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Margaret Sanger Papers Project

Category Archives: Birth Control

Happy Birthday Margaret Sanger!!!

14 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by estherkatz in Birth Control, Events

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

birth control, birthday, margret sanger

Margaret Sanger,  who would have been 136 years old today, would no doubt be shocked to learn we are still fighting the battle for Pensive sangerreproductive rights, or that she has become a pawn in this endless battle. As Imani Gandy point out in her recent, excellent Reality Check article (http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/08/20/false-narratives-margaret-sanger-used-shame-black-women/) notes that as “anti-choice fanatics seem utterly incapable of making an honest argument that Black women should be forced into childbirth rather than permitted to make their own decisions about what to do with their bodies, they resort to lies, misinformation, and half-truths about Sanger and the organization she founded.”

Yet we could not have come even this far without the dedication, spirit and the willingness of Margaret Sanger to dedicate her life to make certain that all women would have access to effective and readily available contraceptive knowledge and tools. She knew the extent of the struggle and understood that success would be achieved quickly or easily. But she was guided by determination. “We must unite in the task of creating an instrument of steel, strong but supple,” she wrote, “if we are to triumph finally in the war for human emancipation.” (Pivot of Civilization, 1922).

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Poor Women, Big Families

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by heatherdebel in Birth Control, Document, Sex and Reproduction

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

activism reproductive rights, Children, family limitations, Poverty

The Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference

The International Aspects of Birth Control – Volume 1 – edited by Margaret Sanger, contains multiple articles from activists around the world about the struggle in their country for Birth Control rights.

While transcribing the 1925 book edited by Margaret Sanger titled The Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conferences: International Aspects of Birth Control I couldn’t help but be surprised by the amount of opposition faced by the original pioneers for Birth Control. Mrs. H. G. Hill, the president of the Alameda County Birth Control League in 1924, sums up the resistance when she wrote that, “There still exists in the minds of the masses a great deal of prejudice,  misunderstanding and indifference in regard to our work.” As all civil rights movements have shown us, sometimes the ignorance of the public proves to be the hardest obstacle to overcome. In response, Margaret Sanger was avid about publishing articles, pamphlets, and giving lectures.

For example, not everyone understood the need to limit big families. It was preached in Christian churches, which dominated the culture’s popular view, that “children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” Similar verses were used against the fight for Birth Control to prove that the movement was anti-God and anti-morals.

Jean H. Baker's Biography of Margaret Sanger

Jean H. Baker’s Biography of Margaret Sanger

Sanger was under no illusion that poor women with big families were always blessed. In Jean H. Baker’s autobiography of Sanger, she talks about how Sanger’s mother “had given birth to eleven children in twenty-two years and suffered seven miscarriages. She had been pregnant eighteen times in thirty years of marriage.” A few years after her last child was born, Sanger’s mother died of tuberculosis.

My mother died at 48,” wrote Sanger in sentences that needed no further explanation to make her point. “My father lived to be 80.’

Despite the toll pregnancy and miscarriages took on women, popular view still held that children were blessings and to prevent one would be to prevent the other. One of the best responses to such a claim comes from Maria Kirstine Dorothea Jensen, known better as Thit Jensen. Jensen was a Danish writer in the early twentieth century who fought for women’s rights and founded an Organization for Sexual Awareness in Denmark. In one of her articles she wrote about a physician who openly bashed the idea of women with the freedom to chose when to have children:

When I first lectured about Birth Control, it happened that a physician for women interfered – I think he was afraid it might spoil his practice, if there were not to be so many sick and half-killed women, when they finished child-bearing in a reasonable time. He had the nerve to go on to my platform and try to take over my audience – of course, he didn’t know me, he talked the most perfect hymn of cheap sentimentality about the poor good mother – the darling mother who gave birth to her sixteenth child and happily took it to her heart and it was wonderful.

And of course, you know an audience; he appealed to their childishness and they applauded him. I could not stand that, exactly at my start, so I got onto the platform and told him just what I happened to know:

‘In your clinic, this very noon, a poor woman died after Thit Jensenhaving borne her ninth child. She had been your patient through several years; you had told her that if she were to bear another child, she would die. You didn’t tell her how to avoid it, you only sent her home to her husband, knowing that the law forbade her not to live with him. She became pregnant, and she died, promptly, as you told her. But…who killed her? You, who had the knowledge, or she who knew nothing. And, tell me please, if she had been a rich woman, belonging to society, and your patient, would she ever have had to die from nine small children? Certainly not, because then she would never have had so many.’

The audience exploded, being poor people most of them.

He never answered a word.

