Woman and the New Race by Margaret Sanger

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Subversion of the sex urge to ulterior purposes has dragged it to the
level of the gutter. Recognition of its true nature and purpose must
lift the race to spiritual freedom. Out of our growing knowledge we
are evolving new and saner ideas of life in general. Out of our
increasing sex knowledge we shall evolve new ideals of sex. These
ideals will spring from the innermost needs of women. They will serve
these needs and express them. They will be the foundation of a moral
code that will tend to make fruitful the impulse which is the source,
the soul and the crowning glory of our sexual natures.

When women have raised the standards of sex ideals and purged the
human mind of its unclean conception of sex, the fountain of the race
will have been cleansed. Mothers will bring forth, in purity and in
joy, a race that is morally and spiritually free.

CHAPTER XV

LEGISLATING WOMAN'S MORALS

One of the important duties before those women who are demanding birth
control as a means to a New Race is the changing of our so-called
obscenity laws. This will be no easy undertaking; it is usually much
easier to enact statutes than to revise them. Laws are seldom exactly
what they seem, rarely what their advocates claim for them. The
"obscenity" statutes are particularly deceptive.

Enacted, avowedly, to protect society against the obscene and the
lewd, they make no distinction between the scientific works of human
emancipators like Forel and Ellis and printed matter such as they are
ostensibly aimed at. Naturally enough, then, detectives and
narrow-minded judges and prosecutors who would chuckle over pictures that
would make a clean-minded woman shudder, unite to suppress the
scientific works and the birth-control treatises which would enable
men and women to attain higher physical, mental, moral and spiritual
standards.

Woman, bent upon her freedom and seeking to make a better world, will
not permit the indecent and unclean forces of reaction to mask
themselves forever behind the plea that it is necessary to keep her in
ignorance to preserve her purity. In the birth-control movement, she
has already begun to fight for her right to have, without legal
interference, all knowledge pertaining to her sex nature. This is the
third and most important of the epoch-making battles for general
liberty upon American soil. It is most important because it is to
purify the very fountain of the race and make the race completely
free.

The first and most dramatic of the three great struggles for liberty
reached its apex, as we know, in the American Revolution. It had for
its object the right to hold such political beliefs as one might
choose, and to act in accordance with those beliefs. If this political
freedom is now lost to us, it is because we did not hold strongly
enough to those liberties fought for by our forefathers.

Nearly a hundred years after the Revolution the battle for religious
liberty came to a climax in the career of Robert G. Ingersoll. His
championship of the much vaunted and little exercised freedom of
religious opinion swept the blasphemy laws into the lumber room of
outworn tyrannies. Those yet remaining upon the statute books are
invoked but rarely, and then the effort to enforce them is ridiculous.

Within a few years the tragic combination of false moral standards and
infamous obscenity laws will be as ridiculous in the public mind as
are the now all but forgotten blasphemy laws. If the obscenity laws
are not radically revised or repealed, few reactionaries will dare to
face the public derision that will greet their attempts to use them to
stay woman's progress.

The French have a saying concerning "mort main"--the dead hand. This
hand of the past reaches up into the present to smother the rising
flame of modern ideals, to reforge our chains when we have broken
them, to arrest progress. It is the hand of such as have lived on
earth but have not loved humanity. At the call of those who fear
progress and freedom, it rises from the gloom of forgotten things to
oppress the living.

It is the dead hand that holds imprisoned within the obscenity laws
all direct information concerning birth control. It is the dead hand
that thus compels millions of American women to remain in the bondage
of maternity.

Previous to the year 1868, the obscenity laws of the various states in
the Union contained no specific prohibition of information concerning
contraceptives. In that year, however, the General Assembly of New
York passed an act which specifically included the subject of
contraceptives. The act made it exactly as great an offense to give
such information as to exhibit the sort of pictures and writings at
which the legislation was ostensibly aimed.

