Contraception controversies
March is Women’s History Month. NY1920s always centers women’s history; this month we’ll do so a bit more emphatically.
One hundred years ago today … Birth Control was an oft-reported and hotly debated topic in the NYC papers. For example, Daily News readers "C.W." and "D.P." went at one another in the letters section.
Daily News, 19 March, 1923, p. 11. Library of Congress.
Daily News, 23 March, 1923, p. 47. Library of Congress.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran a health column by Dr. William Brady which started by excoriating birth control as "race suicide."
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 March, 1923, p. 23. Library of Congress.
The Tablet, 24 March, 1923, p. 2. Library of Congress.
There was good reason for it to be a fraught time for this discussion. In the news that month, the US Congress announced it would consider a bill legalizing the distribution of birth control information. A report on this news appeared in The Tablet, Brooklyn's Catholic weekly.
The bill had been pushed by the Voluntary Parenthood League and its leader Mary Ware Dennett, whom we have featured before.
Speaking of figures we have featured before: Early in 1923, Margaret Sanger had opened the US's first legal birth control clinic, at 17 West 16th Street. (See "The Margaret Sanger Papers Project" blog of February 12, 2014.) Around the corner at 104 5th Avenue, Sanger's American Birth Control League put out the monthly Birth Control Quarterly. The issue from one hundred years ago this month reflects the overlap of birth control with population concerns.
Birth Control Quarterly, March, 1923. Internet Archive.
Birth Control Quarterly, March, 1923, p. 2. Internet Archive.
– Jonathan Goldman, March 31, 2023
TAGS: women’s history, contraception, activism, family planning, bodily autonomy, right to choose. choice, eugenics, race