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

Tags

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.

The Early Birth Control Movement and Consent: Marriage Means Yes?

Tags

feminism, reproductive rights

The Fight for Birth Control, one of Sanger’s many pamphlets, was published in 1916.

During my time at the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, I have had the pleasure of reading a variety of texts written by or about Margaret Sanger. Often, the most surprising aspect of reading these texts is the underlying ideology that is revealed. Louis Althusser teaches us that an ideology is a way of thinking that permeates our society so completely, that it simply becomes “the way it is.” By championing for access to birth control, Sanger certainly challenged the ideology that having more children than one can handle is an inevitable part of life. However, looking back from our contemporary vantage point, it is clear that Sanger was at the very beginning of a fight against multiple harmful ideologies, some of which persisted even after Sanger’s death.

One of these ideologies is revealed in the language that Sanger and her contemporaries use to discuss birth control and marriage: the assumption that a woman must submit to her husband’s sexual desires. This topic is rarely discussed in a straightforward manner, but some documents attempt to grapple with it in some form.  For example, Sanger “and other early advocates made it clear that men could not be trusted when it came to contraception and were, generally, unwilling to sacrifice any degree of pleasure.” In fact, in a pamphlet entitled Dutch Methods of Birth Control, Sanger even goes as far as to publish a description by a Dutch writer about how to slip a condom on to one’s drunk husband  in the event that one is forced to have sex with him:

When the husband is drunk, and his wife, fearing that a miserable child will be born, has not other preventative at hand, she can perhaps apply the French Letter as if caressing him, when he does not know what he is doing. At all events, she should always take care that one or two French Letters be ready for use.

To a contemporary reader, the implications of this passage can be alarming, as there seems to be no concept of consent. After my initial reading of this passage, it looked as though Sanger and her contemporaries focused on helping women gain agency over their bodies because they saw this approach as being more fruitful than holding men accountable for their actions. To some extent, women felt the need to arm themselves against their husbands. To better understand this, I looked into the etymology of consent on the Oxford English Dictionary. The first reference to sexual consent appears in the early 1800s, with regards to the age of consent, or the age at which people can agree to marriage and sexual intercourse. What is striking about this discovery is the way in which consent was inherently linked to marriage. Thus, the ideology that marriage was a 24/7 consent pass does not come as a surprise.

This protester’s sign shows us that we have come a long way in terms of consent.

In the United States, marital rape was exempted from rape laws until the mid-1970s because of the belief that men were entitled to have sex with their wives whenever they wanted. This marital rape exemption was not eradicated from every state until 1993. To this day, a number of states have more lenient penalties for marital rape. 

With this in mind, we can see that Sanger was battling centuries of patriarchal ideology when she said that “no woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.” Although the language of sexual consent did not exist in Sanger’s time as it does now, Sanger certainly broached the topic in her own way. She often spoke of the importance of open communication in order to maintain a healthy and happy marriage, especially when it came to sex. In “What Margaret Sanger Thinks About Marriage,” she writes:

For marriage built on the shifting sands of fear, shame and ignorance can never lead to happiness, yet if contracted with a frank recognition of the central importance of the beauty of sex in life, alike in its physiological, psychological and spiritual aspects, happiness becomes a glowing possibility. This is a buried treasure to be unearthed by true lovers. It may be imbedded in the rich soil of mutual respect and consideration.

Thus, although Sanger did not talk about consent in the same way that we do now, she preached the importance of mutual respect and understanding, which are ultimately the foundation for consent as we understand it today.

Paired with Sanger’s insistence in a woman’s right to her own body, this emphasis on healthy relationships allowed us to reach a point where yes means yes and no means no, regardless of the circumstances.

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Further reading:

• Margaret Sanger, “A Parents’ Problem or Woman’s?,” March 1919
• Margaret Sanger, “Introduction to Dutch Methods of Birth Control,” Mar./Apr. 1915. 
• Margaret Sanger, “What Margaret Sanger Thinks About Marriage,” Mar. 1928.
  
• Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter, “The Lowly Condom–Sanger’s Missed Opportunity?,” 1997
• Jill Elaine Hasday, “Contest and Consent: A Legal History of Marital Rape,” Oct. 2000.
• Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” 1970. 