In 1873, the late Anthony Comstock, who with a list of contributors,
most of whom did not realize the real effects of his work, constituted
the so-called Society for the Suppression of Vice, succeeded in
obtaining the passage of the federal obscenity act. This act was
presented as one to prevent the circulation of pornographic literature
and pictures among school children. As such, it was rushed through
with two hundred sixty other acts in the closing hours of the
Congress. This act made it a crime to use the mails to convey
contraceptives or information concerning contraceptives. Other acts
later made the original law applicable to express companies and other
common carriers, as well as to the mails.

With this precedent established--a precedent which a majority of the
congressmen could hardly have understood because of the hasty passage
of the act--Comstock secured the enactment of state laws to the same
effect. Meanwhile, the provisions regarding contraceptives had been
dropped from the amended New York State law of 1872. In 1873, however,
a new section, said to have been drafted by Comstock himself, was
substituted for the one enacted in 1872, and that section is
essentially the substance of the present law. None of these acts made
it an offense to prevent conception--all of them provided punishment
for anyone disseminating information concerning the prevention of
conception. In the federal statutes, the maximum penalties were fixed
at a fine of $5,000 or five years imprisonment, or both. The usual
maximum penalty under a state law is a fine of $1,000 or one year's
imprisonment, or both.

Comstock has passed out of public notice. His body has been entombed
but the evil that he did lives after him. His dead hand still reaches
forth to keep the subject of prevention of conception where he placed
it--in the same legal category with things unclean and vile. Forty
years ago the laws were changed and the chief work of Comstock's life
accomplished. Those laws still live, legal monuments to ignorance and
to oppression. Through those laws reaches the dead hand to bring to
the operating table each year hundreds of thousands of women who
undergo the agony of abortion. Each year this hand reaches out to
compel the birth of hundreds of thousands of infants who must die
before they are twelve months old.

Like many laws upon our statute books, these are being persistently
and intelligently violated. Few members of the well-to-do and wealthy
classes think for a single moment of obeying them. They limit their
families to one, two or three well-cared-for children. Usually the
prosecutor who presents the case against a birth-control advocate,
trapped by a detective hired by the Comstock Society, has no children
at all or a small family. The family of the judge who passes upon the
case is likely to be smaller still. The words "It is the law" sums it
all up for these officials when they pass sentence in court. But these
words, so magical to the official mind, have no weight when these same
officials are adjusting their own private lives. They then obey the
higher laws of their own beings--they break the obsolete statutes for
themselves while enforcing them for others.

This is not the situation with the poorer people of the United States,
however. Millions of them know nothing of reliable contraceptives.
When women of the impoverished strata of society do not break these
laws against contraceptives, they violate those laws of their inner
beings which tell them not to bring children into the world to live in
want, disease and general misery. They break the first law of nature,
which is that of self preservation. Bound by false morals, enchained
by false conceptions of religion, hindered by false laws, they endure
until the pressure becomes so great that morals, religion and laws
alike fail to restrain them. Then they for a brief respite resort to
the surgeon's instruments.

For many years the semi-official witch hunting of the Comstock
organization had a remarkable and a deadly effect. Everyone, whether
it was novelist, essayist, publicist, propagandist or artist, who
sought to throw definite light upon the forbidden subject of sex, or
upon family limitation, was prosecuted if detected. Among the many
books suppressed were works by physicians designed to warn young men
and women away from the pitfalls of venereal diseases and sexual
errors. The darkness that surrounded the whole field of sex was made
as complete as possible.

Since then the feeling of the awakened women of America has
intensified. The rapidity with which women are going into industry,
the increasing hardship and poverty of the lower strata of society,
the arousing of public conscience, have all operated to give force and
volume to the demand for woman's right to control her own body that
she may work out her own salvation.

Those who believe in strictly legal measures, as well as those who
believe both in legal measures and in open defiance of these brutal
and unjust laws, are demanding amendments to the obscenity statutes,
which shall remove information concerning contraceptives from its
present classification among things filthy and obscene.

