Comment on Removal of Sanger’s Name from Her Clinic

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birth control, clinic, eugenics, New York City, race

To the Editor:

Re “Planned Parenthood in N.Y. Disavows Margaret Sanger Over Eugenics” (Washington Post, July 22):

Sanger’s 1st clinic at 17 West 16th Street, NYC

Margaret Sanger pushed her way into the (then) widely respected eugenics movement in order to win greater acceptance for birth control, which was illegal and associated with promiscuity and prostitution. Yet she vehemently opposed the eugenics movement’s principal goal: increasing middle- and upper-class childbearing.

Sanger believed that every woman, regardless of class, religion, or race, should be able to decide when and if to have children. The exception she made, which was broadly supported, was for those who were incapable of caring for a child or were at risk of passing on a disease or defect. Today we see a troubling disconnect between Sanger’s lifelong fight for women’s reproductive freedom and her inability to extend rights and liberties to the mentally and physically disabled.

But it’s important not to let the decision by Planned Parenthood of Greater N.Y. legitimize the accusation made by many on the right that Sanger was a racist intent on limiting the reproduction of people of color. Sanger never defined fitness for parenthood in racial terms and worked closely with Black leaders and in Black communities to improve access to contraception.

Peter Engelman

Conway, Mass.

In Honor of Women’s History Month, We Remember Hannah Stone

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birth control, birth control methods, history, margaret sanger, reproductive rights, women

When we remember the birth control movement, we must commemorate the extraordinary women who willingly risked so much for the advancement of such a controversial movement. For these activists, giving all women new access and opportunities to contraceptives meant more than their own potential individual  advancements. Dr. Hannah Mayer Stone embodied this type of dedication. Chosen by Margaret Sanger in 1925 to be the head physician of the Clinical Research Bureau, Dr. Hannah Stone would prove to be dedicated not just to the cause, but also to the over 100,000 patients she saw during her time at the clinic.

Hannah M. Stone

While she defied the norm with her passionate involvement with the movement, Dr. Hannah Stone surpassed traditional 20th century women’s roles all her life. Born in New York City in 1893 as the daughter of a pharmacist, she went on to receive a degree in pharmacy from Brooklyn College in 1912. Following this, she attended New York Medical school, receiving her MD in 1920. In 1921, she attended the first American Birth Control Conference, where she met Margaret Sanger. Sanger opened the Clinical Research Bureau in 1923, and two years later she needed a new physician.Dr. Stone was already a member of the medical advisory board for the Clinical Research Bureau when Margaret Sanger offered her the position of physician. As she had this prior involvement, her interest in the birth control movement was known. Dr. Hannah Stone would work at the Clinical Research Bureau, which was later renamed Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in 1928, for 16 years without receiving compensation.

The main purpose behind the establishment of the Clinical Research Bureau was to do more than just administer birth control to patients; it was to also prove the effectiveness of different types of contraceptives through detailed record keeping. Dr. Stone handled both tasks methodically. By the end of her time at the clinic in 1941, she had helped over 100,000 patients and she had maintained a record for each one. But aside from just being thorough, Dr. Stone was compassionate and understanding with her patients. Her demeanor led her become known as the “Madonna of the Clinic.” In her writing, Sanger expressed her adoration of Dr. Stone. She commented on her attributes, listing  “her infinite patience, her attention to details, her understanding of human frailties, her sympathy, her gentleness” as reasons that she was invaluable to the work of the clinic. Dr. Stone understood the value of her work at the clinic, not just in her interactions with patients, but also with her responsibility of compiling data about her patients. During her 16 years of service to the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, Dr. Hannah Stone was able to leave a profound impact. Her detailed records helped the movement discover that the most effective method of birth control was the diaphragm used with spermicide. She later published some of her findings in “Therapeutic Contraceptives.” This article was one of the first involving birth control to be published within a medical journal.

