Birth Control and Eugenics: Uneasy Bedfellows?

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document, eugenics, Historical Legacy, history, margaret sanger, New York Historical Society, reproductive rights

Margaret Sanger blurb in New York Historical Society Exhibit

Recently on a visit to the New York Historical Society (NYHS), we noticed a small exhibit in the front hall on the history of reform movements in New York that featured Margaret Sanger. The blurb read: “Though best known for her role in promoting women’s access to legal birth control (for which she was indicted for obscenity in 1914) Margaret Sanger was also a proponent of eugenics, suggesting that the fertility of the “unfit” ought to be restricted.” At the Sanger Papers we spend our time going over the entirety of Sanger’s life, so it strikes us as curious (and particularly presentist) that this stage of her career has come to define her so extensively.

In the wake of media attention following the 1917 Brownsville Clinic trial, Margaret Sanger broadened her arguments for birth control in an effort to appeal to a wider audience that included wealthy women, doctors and academics. Sanger added eugenic and public health reasons to support birth control, which essentially overshadowed her earlier feminist and socialist rationales. These conservative arguments had far more widely spread support. Eugenics, in particular, was a respectable scientific field,  widely advocated by leading intellectuals, scientists and politicians. Students were taught eugenics in college courses; state fairs had booths educating visitors on “racial hygiene,” and proponents of eugenics populated the faculty of schools like Yale, Stanford and Harvard. Sanger believed that if she could secure the support of the eugenics movement, she could win legitimacy and gain prestige for the birth control movement. Sanger, like many others of her time, was swayed by the arguments of eugenics, though she did not adopt them wholesale. Her 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization, offers the most detailed explication of her views on eugenics, and shows where she differed with so-called positive eugenics. Her efforts to win the acceptance of the eugenics movement did not succeed, as Sanger and the birth control movement remained at the fringe of the mainstream eugenics movement.

The differences between Sanger and the birth control movement and the academics who lead the eugenics movement have been summarized by the Eugenics Archive site, in part:

Margaret Sanger and leaders of the birth control movement, predominantly women, believed that people should be empowered, by education, to make choices to limit their own reproduction. In a society that frowned on open discussion of sexuality and where physicians knew little about the biology of reproduction, Sanger advocated that mothers be given access to the scientific information needed to thoughtfully plan conception.

Davenport and other eugenic leaders, predominantly men, believed that the state should be empowered, by statute, to control reproduction by whole classes of people they deemed genetically inferior. Eugenicists focused on segregating the “feebly inherited” in mental institutions, ultimately seeking the legal remedy of compulsory sterilization. (They also employed immigration restriction to limit the growth of certain population groups.)

Evidence of the distrust and antipathy that some eugenicists felt for Sanger and her colleagues can be seen in the following excerpts from a 1928 letter from Paul Popenoe to Madison Grant, in which Popenoe bemoans the possibility of an alliance with Sanger’s American Birth Control League. The original can be found in the Charles B. Davenport Papers, at the American Philosophical Society Library.

“Dear Mr. Grant,

I have been considerably disquieted by the letter you showed me yesterday, suggesting a working alliance between the American Eugenics Society and the American Birth Control League. In my judgement we have everything to lose nothing to gain to such an arrangement.

[The American Birth Control League] is controlled by a group that has be brought up on agitation and emotional appeal instead of on research and education… With this group, we would take on a large quantity of ready-made enemies which it has accumulated, and we would gain allies who, while believing that they are eugenics, really have no conception of what eugenics is and are actually opposed to it.

[At a recent international birth control conference] two members of our advisory council … put through a resolution at the final meeting, urging that people whose children gave promise of being of exceptional value to the race should have as many children, properly spaced, as they felt that they feasibly could. This is eugenics. It is not the policy of the American Birth Control League leaders, who in the next issue of their monthly magazine came out with an editorial denouncing this resolution as contrary to all the principles and sentiments of their organization.

If it is desirable for us to make a campaign in favor of contraception, we are abundantly able to do so on our own account, without enrolling a lot of sob sisters, grand stand players, and anarchists to help us. We had a lunatic fringe in the eugenics movement in the early days; we have been trying for 20 years to get rid of it and have finally done so. Let’s not take on another fringe of any kind as an ornament.