An amendment typical of those offered is that drawn up for the New
York statutes under the direction of Samuel McClure Lindsey, of
Columbia University. The words and sentences in italics are those
which it proposed to add:

"(Section 1145.) Physicians' instruments _and information_. An article
or instrument used or applied by physicians lawfully practicing, or by
their direction or prescription, for the cure or prevention of
disease, is not an article of indecent or immoral nature or use,
within this article. The supplying of such articles to such physicians
or by their direction or prescription, is not an offense under this
article. _The giving by a duly licensed physician or registered nurse
lawfully practicing, of information or advice in regard to, or the
supplying to any person of any article or medicine for the prevention
of, conception is not a violation of any provision of this article._"

This proposed amendment should without doubt include midwives as well
as nurses. There are thousands of women who never see a nurse or a
physician. Under this section, even as it now stands, physicians have
a right to prescribe contraceptives, but few of them have claimed that
right or have even known that it has existed. It does exist, however,
and was specifically declared by the New York State Court of Appeals,
as we shall see when we consider that court's opinion in the Sanger
case, farther on in the book. It can do no harm to make the intent of
the law as regards physicians plainer, and it would be an immense step
forward to include nurses and midwives in the section. With this
addition it would remove one of the most serious obstacles to the
freedom and advancement of American womanhood. Every woman interested
in the welfare of women in general should make it her business to
agitate for such a change in the obscenity laws.

The above provision would take care of the case of the woman who is
ill, or who is plainly about to become ill, but it does not take care
of the vast body of women who have not yet ruined their health by
childbearing and who are not yet suffering from diseases complicated
by pregnancy. If this amendment had been attached to the laws in all
the states, there would still remain much to be done.

Shall we go on indefinitely driving the now healthy mother of two
children into the hands of the abortionist, where she goes in
preference to constant ill health, overwork and the witnessing of
dying and starving babies? It is each woman's duty to herself and to
society to hasten the repeal of all laws against the communication of
birth-control information now that she has the vote, she should use
her political influence to strike, first of all, at these restrictive
statutes. It is not to her credit that a district attorney, arguing
against a birth control advocate, is able to show that women have made
no effort to wipe out such laws in states where they have had the
ballot for years.

It is time that women assert themselves upon this fundamental right,
and the first and best use they can make of the ballot is in this
direction. These laws were made by men and have been instruments of
martyrdom and death for unnumbered thousands of women. Women now have
the opportunity to sweep them into the trash heap. They will do it at
once unless, like men, they use the ballot for those political honors
which many years of experience have taught men to be hollow.

It is only a question of how long it will take women to make up their
minds to this result. The law of woman's being is stronger than any
statute, and the man-made law must sooner or later give way to it. Man
has not protected woman in matters most vital to her--but she is
awaking and will sooner or later realize this and assert herself. If
she acts in mass now, it will be another cheering evidence that she is
moving consciously toward her goal.

CHAPTER XVI

WHY NOT BIRTH-CONTROL CLINICS IN AMERICA

[Footnote: This chapter, in substance, and largely in language,
appeared under the present title in the March, 1920, issue of American
Medicine (New York) and is incorporated in this book by courtesy of
that publication.]

The absurd cruelty of permitting thousands of women each year to go
through abortions to prevent the aggravation of diseases for which
they are under treatment assuredly cannot be much longer ignored by
the medical profession. Responsibility for the inestimable damage done
by the practice of permitting patients suffering from certain ailments
to become pregnant, because of their ignorance of contraceptives, when
the physician knows that if pregnancy goes to its full term it will
hasten the disease and lead to the patient's death, must in all
fairness be laid at his door.

What these diseases are and what dangers are involved in pregnancy are
known to every practitioner of standing. Specialists have not been
negligent in pointing out the situation. Eager to enhance or protect
their reputations in the profession, they continually call out to one
another: "Don't let the patient bear a child--don't let pregnancy
continue."

