; we would show them in terms all could understand that they must take care of the babies they have already brought into the world, so that each child might have a fine opportunity of developing into a strong, sturdy man or woman, vigorous enough to carry on the torch of our civilization."

"There is a good deal of chatter nowadays about Americanization. We cannot develop a fine race on this great Continent of ours unless we look into the future. We must think not only of our own children but the children and the grandchildren of our boys and girls."

"As long as we willfully, as a Nation, waste the most precious resources we have--our child life--let us hold our tongues about the dangers of Birth Control. The advocates of Birth Control place a higher value on the life of a child than do its opponents. We want every child born in this country to bring with it the heritage of health and a fine vitality. There is the true wealth of our country.

"Let us breed a race of thorough-breds! You cannot measure the greatness of a country by its industrial resources, in dollars and cents, or financial power. You can measure it only in the fine types of manhood and womanhood you produce, in the beauty and happiness of your children, in the talent and genius of poets, philosophers and artists."

"Let us Americans give up that lamentable habit of counting our greatness only by the dollar sign, only in the number of billions of dollars, or millions of inhabitants we have."

The objection was made by the interviewer that perhaps the classes most in need of Birth Control could not be taught to exercise it, due to mental defect, irresponsibility or recklessness.

"Until we have responded to the piteous appeals of thousands upon thousands of normal, intelligent wives who already realize their responsibility and their duty toward their children born and unborn," replied Margaret Sanger, "such an objection is, neither immediate nor important. We believe that the feeble-minded and the incurable mental defective should not be permitted to increase and multiply. Every new instrument invented to further civilization has been opposed as dangerous and inimical to mortality. There are all sorts of automobile accidents every day--but we do not look upon motor cars as immoral. Airplanes have caused the death of hundreds yet we do not condemn them as unnatural."