Sanger Slept (Spoke) Here – Hotel Paso de Norte, El Paso, Texas (February 1937)

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Beth Mary Goetting, clinics, El Paso, history, margaret sanger, reproductive rights

Hotel Paso del Norte (Camino Real El Paso Hotel)

photo source: Wikipedia

In February of 1937, Margaret Sanger was invited to speak at the Hotel Hilton in El Paso,Texas to celebrate the opening of the El Paso Mother’s Health Center (which would later become the El Paso Planned Parenthood). However, due to pressure from local Catholic groups, the event was moved to the Hotel Paso del Norte. The event was hosted by Health Center Chairman, Beth Mary Goetting and the Birth Control Clinic Committee.

Sanger spoke in front of some 350 El Pasoans including a number of local clergy and doctors. She expressed the hope that clinics would be established both on El Paso’s north and south sides. Clinic equipment and supplies were provided by the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau.

El Paso people are the first to take advantage of the December 7, United States Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that physicians might send contraceptives by mail – an act considered hitherto illegal…Now doctors need not fear a $500 fine, or five years in the penitentiary for administering a simple, scientific preventive to a woman who is not able to bear a child.

On February 9, 1938, Sanger wrote to Ms. Goetting commending the center:

I am particularly proud of the fine work being done in El Paso and I feel that your group has much to offer to others interested in advancing the birth control cause in Texas.

From 1937 – 1938, the clinic served over 600 patients.  By the time of it’s closure in 2010, the clinic was serving more than 10,000 local women providing prenatal and postnatal information and healthcare including affordable HIV/AIDS testing.

The Hotel Paso del Norte is a historic hotel located less than one mile north from the United States-Mexico border. The hotel, designed by Trost & Trost, was opened in 1912. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, the hotel was extensively remodeled in 2004 and renamed the Camino Real El Paso Hotel.

For more info on Planned Parenthood of El Paso: https://sangerpapers.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/planned-parenthood-of-el-paso/

For more info on the development of the birth control movement in Texas: https://sangerpapers.wordpress.com/tag/texas/

All quotes from documents accessed through the MSPP’s Microfilm Files.

Click here for our map of Sanger’s travels.

Address at the Hotel Brevoort, January 17, 1916

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1916, birth control, brevoort hotel, Brooklyn, Brownsville clinic, margaret sanger, reproductive rights, speeches, Woman Rebel

There is never an easy path to becoming a national icon, and Margaret Sanger’s was no different.  While many would say that “no press is bad press,” it was probably not in Sanger’s best interests to be jailed just as her birth control movement was taking shape.  While her famous monthly, Woman Rebel, was first published in March of 1914 and was then banned from public mailing, her trial concerning the publication was continuously postponed until January of 1916.  The day before her trial, a large crowd of people was privileged enough to hear Sanger deliver a short but powerful speech at the Hotel Brevoort.

A 1954 photo of the Brevoort Hotel shortly before its demolition.

Once a farm property, the Hotel Brevoort was erected in 1845 across from the Brevoort family mansion.  In business for over 100 years, the hotel was home to many colorful people, including “Congressmen, Senators, Mexican and Turkish heads of state, past U.S. presidents, army generals, and even Prince Arthur”.  Even Mark Twain, who lived nearby the hotel, frequented its barber shop run by long-time barber Henri Grechen.

Sanger gave her speech at a dinner held in her support.  Although the speech was short, it had a powerful impact on the hundreds of people, men and women, who came to show their support for the original Woman Rebel.  It had the air of a proud woman, ready to become a martyr for her cause as a way of extending her voice to those she had not yet reached in her travels.  She praises her supporters, saying that “all our great and modern thinkers have advocated it!  It is an idea that must appeal to any mature intelligence”², placing them on a pedestal of higher society.  Sanger understood that some of her audience members did not fully agree with the method she was using to spread the information of safe birth control, and addressed this in her address:

I know that physicians and scientists have a great technical fund of information–greater than I had on the subject of family limitation – Margaret Sanger, Hotel Brevoort Speech

and goes on to ask her audience members to carry on her work in the way they saw fit.  Not because, I believe, she anticipated never returning from prison or exile, but because she wished, upon her eminent return, that there would still be a movement in the United States fighting for the freedom and safety of women’s bodies.