The warning has been sounded most often, perhaps, in the cases of
tubercular women. "In view of the fact that the tubercular process
becomes exacerbated either during pregnancy or after childbirth, most
authorities recommend that abortion be induced as a matter of routine
in all tubercular women," says Dr. J. Whitridge Williams,
obstetrician-in-chief to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, in his treatise
on _Obstetrics_. Dr. Thomas Watts Eden, obstetrician and gynecologist
to Charing Cross Hospital and member of the staffs of other notable
British hospitals, extends but does not complete the list in this
paragraph on page 652 of his _Practical Obstetrics_: "Certain of the
conditions enumerated form absolute indications for the induction of
abortion. These are nephritis, uncompensated valvular lesions of the
heart, advanced tuberculosis, insanity, irremediable malignant tumors,
hydatidiform mole, uncontrollable uterine hemorrhage, and acute
hydramnios."

We know that abortion, when performed by skilled hands, under right
conditions, brings almost no danger to the life of the patient, and we
also know that particular diseases can be more easily combatted after
such an abortion than during a pregnancy allowed to come to full term.
But why not adopt the easier, safer, less repulsive course and prevent
conception altogether? Why put these thousands of women who each year
undergo such abortions to the pain they entail and in whatever danger
attends them?

Why continue to send home women to whom pregnancy is a grave danger
with the futile advice: "Now don't get this way again!" They are sent
back to husbands who have generations of passion and passion's claim
to outlet. They are sent back without being given information as to
how to prevent the dangerous pregnancy and are expected, presumably,
to depend for their safety upon the husband's continence. The wife and
husband are thrown together to bring about once more the same
condition. Back comes the patient again in a few months to be aborted
and told once more not to do it again.

Does any physician believe that the picture is overdrawn? I have known
of many such cases. A recent one that came under my observation was
that of a woman who suffered from a disease of the kidneys. Five times
she was taken to a maternity hospital in an ambulance after falling in
offices or in the street. One of the foremost gynecologists of America
sent her out three times without giving her information as to the
contraceptive means which would have prevented a repetition of this
experience.

Why does this situation exist? We do not question the good intent nor
the high purposes of these physicians. We know that they observe a
high standard of ethics and that they are working for the uplift of
the race. But here is a situation that is absurd--hideously absurd.
What is the matter?

Several factors contribute to this state of affairs. First, the
subject of contraception has been kept in the dark, even in medical
colleges and in hospitals. Abortion has been openly discussed as a
necessity under certain conditions, but the subject of contraception,
as any physician will admit, has not yet been brought to the front. It
has escaped specialized attention in the laboratories and the research
departments. Thus there has been no professional stamp of approval by
great bodies of experimenters. The result is that the average
physician has felt that contraceptive methods are not yet established
as certainties and has, for that reason, refused to direct _their
use_.

Specialists are so busy with their own particular subjects and general
practitioners are so taken up with their daily routine that they
cannot give to the problem of contraception the attention it must
have. Consultation rooms in charge of reputable physicians who have
specialized in contraception, assisted by registered nurses--in a
word, clinics designed for this specialty, would meet this crying
need. Such clinics should deal with each woman individually, taking
into account her particular disease, her temperament, her mentality
and her condition, both physical and economic. Their sole function
should be to prevent pregnancy. In accomplishing this purpose, a
higher standard of hygiene is attained. Not only would a burden be
removed from the physician who sends a woman to such a clinic, but
there would be an improvement in the woman's general condition which
would in a number of ways reflect itself in benefit to her family.

All this for the diseased woman. But every argument that can be made
for preventive medicine can be made for birth-control clinics for the
use of the woman who has not yet lost her health. Sound and vigorous
at the time of her marriage, she could remain so if given advice as to
by what means she could space her children and limit their number.
When she is not given such information, she is plunged blindly into
married life and a few years is likely to find her with a large
family, herself diseased and damaged, an unfit breeder of the unfit,
and still ignorant!

What are the fruits of this woeful ignorance in which women have been
kept? First, a tremendous infant mortality--hundreds of thousands of
babies dying annually of diseases which flourish in poverty and
neglect.

