Ghanima Atreides (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
atreideslioness) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2013-02-11 10:47 am
atreideslioness) wrote in fandomhigh2013-02-11 10:47 am
Entry tags:
History of American Feminism, Monday, 2nd Period.
"For those of us whom have always had reproductive control over our bodies, the alternative is often unimaginable," Ghanima began, once everyone had arrived for the day. "However, even as recently as within the last hundred years, this has not been the case in the United States."
Ghanima had a unique view on time, it was true, but in the Imperium it wasn't uncommon for members of the Great Houses - and others with access to the spice melange - to live a hundred and fifty years or more.
"Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term 'birth control,' which many Americans are familiar with today, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood. Sanger's efforts contributed to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case which legalized contraception in the United States. Sanger is a frequent target of criticism by opponents of birth control and has also been criticized for supporting eugenics, but remains an iconic figure in the American reproductive rights movement. Sanger's activism was influenced by the conditions of her youth—her mother had 18 pregnancies in 22 years, and died at age 50 of tuberculosis and cervical cancer."
"Starting in 1911, Sanger wrote a series of articles about sexual education entitled "What Every Mother Should Know" and "What Every Girl Should Know" for the socialist magazine New York Call. By her days' standards, the articles were extremely frank in their discussion of sexuality, and many New York Call readers were outraged by them, at least one of them wrote a letter in response canceling her subscription. Other readers, however, praised the series for its candor, one stated that the series contained "a purer morality than whole libraries full of hypocritical cant about modesty.""
"In 1913, Sanger worked as a nurse at Henry Street Settlement in New York's Lower East Side, often with poor women who were suffering due to frequent childbirth and self-induced abortions. Searching for something that would help these women, Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to find information on contraception. These problems were epitomized in a story that Sanger would later recount in her speeches: while Sanger was working as a nurse, she was called to Sadie Sachs' apartment after Sachs had become extremely ill due to a self-induced abortion. Afterward, Sadie begged the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent this from happening again, to which the doctor simply gave the advice to remain abstinent. A few months later, Sanger was once again called back to the Sachs' apartment — only this time, Sadie was found dead after yet another self-induced abortion. Sanger would sometimes end the story by saying, "I threw my nursing bag in the corner and announced ... that I would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth." Although Sadie Sachs was possibly a fictional composite of several women Sanger had known, this story marks the time when Sanger began to devote her life to help desperate women before they were driven to pursue dangerous and illegal abortions."
In 1914, Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, an eight-page monthly newsletter which promoted contraception using the slogan "No Gods, No Masters". Sanger, collaborating with anarchist friends, popularized the term "birth control" as a more candid alternative to euphemisms such as "family limitation" and proclaimed that each woman should be "the absolute mistress of her own body." In these early years of Sanger's activism, she viewed birth control as a free-speech issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel, one of her goals was to provoke a legal challenge to the federal anti-obscenity laws which banned dissemination of information about contraception." Ghanima looked over the class candidly. "It wasn't simply that speaking about contraception was considered impolite or risque, it was considered illegal to do so thanks to the Comstock Law."
"Sanger was indicted in August 1914 on three counts of violating obscenity laws and a fourth count of "inciting murder and assassination." The incitement charge was based on an article in The Woman Rebel. Afraid that prosecutors might focus on the incitement charge, and that she might be sent to prison without an opportunity to argue for birth control in court, she fled to England under the alias "Bertha Watson" to avoid arrest and during her absence a groundswell of support grew in the United States, and Margaret returned to the United States in October 1915, and, bowing to public pressure, the government dropped the charges in early 1916."
"On October 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy St. in Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States. Nine days after the clinic opened, Sanger was arrested for breaking a New York state law that prohibited distribution of contraceptives, and went to trial in January 1917. Sanger was convicted; the trial judge held that women did not have "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception." Sanger was offered a more lenient sentence if she promised to not break the law again, but she replied: "I cannot respect the law as it exists today." For this, she was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse."
"After Sanger discovered that physicians were now exempt from the law that prohibited the distribution of contraceptive information to women—provided it was prescribed for medical reasons—she established the Clinical Research Bureau in 1923 to exploit this loophole. The CRB was the first legal birth control clinic in the United States, and it was staffed entirely by female doctors and social workers. The clinic received a large amount of funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his family, which continued to make donations to Sanger's causes in future decades, but generally made them anonymously to avoid public exposure of the family name, and to protect family member Nelson Rockefeller's political career since openly advocating birth control could have led to the Catholic Church opposing him politically. In 1922, she traveled to China, Korea, and Japan. In China she observed that the primary method of family planning was female infanticide, and she later worked with Pearl Buck to establish a family planning clinic in Shanghai."
"In 1929, Sanger formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control in order to lobby for legislation to overturn restrictions on contraception. That effort failed to achieve success, so Sanger ordered a diaphragm from Japan in 1932, in order to provoke a decisive battle in the courts. The diaphragm was confiscated by the United States government, and Sanger's subsequent legal challenge led to a 1936 court decision which overturned an important provision of the Comstock laws which prohibited physicians from obtaining contraceptives. This court victory motivated the American Medical Association in 1937 to adopt contraception as a normal medical service and a key component of medical school curriculums."
