Attitudes to birth control have come a long way since the turn of the century. Early family planning pioneers faced outrage, abuse and jail terms for the crime of giving people information about reproduction and contraception.
One of the most notable pioneers was a woman called Margaret Sanger, a nurse working in the slums of New York. She spoke of her concern for the plight of the poor, burdened with more children than they could possibly afford, her distress when she saw the dozens of women lining up at an illicit clinic on a Saturday night for five-dollar abortions and her despair when, despite her efforts and without the benefit of antibiotics, some died of infection as a result. One case in particular cemented her determination. Sadie Sachs was the mother of three and her husband Jake was a truck driver. Sadie nearly died from septicemia after a self-induced abortion. Sanger and a doctor fought for her for weeks and eventually saved her life.
Sadie apparently asked her doctor for advice on what to do to prevent another pregnancy, and she was advised to tell her husband to sleep on the roof. Sadie died three months later from another septic abortion.
In her search for real solutions, Sanger tried to find out about contraception, but any book with reference to it had been purged from the public libraries by Anthony Comstock, who managed to push a Bill through Congress in 1873 which made it illegal to provide information about contraception. It took a trip to France for her to gather the information she needed. Defying the law, Sanger opened America’s first family planning clinic in Brooklyn in 1916 but it was shut down by the police and the vice squad jailed her. Several arrests later she managed to get the law changed so that doctors could make contraceptive information available.
In Britain the charge was led by Marie Stopes, a scientist and author who was the first woman to join the scientific staff of Manchester University. Stopes first became interested in marriage and relationship issues after her first marriage in 1911. She knew there was something very wrong with her relationship but was not sure what was missing. Researching in the British Museum, she realized that after six months she was still a virgin. She wrote a book to help others avoid the same ignorance. She had met Margaret Sanger and with the same goals in mind she founded the Mothers’ Clinic for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress. Fortunately for her, and for the British population, the London police turned a blind eye to the clinic and despite outrage from medical, political and religious groups her work continued.
Charles Knowlton was an American physician who published a book in 1832, Fruits of Philosophy: or a Private Companion of Young Married People, that gave advice on contraception. Sounds harmless enough, but when it was published he was sentenced to three months hard labor.
Without the uncompromising commitment of people like these, we would still be in the dark ages of sexual ignorance and desperation. Birth control has come a long way and information and contraceptive methods are available in most developed countries to those who choose to use them.
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