The audience’s opinion changed rather quickly when they heard the truth; women were dying unnecessarily from their excessive pregnancies, particularly women who were poor and didn’t understand their options. Ignorant claims about traditional families and the public’s lack of knowledge kept women like Margaret Sanger and Thit Jensen fighting, lecturing and publishing for as long as they did.


For full article written by Jensen see:

http://beta.birthcontrol-international.org/items/show/14

For full Alameda County Birth Control League article see:

http://beta.birthcontrol-international.org/items/show/196

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Sanger and the Ever Elusive Male Birth Control

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by mishachoudhry in Birth Control

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

birth control methods

From pills, to implants, to patches, Sanger would be awestruck at the variety of birth control methods available to women today. Many women are now able to choose the birth control method that best fits their needs and lifestyles. For Sanger, who believed that “no woman can call herself free who does not control her own body,” this would have been a huge feat, despite the drawbacks of these methods. Birth control can be expensive and comes with an array of side effects, ranging from mood swings to heart attacks. In fact, for many women today, there is still a great deal to be done in terms of access to safe and effective birth control.

One avenue that has been largely unexplored until recent years is male birth control. Early advocates of birth control, including Sanger, were not very enthusiastic about male-controlled methods, which at the time, included condoms and withdrawal. Sanger felt that these methods “placed the burden of responsibility solely upon the husband – a burden which he seldom assumed.” Instead, the women who came to her were seeking “self-protection she could herself use, and there was none.” In other words, women did not feel comfortable trusting their husbands with birth control, and sought a way in which they could, in a sense, arm themselves from unwanted pregnancies. Thus, the emphasis of female birth control methods has its roots in the early years of the birth control movement. Female-controlled methods such as diaphragms became popularized by the birth control movement because they gave women agency in their reproductive lives.

A condom made out of caecal, or animal gut membrane, c. 1910. (Courtesy of the Science Museum, London)

A condom made out of caecal, or animal gut membrane, c. 1910. (Courtesy of the Science Museum, London)

Additionally, there is reason to believe that Sanger’s focus on female-controlled methods was a strategic move on her part. Women who relied on condoms for birth control did not need to visit birth control clinics. Sanger would have seen this as an immeasurable loss, because birth control clinics were often the only way women became adequately educated on their health and sexuality. The need for clinics also helped legitimize birth control as a public concern that was deserving of acceptance and state-sponsored support.

However, now that is has been over a century since Sanger’s first publication of “Family Limitation,” the issues women face when it comes to reproductive rights have evolved. Enter male birth control. Specifically, Vasalgel. According to the Parsemus Foundation‘s website, Vasalgel is a “long-acting, non-hormonal contraceptive similar to vasectomy but with one significant advantage: it is likely to be more reversible.” It involves injecting a gel into the vas deferens in order to stop the flow of sperm. Vasalgel can be flushed out through a second injection if one wishes to restore their sperm flow. Although it could be a while until Vasalgel passes clinical trials and makes it way on to the market, the public’s increasing interest in this type of birth control shows us that we have come a long way since the start of the birth control movement.

Image courtesy of the Parsemus Foundation

Image courtesy of the Parsemus Foundation

The possibility of safe, effective, and long-term male contraception reveals a cultural shift in the way that we see birth control. It is no longer solely the woman’s burden to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Vasalgel shows us that men are starting to be held accountable as well. Although Sanger was against male-controlled contraceptives in the early years of the birth control movement, one could argue that products such as Vasalgel and what they tell us about how far we have come in terms of reproductive rights would certainly impress her.


For more information on Sanger’s stance on male birth control, check out these sources:

  • Margaret Sanger, “A Parents’ Problem or Woman’s?,” March 1919
  • Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter, “The Lowly Condom–Sanger’s Missed Opportunity?,” 1997

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Margaret Sanger Jail Interview with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by lzhirt in Birth Control

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Tags

Brooklyn, Brownsville clinic, clinics

If there is one thing I have learned during my time here at the Sanger Papers, it is that Sanger was not afraid to go to extreme lengths for her cause. This level of dedication and devotion to the birth control movement inevitably landed her in jail multiple times, as birth control was not effectively legalized until 1965.

I recently came across an interview of Sanger during one of her first stints in jail, after the raid of her Brownsville Clinic in 1916, and found it to be incredibly inspiring. The reporter started off the article by noting how “remarkably fresh” she appeared, despite having spent the night in horrible prison conditions. Sanger truly could withstand anything.

Mothers with carriages stand outside the Brownsville Clinic, Brooklyn

Sanger started off the interview by describing the horrible conditions of her prison cell.