"This 1936 contraception court victory was the culmination of Sanger's birth control efforts, and she took the opportunity, now in her late 50s, to move to Tucson, Arizona, intending to play a less critical role in the birth control movement. In spite of her original intentions, she remained active in the movement through the 1950s."
[OOC: OCD up, today's topic is Margaret Sanger.]
Ghanima had a unique view on time, it was true, but in the Imperium it wasn't uncommon for members of the Great Houses - and others with access to the spice melange - to live a hundred and fifty years or more.
"Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term 'birth control,' which many Americans are familiar with today, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood. Sanger's efforts contributed to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case which legalized contraception in the United States. Sanger is a frequent target of criticism by opponents of birth control and has also been criticized for supporting eugenics, but remains an iconic figure in the American reproductive rights movement. Sanger's activism was influenced by the conditions of her youth—her mother had 18 pregnancies in 22 years, and died at age 50 of tuberculosis and cervical cancer."
"Starting in 1911, Sanger wrote a series of articles about sexual education entitled "What Every Mother Should Know" and "What Every Girl Should Know" for the socialist magazine New York Call. By her days' standards, the articles were extremely frank in their discussion of sexuality, and many New York Call readers were outraged by them, at least one of them wrote a letter in response canceling her subscription. Other readers, however, praised the series for its candor, one stated that the series contained "a purer morality than whole libraries full of hypocritical cant about modesty.""
"In 1913, Sanger worked as a nurse at Henry Street Settlement in New York's Lower East Side, often with poor women who were suffering due to frequent childbirth and self-induced abortions. Searching for something that would help these women, Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to find information on contraception. These problems were epitomized in a story that Sanger would later recount in her speeches: while Sanger was working as a nurse, she was called to Sadie Sachs' apartment after Sachs had become extremely ill due to a self-induced abortion. Afterward, Sadie begged the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent this from happening again, to which the doctor simply gave the advice to remain abstinent. A few months later, Sanger was once again called back to the Sachs' apartment — only this time, Sadie was found dead after yet another self-induced abortion. Sanger would sometimes end the story by saying, "I threw my nursing bag in the corner and announced ... that I would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth." Although Sadie Sachs was possibly a fictional composite of several women Sanger had known, this story marks the time when Sanger began to devote her life to help desperate women before they were driven to pursue dangerous and illegal abortions."
In 1914, Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, an eight-page monthly newsletter which promoted contraception using the slogan "No Gods, No Masters". Sanger, collaborating with anarchist friends, popularized the term "birth control" as a more candid alternative to euphemisms such as "family limitation" and proclaimed that each woman should be "the absolute mistress of her own body." In these early years of Sanger's activism, she viewed birth control as a free-speech issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel, one of her goals was to provoke a legal challenge to the federal anti-obscenity laws which banned dissemination of information about contraception." Ghanima looked over the class candidly. "It wasn't simply that speaking about contraception was considered impolite or risque, it was considered illegal to do so thanks to the Comstock Law."
"Sanger was indicted in August 1914 on three counts of violating obscenity laws and a fourth count of "inciting murder and assassination." The incitement charge was based on an article in The Woman Rebel. Afraid that prosecutors might focus on the incitement charge, and that she might be sent to prison without an opportunity to argue for birth control in court, she fled to England under the alias "Bertha Watson" to avoid arrest and during her absence a groundswell of support grew in the United States, and Margaret returned to the United States in October 1915, and, bowing to public pressure, the government dropped the charges in early 1916."
"On October 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy St. in Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States. Nine days after the clinic opened, Sanger was arrested for breaking a New York state law that prohibited distribution of contraceptives, and went to trial in January 1917. Sanger was convicted; the trial judge held that women did not have "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception." Sanger was offered a more lenient sentence if she promised to not break the law again, but she replied: "I cannot respect the law as it exists today." For this, she was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse."
"After Sanger discovered that physicians were now exempt from the law that prohibited the distribution of contraceptive information to women—provided it was prescribed for medical reasons—she established the Clinical Research Bureau in 1923 to exploit this loophole. The CRB was the first legal birth control clinic in the United States, and it was staffed entirely by female doctors and social workers. The clinic received a large amount of funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his family, which continued to make donations to Sanger's causes in future decades, but generally made them anonymously to avoid public exposure of the family name, and to protect family member Nelson Rockefeller's political career since openly advocating birth control could have led to the Catholic Church opposing him politically. In 1922, she traveled to China, Korea, and Japan. In China she observed that the primary method of family planning was female infanticide, and she later worked with Pearl Buck to establish a family planning clinic in Shanghai."
"In 1929, Sanger formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control in order to lobby for legislation to overturn restrictions on contraception. That effort failed to achieve success, so Sanger ordered a diaphragm from Japan in 1932, in order to provoke a decisive battle in the courts. The diaphragm was confiscated by the United States government, and Sanger's subsequent legal challenge led to a 1936 court decision which overturned an important provision of the Comstock laws which prohibited physicians from obtaining contraceptives. This court victory motivated the American Medical Association in 1937 to adopt contraception as a normal medical service and a key component of medical school curriculums."
"This 1936 contraception court victory was the culmination of Sanger's birth control efforts, and she took the opportunity, now in her late 50s, to move to Tucson, Arizona, intending to play a less critical role in the birth control movement. In spite of her original intentions, she remained active in the movement through the 1950s."
[OOC: OCD up, today's topic is Margaret Sanger.]