Sincerely,

Paul Popenoe

In 1928, at the height of the popularity of the eugenics movement, this letter makes clear how peripheral Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement were to eugenics, and how much at odds she was with many of its central tenants. Fast forward to 2012, where the dominant interpretation of Sanger’s work is her critical role in the eugenics movement.  It is rather ironic that her legacy today has been yoked to a discredited ideological movement that hardly accepted her at the time.

So why did the NYHS accept a portrayal of Sanger that depicts her eugenics period as definitive of her life time of advocacy? In today’s popular discourse, Sanger’s historical legacy has been appropriated by opponents of reproductive rights and used as an easy target to defame and discredit the work that has continued in the almost 50 years since Sanger’s death. Embellishing her role within the eugenics movement is a key feature of this agenda. With a single sentence, the NYHS lent its institutional authority to legitimizing this problematic interpretation.  When we asked them, via Twitter, about their curatorial choices, they responded that their exhibit “reveals history’s complexity”. Certainly, history is complex; yet this exhibition piece reveals more about the complexity of the present than that of the past.

Margaret Sanger: Closeted Atheist Marxist? Probably Not.

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apologetics, atheist, birth control, history, marxist

“Sanger was in fact a Marxist, an atheist and a racist with some real enthusiasm for human eugenics.“

– UK Apologetics Margaret Sanger Page

This quote, part of a factually questionable “biography” of Sanger written by Robin A. Brace, makes some interesting claims… interesting, but untrue all the same. We’ve covered the charge of racism before on this blog, but we haven’t touched on Sanger’s supposed Marxism yet, mostly because this claim seems to have been pulled out of thin air.

In her 1922 book, Pivot of Civilization, Sanger makes her feelings about the incompatibility between Marxism and the Birch Control Movement crystal clear:

“No thorough understanding of Birth Control, its aims and purposes, is possible until this confusion has been cleared away and we come to a realization that Birth Control is not merely independent of, but even antagonistic to the Marxist dogma. “

“”Critics have often been puzzled by the tremendous vitality of [Marx’s] work. Its predictions have never, despite the claims of the faithful, been fulfilled. Instead of diminishing, the spirit of nationalism has been intensified tenfold.”

– From the Pivot of Civilization. Chapter VII: Is Revolution the Remedy?

[Full document here.]

Marxists don't wear mink! Margaret Sanger and J. Noah Slee in 1927. Image credit: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

As for the claim that Sanger was an atheist, one who denies the existence of god, it too is untrue. Sanger herself identified as Episcopalian in a 1957 interview with Mike Wallace. She was raised Catholic, married a Jewish man, and eventually joined her second husband, J. Noah Slee, in the Episcopalian Church. She had both of her sons baptized in the Episcopalian faith, a choice that was obviously her own because their father, William Sanger, was Jewish and, thus, would not have advocated for baptism. While it is true that told her son, Grant, that she had “outgrown the need of Church” in a letter written in 1928, she also said in the same letter that she has “no objection to [Grant] joining the church & being confirmed.” [This letter can be found in The Selected Papers of Margraret Sanger: Volume I,  page 474]

When looking at all of this information together, it is certainly fair to assume that Sanger considered herself more spiritual than religious, having eschewed the need for a church. However, nothing that she has said – in early letters, or later interviews – indicates that she was an atheist.

As always, we would like to implore authors like Robin A. Brace to do some research and consider the truth before publishing work like this.

Gandhi and Sanger Debate Love, Lust and Birth Control

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document, feminism, Gandhi, history, margaret sanger, reproductive rights

On November 14th India Today published an excerpt from Tohmas Weber’s book Going Native: Gandhi’s Relationship with Western Women. The excerpt, which talks about a meeting between Gandhi and Margaret Sanger was called Love lust and the Mahatma.

We decided to share some excerpts from Margaret Sanger’s journal about this same visit with Gandhi on the blog today. The rest of this document will be available in The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger: Volume Four.

Sanger on meeting Gandhi for the first time:

“We went directly to his place & met him, tho this is his day of silence. He rose to greet me smiling from ear to ear. I put down my bag & gloves & flowers & magazines in order to take both his hands. He has an ↑inward↓ light that shines in his face! that shines through the flesh! that circles around his head & neck like a mist, with white sails of a ship coming thru. It lasted only a few seconds but it is there. When I looked again it was only the shiney appearance of his flesh that I saw, but always the smile & the smile & a hospitable welcome.”