Her passion for helping women extended past the realm of birth control. Dr. Stone and her husband, Dr. Abraham Stone counseled couples with relationship and sexual problems from within the clinic as well. This began casually, but it developed into the more formal Marriage Consultation Center which was ran out of the clinic and a community church. Through this work Dr. Stone again acted as a trailblazer, as these marriage counseling sessions had not been done in this manner before. In 1935, Dr. Stone and her husband were able to publish their counseling techniques in a book entitled A Marriage Manual.

From left: Sigrid Brestwell, Antoinette Field, Elizabeth Pissort, Margaret Sanger, Hannah Mayer Stone, and Marcella Sideri

Dr. Stone’s association with birth   control often caused her to put the movement’s progression ahead of her own career, as her work at the clinic cost her many opportunities. She had been working at the Women’s Lying-In Hospital when she first started to work for Margaret Sanger at the Research Bureau Clinic. Her new work at the clinic caused a conflict with her the Women’s Hospital and they asked her to give up her newly acquired position. She refused this request, and as a result she was asked to resign from the Women’s Lying-In Hospital. This would only be the first of many times where her work at the clinic would prove to be a detriment to her career. Later, in 1929, Dr. Stone was arrested with four others when the Research Bureau Clinic was raided. Although the charges that were brought against her were later dismissed, the picture that was taken of her in handcuffs permanently damaged her record. Dr. Stone felt the full impact of this when she applied to admission to the New York Medical Society in 1932, and her application was tabled. She continued to take risks for the movement, including her involvement with the test case US v. One Package, when a package of Japanese pessaries were shipped to her and later seized. This case ended up being monumental, as it was the first step in legalized birth control. Despite her involvement with the birth control movement, and the clinic itself proving to be a detriment to the furthering of her medical career, Dr. Stone’s dedication to the cause never faltered.

Dr. Hannah Stone died suddenly of a heart attack in 1942 at the age of 48. Her loss was deeply felt at the clinic, as she had dedicated so much of her time to assisting the patients. She was replaced by her husband, who carried on her legacy and dedication to the cause. Dr. Stone is remembered for her kindness, and her groundbreaking work. She was well respected for her tremendous knowledge on administering effective contraceptives. Thousands of medical students and doctors alike came to the Research Bureau Clinic to learn her methods. Even though Dr. Stone was recognized for her greatness, Margaret Sanger wrote extensively on her humility. She did not crave attention or recognition, and often others took responsibility for her advancements.

As a doctor, Hannah Stone was a trailblazer. As a woman, she exceeded the expectations society had for her at the time. But it is her selflessness that is most inspiring. Dr. Hannah Stone dedicated nearly her entire career to serving women and the birth control movement, and despite her vast achievements she never sought recognition for them.

Anniversary of Spanish-language publication of Family Limitation

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birth control, Censorship, Family Limitation, margaret sanger

To celebrate the publication of a Spanish-language translation Margaret Sanger’s  Family Limitation’s in Merida, Mexico, her grandson Alexander Sanger wrote the following new introduction:La brújula del hogar

Introduction to Family Limitation – La Brujula del Hogar
By Alexander Sanger

La brújula del hogar

“In the summer and fall of 1914, my grandmother, Margaret Sanger, nascent birth control advocate and a public health nurse in New York, wrote a pamphlet entitled, Family Limitation, in which she described various methods of contraception which she recommended to enable couples to plan, space and limit their children. It was this pamphlet that was translated into Spanish as La Brujula del Hogar and published in Merida in 1922.
My grandmother, a mother of three, knew what she was talking about, not just because she had only three children, but because she had been working in the poorest slums of New York City, taking care of mothers who had children they did not want and could not afford. She often talked of one patient, Sadie Sachs, who in 1912 went to a back alley abortionist and almost died in the attempt. My grandmother nursed her back to health. When the doctor made his final visit, Sadie Sachs asked what she could do to not have any more children. The doctor responded,”“So you want to have your cake and eat it too. The answer is, tell Jake (her husband) to sleep on the roof.’”

“Three months later, Sadie Sachs was pregnant again, went to a back alley abortionist and died in my grandmother’s arms.”