Next, the rapid increase of the feebleminded, of criminal types and of
the pathetic victims of toil in the child-labor factories. Another
result is the familiar overcrowding of tenements, the forcing of the
children into the street, the ensuing prostitution, alcoholism and
almost universal physical and moral unfitness.

Those abhorrent conditions point to a blunder upon the part of those
to whom we have entrusted the care of the health of the individual,
the family and the race. The medical profession, neglecting the
principle involved in preventive medicine, has permitted these
conditions to come about. If they were unavoidable, we should have to
bear with them, but they are not unavoidable, as shown by facts and
figures from other countries where contraceptive information is
available.

In Holland, for instance, where the information concerning
contraceptives has been accessible to the people, through clinics and
pamphlets, since 1881, the general death rate and the infant mortality
rate have fallen until they are the lowest in Europe. Amsterdam and
The Hague have the lowest infant mortality rates of any cities in the
world.

It is good to know that the first of the birth-control clinics of
Holland followed shortly after a thorough and enthusiastic discussion
of the subject at an international medical congress in Amsterdam in
1878. The Dutch Neo-Malthusian League was founded in 1881. The first
birth-control clinic in the world was opened in 1885 by Dr. Aletta
Jacobs in Amsterdam. So great were the results obtained that there has
been a remarkable increase in the wealth, stamina, stature and
longevity of the people, as well as a gradual increase in the
population.

These clinics must not be confused with the white enameled rooms which
we associate with the term in America. They are ordinary offices with
the necessary equipment, or rooms in the homes of the nurses, fitted
out for the work. They are places for consultation and examination,
opened by specially trained nurses who have been instructed by Dr. J.
Rutgers, of The Hague, secretary of the Neo-Malthusian League, who has
devoted his life to this work. There have been more than fifty nurses
trained specially for this work by Dr. Rutgers. As a nurse completes
her course of training, she establishes herself in a community and her
place of consultation is called a clinic.

The general results of this service are best judged by tables included
in the _Annual Summary of Marriages, Births and Deaths in England,
Wales, Etc., for 1912_. [Footnote: (See table on page 208.)]

In Amsterdam, the birth rate dropped from 37.1 for the period of
1881-85 to 24.7 for 1906 and 23.3 in 1912. During the same periods, the
death rate fell from 25.1 to 13.1, and in 1912 to 11.2. Infant
mortality for the same period fell from 203 for each thousand living
births to 90, and in 1912 to 64. Illegitimate fertility also
decreased. Results in other cities, as shown by the table at the end
of this chapter, are exactly similar.

In the Australian Commonwealth, where birth control is taken as a
matter of course, and information concerning contraceptives is
available to the masses, the births were so well distributed in 1915
that while the birth rate was 27.3, there was an infant death rate of
only 10.7. New Zealand, which is also one of the typical birth-control
countries, had a birth rate of 25.3 and an infant death rate of only
9.1 for the same year. These figures are in marked and happy contrast
with those for the birth registration of the United States, where the
reports for 1916 show a birth rate of 24.8, but an infant death rate
of 14.7. A similar comparison may be made with the German Empire in
1913, where there was a birth rate of 27.5 in 1913 and an infant
mortality rate of 15. In these countries, birth control information is
not so generally within the reach of the masses and, consequently, the
largest percentage of births come to that class least able to bring
children to full maturity, as indicated in the infant mortality rates.

In conclusion, I am going to make a statement which may at first seem
exaggerated, but which is, nevertheless, carefully considered. The
effort toward racial progress that is being made to-day by the medical
profession, by social workers, by the various charitable and
philanthropic organizations and by state institutions for the
physically and mentally unfit, is practically wasted. All these forces
are in a very emphatic sense marking time. They will continue to mark
time until the medical profession recognizes the fact that the ever
increasing tide of the unfit is overwhelming all that these agencies
are doing for society. They will continue to mark time until they get
at the source of these destructive conditions and apply a fundamental
remedy. That remedy is birth control.

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