In the end, the government dropped the charges against Sanger.  The death of her daughter, Peggy, just a few weeks before her trial date led prosecutors to believe that jailing Sanger would brand her as martyr, and decided to avoid the bad press that came with prosecuting a grieving mother.  By not being jailed, Sanger was able to start a birth control clinic in October of 1916 in Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States.  Sanger was jailed for 30 days for opening the clinic, but her jailing led to a court ruling in the reformation of the law that prohibited the dispensing of contraceptive information, and restricted it to allow professional doctors to become legal distributers.  This culminated in Sanger opening the first legal birth control clinic in 1923 at 104, 5^th Avenue, and the beginning of mass distribution of information to women in need of a family planning strategy.

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The complete Hotel Brevoort Speech:

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=128167.xml

New York Times on the Hotel Brevoort Speech:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50D10FD3B5B17738DDDA10994D9405B868DF1D3

History of the Hotel Brevoort:

http://westviewnews.org/2012/07/brevoort-in-the-village/

Birth Control Review: A communication tactic

Tags

birth control, Birth Control Review, Censorship, margret sanger, reproductive rights, women

Margaret Sanger began publishing the Birth Control Review in 1917 as a means to help build a birth control movement. By 1921 the monthly journal had become the official organ of the American Birth Control League, and included news of birth control activities, articles by scholars, activists, and writers on birth control, and reviews of books and other publications. The Review even included art and fiction in the form of cartoons, poetry and short stories.

Karla K. Gower and Vanessa Murphree recently published “Making Birth Control Respectable” in American Journalism, an article that looked at underlying messages about eugenics and Neo-Malthusianism (overpopulation) found in the Review.

To understand how eugenics and population were treated by the Review,  it is important to understand the context in which the journal appeared. Gower and Murprhee argue that the topic of birth control was not publicly acceptable in the 1920s. Anything that related to reproduction was thought to belong in the private sphere. Public discussion of such matters made people uncomfortable. The Gower and Murphree argue that women were “relegated to the home” and were expected to uphold the virtues of the cult of domesticity–piety, purity, submission and domesticity.[1] Thus, birth control was seen as taboo.

Mailing information about birth control was also illegal, thanks to the 1873 Comstock Act, which made it a federal offense to send information about contraceptives in the mail.  The Comstock Act also inspired states to further criminalize birth control.  Gower and Murphree indicated that fourteen states prohibited the verbal transmission of information about contraception or abortion, while eleven others made possession of instructions for the prevention of pregnancy a criminal offense.[2]

Page of the Morning Oregonian, published in June 1916. “Censorship is Attacked.”

But this did not stop Sanger and the American Birth Control League from mailing out the Review, though it probably had some impact the kinds of material the journal published.  The main goal of the Review was to secure public support for birth control, to attract the support of doctors, legislators, academics, and the middle class and wealthy society women who formed the backbone of local birth control leagues.

This is where the undertones of eugenics and Neo-Malthusianism come in.

Sanger understood that there needed to be political accommodation in order to publish material on birth control. The Comstock Act, along with similar state laws, still existed. So Sanger and her supporters had to find a way to disseminate the information that they needed to without engaging in a full on battle with the law.

The answer lay in appealing to a greater audience and breaking their belief that birth control was a taboo. This audience was the white middle and upper classes.

But why would the BCR want to reach these classes? Were not most of the writings concerned with the impoverished classes, the women who could not afford to have undesired children?

In Sanger’s autobiography, My Fight for Birth Control, she writes:

The answer was to make the club women, the women of wealth and intelligence, use their power and money and influence to obtain freedom and knowledge for the women of the poor. The women of leisure must listen. The women of wealth must give. The women of influence must protest.

(p. 191)

(For more on this subject see, “Women of Wealth and Influence.”)

Sanger concluded that although it was working class women who needed the most aid, it was the “club women” who would have the necessary influence and resources to promote the birth control movement.

