Margaret Sanger (continued from page 11)

had come to the Bureau, 1,434 had admitted to regularly aborting themselves; one woman had done this forty times.

A major development in contraception occurred in 1925, when J. Noah Slee financed the founding of the Holland Rantos Company by Herbert Simonds. Simonds, an engineer and plastics manufacturer, was able to manufacture a more inexpensive and reliable spermicidal jelly. Once Holland Rantos showed that contraceptives could be profitably manufactured and ethically retailed through the medical profession, many other established pharmaceutical houses entered the business.

Although a few physicians endorsed her cause after her first international conference, Sanger was met by strong resistance from many doctors, who felt that their efforts to achieve respectability would be jeopardized if they endorsed the contraceptives being offered by a laywoman. In 1927, Sanger decided to hold another, much larger international conference in hopes of gaining the much needed support of the medical profession. She chose Geneva as the site because it was the home of the League of Nations; she felt that if the League were impressed, it would take over the international work.

The conference was considered a success with a number of doctors speaking out on the need for birth control. However, the delegates from the League of Nations were not impressed, and many American doctors still violently opposed her birth control methods as "foreign contraceptives that were filthy, untested and unsafe." They were also very much against her Family Limitation pamphlet, and its discussion of the diaphragm and jelly.

Nevertheless in 1929, influential physicians found themselves coming to the support of the Clinical Research Bureau when it was raided on charges of violating Section 1142 at the instigation of the Catholic Church, as a means to obtain names of Catholic women attending the clinic. Arrests were carried out with extreme brutality, and police seized complete patient histories and files containing names and addresses of patients. The seizure of medical records was denounced by the New York Academy of Medicine. However, as late as the 1930's, the American Medical Association stated regarding birth control that "We do not know of any effective method except complete abstinence." Not until the infamous United States v. One Package case come to trial in 1935 did the AMA begin openly to support the idea of birth control.

In 1930, the United States Circuit Court of Appeals commented on the Comstock Act:

The Comstock Law must not be assumed to have been designed to interfere with serious instruction regarding sex matters unless the terms in which the information is conveyed is clearly indecent.

As a result of this ruling, articles in medical journals now were able to circulate without interference. Condoms were readily available for sale, on the premise that they be used for the cure or prevention of disease." The main block was U.S. Customs, which still seized female contraceptives upon importation.

A prominent lawyer and advocate of birth control, Morris Ernst, decided it was time to take actionagainst this final stumbling block by arranging for a package of diaphragms to be imported to the United States and conveniently seized by customs officials. When they arrived, he asked the officials not to destroy them, but to hold them until he could take the case to court.

In United States v. One Package, Judge Learned Hand ruled that although the language of the Com stock Act was uncompromising, if Congress had had available in 1873 the clinical data on the danger of

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pregnancy and the usefulness of contraceptive practice available in 1936, birth control would not have been classified as an obscenity. While Judge Hand's decision opened the mails to contraceptive materials intended for physicians, not until 1971 could the individual citizen bring such devices into the country for personal use.

For a decade after the One Package victory, Sanger temporarily retired from her leadership role to devote more time to her husband, who died in 1943. She re-emerged after World War II to play a key role in the establishment of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Despite having suffered a severe heart attack in 1949 and having developed an addiction to the pain killer Demerol, Sanger succesfully campaigned for birth control in two over-populated countries, Japan and India, in 1952.

Finally, in 1954, Sanger embarked on another project, helping to raise funds for research on what was simply called "the Pill." Her efforts at last put a nearly foolproof contraceptive into women's hands.

In June 1962, a physician declared Sanger senile, with advanced arteriosclerosis of the brain. She died quietly of leukemia on September 6, 1966, just short of her 87th birthday.

Editorial (continued from page 7)

When sectors of U.S. business are slow to achieve this equality of opportunity promised by both the "American dream" and U.S. law, it is up to the owners of the business to encourage the managers to bring operations intofull compliance with the norms of our society.

This is similar to other actions taken by religious activist groups who have questioned the ethics of corporations they own in part through stock holdings. While this tactic will not turn around corporate policy overnight, corporations are somewhat susceptible to pressures that could lead to tarnished images and the possibility of decreasing profits.

The CWW campaign against National City Bank will continue on Monday, April 20, at noon in front of the National City Bank Building. CWW's "Annual Meeting of Office Workers" will highlight problems working women face in the banking industry and coincide with the NCB annual shareholders' meeting where the United Church Board's resolution will be introduced.

Moral Majority (continued from page 4) a long way from being able to unite around common concerns with these activists, even though most are

women,

What worries me is the fact that, as the country heads into an era of greater political polarization than we have known since perhaps the 1950's, the abortion issue has the potential to divide those of us who do agree on most matters, who regard ourselves as feminist, left or progressive.

Those among us who, in good conscience, oppose abortion seem unable to see past moral concerns to the vital facts of who is behind the anti-abortion ¡ movement and how they are using it.

Others, who are working on issues not directly related to abortion rights,, perceive the power that... anti-choice forces clearly wield, and although sympathetic to the pro-choice movement, hesitate to ally themselves with pro-choice groups for fear of alienating potential adherents to their own causes.

We need to avoid the trap of single-issue politics, and 'recognize that even more is at stake than the right of women to control their lives through reproductive, choice. As the organized right clearly. intends, the loss of abortion rights would set a precedent leading to the loss of other rights for women,

workers and minorities.