Women's Rights - Part One

Birth Control Movement

Effects of Multiple Births

In a study by the University of Texas, they found women who have four or more children double their risk of heart disease. The body carries lasting effects of pregnancy. Doctors warn that as the number of births increases, so does the potential harm to the mother – and the child. Doctors worry these women may bleed to death after delivery or lose the child due to the damage done by multiple previous pregnancies.

Contraception as a Sin

Contraception was considered a sin by the Catholic Church. In the early 20th century, Catholic Irish and Catholic Italians swept into New England. The Pope and Catholic doctrine teaches that sex was created by God for the purposes of having children. They argued that contraception is unnatural and immoral. In the bible of a man named Onan who, when asked to impregnate his dead brothers wife, doesn't and gets struck down dead by God. Most Catholics therefore didn't take precautions and simply had child after child even if they couldn't look after them or afford them or want them. The average woman had 7 children in 1900. That means for every woman that didn't have children, someone else had 14.

Comstock Laws - 1873

Concerned about public decency and family values, politicians sought to make America more modest. The government made it illegal for:

Every obscene, lewd, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other publication of an indecent character, and every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception. Any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception shall be fined not less than fifty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days nor more than one year or be both fined and imprisoned."

This meant the postal service would go through your mail and confiscate your birth control and even love letters between couples.

Margaret Sanger - (1914-1966)

Margaret Sanger grew up in a devout Catholic household. She was one of 11 children, resulting from her mother's 18 pregnancies. Her mother died age 49. This was common at the time for three reasons. Firstly, it was seen as a woman's purpose. It was believed that woman without children wasn't fulfilling her purpose. This was fed by the Catholic teaching that sexual relations without the goal of creating a child was sinful. Therefore, an attempt at trying to prevent pregnancy was immoral. Thirdly, if you wanted 4 children, you'd often have to bear 8 pregnancies because children often died young.

Margaret Sanger married and had three children and worked as a nurse. One day, their family home burned down and the five of them moved to the slums of New York. While there she experienced the struggles of working class women and children. Many of whom were Irish and Italian Catholics.

Sanger's political interests, her emerging feminism and her nursing experience all led her to write two series of columns on sex education which were titled "What Every Mother Should Know" and "What Every Girl Should Know" By the standards of the day, Sanger's articles were extremely frank in their discussion of sexuality, and many readers were outraged by them.

During her work among working-class immigrant women, Sanger met many women who underwent frequent gruesome medical difficulties having children. Margaret Sanger wanted to educate more women and help them avoid horrific outcomes. Seeking to help these women, Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to find information on contraception. 

Access to contraceptive information was prohibited on grounds of obscenity by the 1873 federal Comstock law and a host of state laws.

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https://youtu.be/CrkrkSiFApA?si=ygOUcLHwHfSr2pjl
Sanger vs Catholic Church

Birth control was more relaxed in parts of Europe. So Sanger illegally smuggled supplies into the country. She opened the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn. It was open only 9 days before she was arrested. She was arrested for distributing contraceptives, something that was illegal at the time. She was taken to court and sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse. However, it was talked about by everyone and as a result, a judge declared that married couples could use contraception.

Right to Birth Control

She declared the right to birth control. Many believed sex should only be for having children. 1 Corinthians 7 "Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” In Genesis 38:8-10, God kills a man for having sex but not impregnating a woman.

Along with the fame that Sanger had gained, she received a lot of financial supporters. She founded the American Birth Control League and their founding principal was:

"We hold that children should be (1) Conceived in love; (2) Born of the mother's conscious desire; (3) And only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of health. Therefore we hold that every woman must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception except when these conditions can be satisfied."

A few years later, contraception would be made legal for medical reasons. People who were high risk of dying were allowed to prevent pregnancies.

The wealthier classes pushed for birth control more effectively. John D Rockefeller made large donations to Sanger's cause. Historically, wealthier people had private doctors and more confidentiality. Many wealthy men would have mistresses they'd sleep with in order to prevent having more children with their wife. Victoria Woodhull had earlier called out the hypocrisy. If a man had a mistress, it was men being men. If a woman did, it was a great shame and great sin.

In Boston in 1929, city officials under the leadership of James Curley threatened to arrest her if she spoke. In response she stood on stage, silent, with a gag over her mouth, while her speech was read by another person.

She spoke to the women's KKK and worked with African American leaders.

Many believed that birth control was the escape from slavery. Black social workers asked Sanger to open a clinic in Harlem. She hired black nurses, doctors and pastors. She was also supported by W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr.

Griswold vs Connecticut

In 1961, a doctor was convicted as accessories for giving married persons information and medical advice on how to prevent conception and, following examination, prescribing a contraceptive device or material for the wife's use. A Connecticut law makes it a crime for any person to use any drug or article to prevent conception.

Privacy. Government has no right to tell people what they could do within their marriages.

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Just for Married Couples.

In 1972, a man was arrested for handing out condoms. In Massachusetts at the time contraceptives could be distributed only by registered doctors or pharmacists, and only to married persons.

The case got taken to the Supreme Court and they ruled in favor, 6-1. "If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child."