Sanger described the various foods that they ate on this trip at length in her journal entries. At one point she writes:

“[Gandhi] is experimenting with foods trying to find out the most economical foods for the village people & the most nourishment.  The great majority are living a life of starvation when you ask a villager how things are going, he points to his stomach & says ‘Salub stomach too long empty.’

One ‘full meal’ a day is their ambition.”

In regards to their conversations about sex and contraception:

“To my question Do you believe there is a difference between sex lust & sex love, his answer was “Yes”–“

“At three promptly we went to the Mahatranas house had our talk on the roof. He sat in the burning sunshine with a white cloth over his head we sat in the shade. The arguments were along the same line as the morning but I am convinced his personal experience at the time of his father’s death was so shocking & self blamed that he can never accept sex as anything good clean or wholesome.”

[Gandhi had been having sex with his wife at the time of his father’s death, this is the personal experience that Sanger refers to.]

We also have a transcript of some of their discussion:

MRS. SANGER: Mr. Gandhi, you and I have the interest of humanity at heart but while both of us have that thing in common, you have greater influence with the masses of humanity. I believe no nation can be free until its women have control over the power that is peculiarly theirs, I mean the power of procreation, that powerful force which allowed to run free has messed up the affairs of the world.

I believe that human nature is good in itself. I believe that men and women are essentially good. I believe that uncontrolled breeding has made the world a pretty sorry mess. I’ve read your books. I know your belief in continence and the importance you place upon it. Your influence stretches far beyond India. Your word means something to women in other countries besides India. Even the opposition at home often quotes you in opposing our legislative campaign for birth control. I have an invitation from the All India Women’s Conference to come to their meeting in December as guest speaker but you see it is really only a pretense to come to see you. The real reason I came is to see if we could not agree upon a fundamental principle and some practical means of helping the women of the world.

Women’s lack of control over fecundity results in over-population, in poverty, misery and war. Should women control this force which has made so much trouble in their lives? Have they a right to control the power of procreation? Do you see any practical solution for this problem which in my humble opinion is the direct cause of much of the chaos in the world today?

MR. GANDHI: I suppose you know that all my life I have been dinning into the ears of women the fact that they are their own mistresses, not only in this but in all matters. I began my work with my own wife. While I have abused my wife in many respects, I have tried to be her teacher also. If today she is somewhat literate it is because I became her teacher. I was not the ideal teacher because I was a brute. The animal passion in me was too strong and I could not become the ideal teacher. My wife I made the orbit of all women. In her I studied all women. I came in contact with many European women in South Africa but I knew practically every Indian woman there. I worked with them. I tried to show them they were not slaves either of their husbands or parents, that they had as much right to resist their husbands as their parents, not only in the political field but in the domestic as well. But the trouble was that some would not resist their husbands. I feel that I speak with some confidence and knowledge because I have worked with and talked with and studied many women.

But the remedy is in the hands of the women themselves. The struggle is difficult for them but I do not blame them. I blame the men. Men have legislated against them. Man has regarded woman as his tool. She has learned to be his tool and in the end found it easy and pleasurable to be such, because when one drags another in his fall the descent is easy.

The full transcript is located online in the Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter #23.

The outcome of this meeting is outlined at the end of the India Today article:

“In an article on birth control that appeared in his paper only a few months later, Gandhi reiterated that he would agree to at least consider the rhythm method of birth control, even though he did it reluctantly. Although she had no luck in convincing Gandhi of her position, her lecture tour of India led to the opening of several birth control clinics in the country. When, in 1959, Prime Minister Nehru declared that a large sum of money would go to family planning in India, Margaret Sanger was standing at his side.”

Times-Herald Record on Sanger

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feminism, history, margaret sanger, news, reproductive rights

Allison Berman wrote about Margaret Sanger in an article for the Times-Herald Record last week:

“The Comstock Laws (1873) made disseminating reproductive information through the mail illegal, as was contraceptive usage even for married couples. Women lacked the information and power to make decisions regarding their bodies — be it to procreate or to use “birth control,” a term coined by Margaret Sanger.