“My grandmother said, ‘Enough.’”

“She went to Europe to research contraceptive methods and put all her knowledge of methods available in the United States and in Europe into Family Limitation.”

“In the United States at that time, both the Federal Government and the states had Comstock Laws, which prohibited the dissemination of birth control information and supplies. The laws also criminalized advocating the legality of birth control.”

“In March of 1914, my grandmother announced in the first issue of her monthly newspaper, The Woman Rebel, her intention to ‘advocate the prevention of conception’ and ‘impart such knowledge in the columns of this paper.’ She never actually imparted any contraceptive information in The Woman Rebel, but nonetheless the authorities confiscated the newspaper. In it she first used the phrase ‘birth control.’  My grandmother kept printing the paper and the government kept confiscating it, and finally indicted her on obscenity charges, since birth control under the Comstock laws was considered ‘obscene.’”

“The indictment made headlines, spreading birth control far beyond the limited readership of her paper and agitating women and men to support her cause.”

“She decided to ‘give them (the government) something to really indict me on,’ she wrote to her muckraker friend, Upton Sinclair. She printed 100,000 copies of Family Limitation. It was immediately translated into multiple languages, including in 1919 and again in 1922 into Spanish. Her willingness to put women’s rights and health above the law launched the United States birth control movement, and soon the worldwide movement.”

“What my grandmother saw in the slums of New York and on her visits to Mexico (she made at least a half dozen), was enormous inequality between the classes. In New York and in poorer areas of the United States, the rich and poor often lived near each other but had vastly different incomes, access to health care and numbers of children, both born and surviving. There were scandalously high infant and maternal mortality rates. If women used contraception, it was a traditional method, often ineffective if not dangerous, and when it failed, the women often resorted to unsafe abortion. There were Sadie Saches in Mexico as well as New York, and my grandmother vowed to put an end to it. In her campaign she was repeatedly imprisoned but she never wavered.”

“Imprisonment also seemed likely for the translators, printers and publishers of La Brujula del Hogar in 1922. The pamphlet fell into the hands of birth control opponents in Merida, the Knights of Columbus, who drew up a petition seeking the prosecution of the publishers. Newspapers took both sides, cartoonists got busy, public became aroused and Birth Control became the most discussed topic of the hour. The first edition of the pamphlet, all 5,000 copies, was exhausted in one day, and a second edition of 10,000 copies was immediately re-printed.”

“The Knights of Columbus petition was forwarded on from the District Attorney, Arturo Cisneros Canto, to the Governor of Yucatan, Felipe Carrillo Puerto, who at once remitted instructions to refuse it. Incidentally, Carrillo, a Socialist, was one of 14 children. In compliance, District Attorney Canto issued a statement published in the March 14 Diario Official, which was reprinted in Meridá newspapers, which said, in part:”

“The Attorney General’s Office cannot shape its manner of proceedings to the narrow-minded and antiquated criteria of morality, the result of deep-rooted religious prejudices, which crops out in your petition. The Executive of the State wishes to have it made clear that forever have gone the prosecutions, which have no other cause than moral fanaticism, which filled with horror the vast period of clerical domination of the Middle Ages. As long as the present socialist government directs public destiny, the Attorney General’s office will not undertake any prosecutions for futile ideas of morality, since prosecutions in the name of morality have at all times been the most odious pretext of which religion made use so as to destroy its enemies.”

“My grandmother touted the Yucatan government’s support of birth control, noting that Arturo Cisneros Canto’s statement’“is a remarkable document and one that might be recommended to the attention of police departments in some American cities–especially in New York, where a meeting for the discussion of the morality of birth control was broken up not six months ago.’”

“The Yucatan’s socialist experiment was short-lived. In 1924 Governor Carrillo Puerto was assassinated, and support for feminist and socialist reforms there evaporated. But, as historian Dan La Botz noted, ‘revolutionary Yucatan set the long-term agenda of the Mexican women’s movement, and many of its demands are still being fought for.’”