[Bridgeport Council of Jewish Women Address]

Date

1923-03-05

Spatial Coverage

Source

"Women Jam Hall to Hear Address on Birth Control," Bridgeport (CT) Telegram, Mar. 6, 1923, p. 1

Description

Sanger's speech was not found; newspaper coverage used instead. Page 2 of this article is missing.

Contributor

Bridgeport Telegram

Identifier

Text

WOMEN JAM HALL TO HEAR ADDRESS ON BIRTH CONTROL

The Connecticut law that holds it to be a crime for any person to use drugs, any article or other means to prevent conception, was attacked as "perfectly absurd" by Mrs. Sanger, of New York internationally famous birth control advocate, in lecturing last night under the auspices of the Council of Jewish Women before several hundred women who crowded all available space in the assembly room of the Business and Professional Women's club in the Liberty building. She advised that every woman, individually, and each organization, as a unit, work to have the law repealed.

Poverty, feeble-mindedness, disease, child labor, human suffering in many forms and other social problems would be solved, Mrs. Sanger argued if women had the "right kind of information" that they could control the number of children in their families.

The laws should be amended, Mrs. Sanger asserted, to allow the establishment of birth control clinics, that physicians and nurses could advise the proper method of birth control, no one method being applicable to different individuals. There should be such a clinic in Bridgeport, she said.

Speaks Without Permit.

Introduced by Mrs. Samuel Capitman, the president of the council, who presided over the meeting, as a "martyr," Mrs. Sanger spoke in Bridgeport for the first time, without a permit.

Superintendent of Police Patrick J. Flanagan said last night he did not know anything about her appearance here, no member of the Council of Jewish Women or other organization consulting with him prior to her speaking last night.

Mrs. Sanger was arrested during scenes of turbulence before and in the Town Hall, New York, and not permitted to deliver the same lecture. The Mayor of Albany refused to allow her to address a body of women in that city, even after he had read her speech in manuscript. Her appearance in New Haven, scheduled recently, was blocked. She has visited Japan, China, and European countries, lecturing on birth control.

In striving to make this a "cleaner, healthier, saner" world, Mrs. Sanger said, a number of suggestions were put out by friends of birth control to awaken a "consciousness for a better race." These included:

A couple should not have children when either parent has a transmissible disease, nor should woman permit pregnancy when suffering from a temporary disease that would tend to injure the child or wreck her own health, and parents of feeble minded and disease-wrecked children should not permit the birth of any more children even though they themselves are healthy, as