ந

Margaret Sanger: Women's Rights Pioneer

By Linda Wemer

Margaret Sanger coined the phrase "birth control" and today it is practically synonymous with her name. To her, birth control meant regulation, planning, the prevention of unwanted conception. This idea of control and planning has remained the basic principle of the national and international Planned Parenthood movements which have developed under her guidance and leadership.

When Margaret Sanger started her crusade in 1914, federal, state and local laws were all arrayed against her. She was jailed eight times. The medical profession denounced her, the churches excoriated her, the press condemned her and even liberal reformers shunned her. She entered the fight alone, without much education, with no financial or social backing, with nothing but conviction.

Sanger began her campaign primarily from the viewpoint of the need for birth control for the physical and mental well-being of the woman and family. However, she soon saw the world-wide significance of fertility control for the social and economic well-being of humanity, and for the stability and peace of the world.

In her vision of the revolutionary impact of birth control, Margaret Sanger predicted a "new woman" who would gain "the greatest possible fulfillment of her desires upon the highest plane." She wanted fulfillment for women-not just in creative energy and careers, but in love and sex. With this blueprint, Sanger was the precursor of the contemporary women's rights movement.

Her winning strategy was to secure new interpretations of existing laws. These legal changes helped lead to birth control instruction in clinics, hospitals and health services. She was able to carry her message around the globe through extensive lecture tours. She organized world population conferences and helped create the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

In 1900, Margaret chose to enter nursing, one of the few professions then open to women. She started as a nurse-probationer, specializing in midwifery, at a hospital in White Plains, New York, where she was to serve a trial period to be judged for her suitability for nursing school. Margaret was accepted to nursing school in 1902, but did not complete her training because of her marriage to architect William Sanger that same year.

I wasn't long before Margaret Sanger became restless with her new life of domesticity. After the birth of her third child in 1911, the Sanger family moved to New York City. Here Margaret's and Bill's socialist and anarchist activities began. They met fellow anarchists Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, of the International Workers of the World (IWW), and became involved in the many factory strikes initiated by this organization.

Margaret Sanger was appalled by the misery of the wives and children of the strikers. The prospect of higher wages for the strikers offered some hope to these women, but gnawing fear of pregnancy and dim awareness that wages would not be adequate unless. family size could be. controlled were everpresent sources of anxiety.

Two specific experiences-a brush with the Comstock Laws and an abortion tragedy--helped Margaret find her unique mission as a reformer. By 1912, as an established writer and speaker in socialist circles, her articles on female sexuality were published in The Call, New York's socialist daily. The series ran for a short time when the Post Office ruled that an article on syphilis was unmailable under the Comstock Act.

The Comstock Law of 1873 was initiated by An-

Page 6/What She Wants/April 1981. sz

thony Comstock, head of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. The main thrust of the act made it a criminal offense not only to import, mail or transport in interstate commerce "any obscene literature," but made it equally criminal to import, mail or transport in interstate commerce "any article of medicine for the prevention of conception or for causing abortion." Not even doctors could exchange such knowledge among themselves.

After the suppression of her articles, Margaret's enthusiasm for the IWW and The Call soon faded. A midwife once again, Margaret worked extensively for the Visiting Nurses Association of the lower East Side.

On a hot summer afternoon in 1912, Margaret was hastily summoned to the fetid room of a woman named Sadie Sachs, 27 and pregnant with her fourth child; she had tried to abort herself and was hemorrhaging badly. Margaret Sanger spent three weeks of backbreaking work in the heat of the tenement, with Mrs. Sachs begging her to explain how to prevent another pregnancy. The only advice her doctor had given her was, "Tell Jake (her husband) to sleep on the roof." Margaret was very distraught by this incident. She described her feelings in her autobiography:

...Night after night the wistful image of Mrs. Sachs appeared before me. I made all sorts of excuses to myself for not going back. I was busy on other cases. I really did not know what to say to her or how to convince her of ignorance; I was felpless to avert such monstrous atrocities. Time rolled by and I did nothing....

Several months later Sanger was called back to the Sachs apartment to find Sadie in a coma following

Women will not be free until we can control our means of reproduction...

Diane Schuller/Milwaukee

another abortion attempt. She died within minutes of Margaret's arrival. It was then Margaret decided to devote her time to birth control.

While on a trip to Paris in 1913, Margaret learned of several contraceptive techniques used by women. there. She learned that French women had longknown about certain chemicals which slowed the passage of the sperm after it entered the vagina. Many pharmacists were making and selling these chemicals in a suppositoryform. Margaret also

▾

learned of the diaphragm, a rubber contraceptive that fitted over the neck of the uterus.

'

Upon her return to America, Sanger believed her first task was to raise the consciousness of working women so they would support her demand for free dissemination of birth control information. In March 1914, she published the first issue of The Woman Rebel, which devoted much of its space to calls for autonomy for women. Subscriptions rapidly increased as more women became aware of Rebel. Letters came from all over the world asking for information on contraception. Margaret therefore prepared Family Limitations, a pamphlet providing detailed contraceptive information. The federal government indicted Sanger for violating the federal law against mailing obscene material. Facing a possible 45 years in prison, she left for Europe in October 1914.

Margaret Sanger's year of exile in Europe was a very influential period in her career. There she met Havelock Ellis, who questioned almost every facet of Victorian sexual morality. Margaret was impressed with Ellis, and they became lovers and soulmates. Ellis encouraged her to stop scattering her energies and concentrate on one cause. That cause, he said, should be neither socialism nor anarchism; it should be birth control, a cause she was far more likely to win.

While in Europe she travelled to Holland, which Ellis told her had the most advanced methods of birth control in the world. Dutch women, like those in Paris, were using the diaphragm.

When Sanger returned to the United States in 1916, she found that her case had been widely publicized. The government had been sharply criticized for the indictments against her. Not wanting to create further adverse publicity, the government decided not to prosecute. Now Sanger was prepared to open her first birth control clinic.

Her first step was to mobilize friends, money and organized support. In early 1916, she began a lecture tour in Pittsburgh and moved westward, staying in each city for a few days after her speech to organize local fundraising and enlist the aid of key people. Her lectures were not always successful. In fact, some that were. scheduled never even took place. When she arrived in St. Louis, she found the lecture hall locked. The Post Dispatch explained that "protests from Catholic priests and laymen resulted in an announcement by the management that Mrs. Sanger would not be permitted to speak." This was the first time the Catholic Church had openly used this kind of pressure against her. In a way she welcomed it, for every time her opponents illegally stopped her, they helped her cause. Large numbers of new supporters would be sure to demand the free speech guaranteed by the Constitution.

When she returned to New York, Sanger found letters from thousands of mothers waiting for her reply on effective birth control. Pamphlets alone could do little for these women. Margaret realized the only answer was a chain of clinics to which women could go and be fitted with diaphragms. Starting a clinic would be difficult. Two laws on birth control existed in New York which were very unclear. Section 1142 of the Penal Code declared that no one could give contraceptive advice to anyone for any reason. Section 1145 allowed doctors to give advice for the cure or prevention of disease. This law was interpreted to mean that condoms could be given to men for the prevention of venereal disease while consorting with prostitutes, but not as birth control devices when consorting with their wives.

Sanger decided to test the ambiguity of these two laws. On October 16, 1916, with her sister Ethel, she

IN

(continued on page 10)

}