“I’m glad you came,” she said, “but before we begin to discuss my arrest I wish to tell you something. Please- for my sake and for the sakes of the other women detained here- let me describe the horrible conditions of this jail. I do not see how the people of Kings County can tolerate such conditions. The blanket which covers my iron cot is dirty. Creatures of all manners and kinds invaded my cell. They came in vast numbers. There is no soap with which to wash my hands. I am only mentioning a few of the defects. Put me on record, please, as saying the women of Kings County should invade this place and clean it out.”

Then, she discussed her actual imprisonment and expressed her conviction to keep fighting.

Sanger dramatized her Brownsville Clinic arrest in a film she produced in 1917. Named “Birth Control,” it was banned by New York City’s Commissioner of Licenses, George Bell. Unfortunately, no copies of the film have been found.

“Now I can talk of my arrest. How do I regard it? As an invasion of my personal rights. It is an outrage and the day will come when this community will realize that Margaret Sanger long ago tried to show it the light. I shall continue in my work. After my trial and the final disposition of my case I am going back to my clinic.”

“They cannot stop me by placing me under arrest. Some time or other I will have regained my liberty. Then Margaret Sanger is going back to violate that law all over again. The charge in the newspapers that I was exhibiting and offering for sale a box of pills is a vicious lie.”

Sanger also referred to the way in which she was caught—by selling birth control devices (probably a diaphragm) to a female detective.

“I admit we did sell to the woman detective. We knew who she was. Mrs. Byrne, my sister, is a hot-headed Irish girl and she deliberately urged the detective to buy. We framed the two dollar bill and wrote across the bill. ‘Received from a spy.’ It was laughable to see the woman’s face when she returned and saw how she had been tricked.”

“That woman detective is beyond me. Perhaps she did only her duty, but personally I would rather scrub floors for my bread than earn it by fighting my sisters.”

For the full article, see http://sangerpapers.org/sanger/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=422082.xml

For a related article, see:
Why I Went to Jail, Feb. 1960
http://sangerpapers.org/sanger/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=303281.xml

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Kitty Marion, Broadway’s Local Suffragette Gets Arrested for Distributing “Obscene” Literature

19 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by sarahcorrado in Birth Control, Birth Control Review

≈ 4 Comments

The-Birth-Control-ReviewBack in 1918 a familiar sight for New Yorkers was German-born Kitty Marion running up and down Broadway clutching a stack of the Birth Control Review and proudly waving them in the air,  most likely with the police directly behind her. Kitty was arrested for the ninth time in 1918 after again violating the law against the sale and distribution of obscene literature. She chose a 30-day sentence over the option of paying a fine of $500, saying “put the Kitty Marion Selling Birth Control Reviewmoney into The Birth Control Review, I’ll stay in jail”.

 

That sentiment did not stop Kitty’s friend Mary Halton, one of New York’s eminent woman obstetricians, from bringing $500 in bags of pennies collected by the lovely ladies of the east side to the judge. Remember when Samsung allegedly paid a fine to Apple in all pennies? Your neighborhood suffragettes did it first.

Kitty didn’t abstain from her duty of spreading this “illegal” knowledge. Once she was released,  she was back at it the next day.

All types of people stopped to see what the fuss was about, why this woman kept coming back with a bag across her chest and papers in the air. Kitty ran into the types you would expect she described the as the “you oughts”

You ought- to be ashamed,- to be arrested,- to be in jail,- to be shot,- to be hanged, or, maybe what I ought to suffer was just ostracism. According to me good sisters, my action in selling The Review and advocating birth control, was disgraceful, disgusting, scandalous, outrageous, villainous, criminal, and unladylike! The poor dears!

Not everyone that passed by Kitty wished she’d simply just disappear.  The positive feedback she and her sisters received gave them hope to carry on, it inspired them when they met people who had a spark of desire to learn more and make a change for the better. People would shout “good luck!” or commend the women on their courage. Men, women, people of faith, all purchased a copy of this outlawed paper.

Arrested for informing the public on a topic otherwise termed taboo Kitty Marion proved that just one person who believed that she could make a difference, could make women’s lives better, even if it was at the expense of her own. Despite arrests and catcalls, she fought what she saw as the injustice of the Comstock law, quoting Helen Keller, when she said,

The dignity of human nature compels us to resist what we believe wrong and a stumbling block to our fellow man

 

 

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The Sanger Papers is a non-profit organization (501(c)3), hosted by New York University. Almost all project expenses are covered by grants and private donations. For more information, see our website, or make a donation online today!

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