Although the article demonstrates that the subject of eugenics in the BCR was a matter of tactic, it is important to note that
for Sanger, eugenics wasn’t just a strategy.

Eugenic theory developed in the United States during the early twentieth century. Individuals, including Margaret Sanger, believed that there were certain ways to promote a healthier population. Sanger, in particular, established ideas on when women should avoid giving birth. These ideas included women being at least 22 years old so that she can “attain a ripe physical and mental development” and when she is working since “society remains indifferent to the needs of her offspring and forces them to toil in mills and factories.

(Vol. 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928, p.243-244)

The BCR was a magazine serving as a publication to discuss the justifications of birth control.[3] The upper class readers of these stories would have emotional reactions to reading the unfortunate stories and letters of poor women.[4]

By speaking to this audience, the topic of birth control would be public and legal with social changes could come to fruition.

What this audience tended to want to  hear during this time were discussions on eugenics and Neo-Malthusianism.

These topics concerned the strengthening of gene pools and the controlling of overpopulation, respectively. More importantly, the supporters of both were concerned with quality over quantity.[5]

Does this sound familiar?

Quite. Think about the BCR and the birth control movement in general. The primary goals included decreasing the number of undesired births in poorer populations in order to improve the quality of life for the poorer families.

Now, Sanger and the BCR editors had to be careful about using eugenics to further promote birth control in the public sphere. The idea was not to make greater white middle and upper class families, rather, the intersection of these movements was to support the idea to ensure that families had the right to control the size of their family and that women had the right to control their bodies.[6]

The following excerpt describes the general perspective on eugenics in the birth  control movement:

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.

(Eugenics Archive)

(For more on eugenics in the birth control movement see, “Birth Control and Eugenics: Uneasy Bedfellows?”)

The conclusion of this intersection, in the perspective of the BCR, was that the access to knowledge about contraceptives and effective family spacing would give women the ability to “eliminate the unfit [population].”[7]

Cover of the BCR published in February 1926. Slogan, “Fewer Children Better Born,” suggests that birth control would lead to a healthier population.

In addition to addressing the question of  increasing an “unfit” population, there was the question of overpopulation.

Neo-Malthusians supported using scientific advancement, in this case birth control, to impede the growing world population as it was assumed to be constrained by inadequate food production.

Sanger, after hearing a speech given by Frank Vanderlip concerning the growing population of Europe and their possible reliance on American food sources, saw the potential in incorporating this argument in the birth control movement.[8]

Though Murphree and Gower emphasize that the inclusion of Neo-Malthusian ideals was a way to reach a broader range of supporters, it is important to understand that Margaret Sanger’s ideas had been influenced by the Neo-Maltusian movement. In 1914, Sanger found herself in England being introduced to the leaders of the Malthusian League. This is where she first learned of the advocacy for using artificial contraception to control population growth. The League’s program gave Sanger new arguments that would increase the appeal of the legalization of birth control
(Vol 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928, p. 94.)

So you see? Both the incorporation of eugenics and neo-Malthusian ideas were also communication tactics!

Sanger effectively used the appeal of the eugenics and overpopulation movements to further the birth control movement.

What was the BCR able to communicate with these associations?

Everything converged to demonstrate that birth control would give women the liberty to control their bodies and therefore, control the number of children they had. This would naturally lead to a healthier population.

Everyone would hopefully be content.

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[1] Gower, Karla K. & Vanessa Murphree. “Making Birth Control Respectable.” American Journalism 30,2 (2013) : 213.

[2]McFarlane, Deborah & Kenneth J. Meier. The Politics of Fertility Control. New York: Seven Bridges, 2001, 30.

[3] Gower, Karla K. & Vanessa Murphree. “Making Birth Control Respectable.” American Journalism 30,2 (2013) : 219.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 227.

[6]Birth Control Review, June 125, front cover.

[7] “Birth Control the True Eugenics–Mothers Who Refuse to Bear Unfit Children,” Birth Control Review, August 1926, 248.

[8] Gower, Karla K. & Vanessa Murphree. “Making Birth Control Respectable.” American Journalism 30,2 (2013) : 233.