Sanger was a pioneer in woman’s reproductive rights, who penned and actively disseminated “Family Limitations,” and who was active in the creation of the first oral contraceptive, which the FDA approved 50 years ago.

“The Pill” is now so universal a medication, it isn’t described by purpose or brand. By 1965, it was the country’s most popular form of reversible birth control, empowering women with the capacity to be responsible for their own bodies.

Women now had options. Some married but delayed childbearing. Others delayed marriage or chose not to marry.”

Read more here!

The First American Birth Control Conference

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arrest, birth control, first birth control conference, free speech, history, police, sanger

Notes and program from the Conference that belonged to Dr. Adolph Meyer, a Swiss Psychiatrist from Johns Hopkins.

This weekend marks the 89th anniversary (November 11th – 13th 1921) of the First American Birth Control Conference, organized by Margaret Sanger. The conference took place at the Plaza Hotel, known as the Hotel Plaza then, in New York City. Over the course of the three day conference prominent scientists, physicians, demographers, and eugenicists, as well as social workers, birth control advocates and socialites gathered to discuss the global ramifications of birth control and its potential to lessen the major social ills of the world. The conference also launched the American Birth Control League (ABCL) to promote birth control through education and lobbying.

In her opening speech at the Conference, Sanger made some interesting points about the importance of exchanging ideas, the diverse perspectives of the crowd, and about the necessity of birth control:

“The idea in calling this Conference was to bring together not our old friends, the advocates of Birth Control, whose worth we know and whose courage has stood the test of opposition; but rather to bring together new people, with other ideas, the people who have been working in social agencies and in other groups for the same results as we, namely a better nation and the banishment of disease, misery, poverty, delinquency and crime.”

“There are two instincts which have ever guided the destiny of mankind. These instincts are hunger and sex. The instinct of hunger has received consideration in practically every civilized country and man has adapted his institutions to meet its needs. But the instinct of sex has been ignored. Not I claim, and most of us who make a study of the subject know, that this instinct is just as deep, just as fundamental, as the instinct of hunger. It cannot be crushed. It cannot be denied. But we must understand it. We will then utilize it, as we utilize music and prayer for out highest powers and for higher illumination.”

“Our definite aim is to repeal the laws so that the medical profession may give women at their request knowledge to prevent conception. We believe that with the assistance of the intelligent members of the community we can bring this about in a very short time, but we need your help. We need your courage. We need you to come out and stand with us on out platform. We also want your guidance, your assistance, your suggestions.”

[Read the full speech here.]

On the last day of the conference Margaret Sanger was arrested alongside Mary Windsor for attempting to prevent police from shutting down the closing event, a public birth control meeting at the Town Hall Theater in Manhattan. The meeting, which was titled “Birth Control – Is It Moral?”  was going to feature a speech by Dr. Karl Reiland, a Rector at Saint George’s Church in New York City followed by a discussion lead by Margaret Sanger and Mr. Harold Cox, a British economist and former Conservative Member of Parliament.

Photo Credit: Town Hall Theater Facebook Page

Police Captain Thomas Donahue ordered the doors to the Town Hall theater locked just minutes before the meeting was to begin. When police were forced to unlock the doors a short time later to let out the crowd that had already gathered in the hall, many outside, including Sanger, burst in.

Sanger quickly took the podium, and when she began to speak, Donahue ordered her arrest. Other activists then sought the stage, and one of them, Mary Winsor, a member of the new ABCL National Council, was also arrested.

They were arrested under charges of disorderly conduct and taken to the 47th Street Police Station, where a riot broke out among the crowd of supporters that followed them there. According to an article in The World: “A great crowd followed the prisoners from the Town Hall when police reserves were called in the clear the hall and marched to the station. Down 43rd street to Broadway, 3,000 strong, they went, singing loudly, ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of No Liberty.’ ” (“Arrest Break Up Town Hall Rally for Birth Control.” November 14th, 1921.)

Both were discharged soon after for lack of evidence. “I consider my arrest,” Sanger said upon leaving the police station, “in violation of every principle of liberty that America stands for, and I shall take this case to the highest courts, if necessary, to preclude the possibility of it ever happening again.”

Click here for a Paper’s Project Newsletter article with more information about the event.