Part 37

In contrast to Geneva and its problems in tact, Zurich was a dovecote. One slight incident alone disturbed the calm. I had gone to Berlin to secure delegates and there in a public theater had seen a film which had traversed the length and breadth of Germany as propaganda for abortion under safe conditions. The scene opened with feet endlessly passing on the streets; you saw a kerchief drop, a masculine hand reach down to pick it up, the boy and girl at lunch, she looking up at him wide-eyed. Soon she was obliged to go to a _femme savante_ in a filthy narrow old alley; you watched her ascend the rickety stairs, an ancient crone peeling potatoes, shoving wood in the stove with dirty hands, the agony in the girl’s face. It was a succession of pictures such as this, straight out of life itself.

I had borrowed the film and rented a theater in Geneva. To my great surprise and no little amusement when the Caesarian section appeared on the screen several men and women in the audience began to faint, among them our own workers, even Edith How-Martyn. One, a young scientist, had to be led out and given a drink to brace him up. Cars and taxis were commandeered to cart the squeamish back to their hotels.

This Conference must remain a milestone because there all propaganda, all moral and ethical aspects of the subject were forgotten. The whole problem was lifted out of the troubled atmosphere of theory, where previously it had been battered by the winds of doctrine and the brutal gusts of prejudice, into the current of serene, impersonal, scientific abstraction. It was too early to tell what practical results might ensue, but at least we soon received the assurance that certain doctors would welcome efficient contraceptives.

Individual physicians in New York had since 1923 taken serious thought of the need for contraception. Mrs. Amos Pinchot had organized certain outstanding members of the Academy of Medicine into the Committee on Maternal Health. They had been fortunate enough to secure the well-known retired gynecologist, Dr. Dickinson, as secretary. He had trained many of the younger men and was able to bring into the movement doctors who would have paid slight attention to anyone less admired and honored. With the aid of various foundations, the Committee on Maternal Health had been doing a fine piece of work in publishing the findings of scientists in brochures and pamphlets.

The Academy, after the Zurich Conference, formally declared that “the public is entitled to expect counsel and information by the medical profession on the important and intimate matter of contraceptive advice.”

We had been attaining small victories, and little by little and bit by bit the Protestant churches had begun to regard us favorably. In September, 1925, the House of Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church, meeting at Portland, Oregon, had gone on record against birth control. Later some of the wives of these same bishops had come to me in New York and asked my help in educating their husbands. A group of three had taken it upon themselves to see that every bishop was thoroughly enlightened. The consequence of the campaign was that at a subsequent meeting in 1934 they reversed their original stand.

Even the Jews had on occasion been in opposition. Rabbi Mischkind of Tremont Temple had been rebuked by his Board of Trustees for having invited me to speak one Sunday morning. Rather than surrender he had resigned and found another synagogue in which I could appear.

Now the Central Conference of American Rabbis urged the recognition of birth control. The hundred and seventieth conference of the Methodist Church sanctioned it and the American Unitarian Association did the same. A special commission appointed by the Presbyterian General Assembly to study the problems of divorce and remarriage admitted the desirability of restricting births under medical advice. And in March, 1931, the Committee on Marriage and the Home of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America approved it.

Due in large measure to Lord Dawson’s eloquence, the Bishops at Lambeth gave us one of our greatest triumphs by voting 193 to 67 in favor of birth control. Bernard Shaw believed the Church of England was making a “belated attempt to see whether it could catch up with the Twentieth Century.”

Ever since the outburst of religious intolerance at Town Hall, it had been apparent that in the United States the Catholic hierarchy and officialdom were going to be the principal enemies of birth control. From city to city you could feel this. At Albany we could not have a hall because the police commissioner was a Catholic. In Cincinnati the Knights of Columbus almost succeeded in barring us from the hotel. At Syracuse the mayor had to veto the ordinance of the Catholic Council before we could hold a conference there. When I was to give a lecture in Milwaukee the Catholic Women’s League came to protest the meeting to Socialist Mayor Hoane. He had told them, however, “If I prevent Mrs. Sanger from speaking because you protest, I shall also have to prevent you from speaking when others object to Catholic doctrine. Free speech must prevail in Milwaukee.”

Tactics aiming to bring about a reconciliation between the Anglicans and Rome had been rendered futile by the endorsement of the Bishops. I suspected the demand for a clear statement from the Vatican on the question originated in the United States where Catholic women were showing a gradual yet persistent spirit of independence. In spite of Church canons they were using contraceptives, and the Church, in its wisdom, was obliged to change the law to keep its parishioners from breaking it. In December came the answer in the form of a Papal Encyclical. The world moved but the Pope sat still. He declared that he was “looking with paternal eye—as from a watch-tower.” But what was he looking at?

The Pope said over and over again that sexual intercourse, unless definitely designed to produce children, was against nature and a sin; he roundly condemned any contraceptive and he affirmed that in the matter of limiting families continence alone was permissible. Yet in the selfsame document he nullified his previous insistence that procreation was the sole justification of marital relations by countenancing them at times when pregnancy could not result. These times he made indefinite; they might refer to sterility, post-menopause, or the so-called “safe period” during the menstrual cycle; in fine, he was saying first, that you might not have intercourse unless you expected to have a child, and, in the same breath, that you might have intercourse when you could not possibly have a child. This Jesuitical inconsistency allowed a loophole for the issuance of the Latz Foundation booklet entitled _The Rhythm of Sterility and Fertility in Women_, published with “ecclesiastical approval” and recommended by Catholic societies.

It had become part of my routine to answer every challenge to the cause, just as I tried to answer every question at a meeting. Here again was the hoary “nature” argument which should have been in its grave long since. The contention that it was sin to interrupt nature in her processes was simple nonsense. The Pope frustrated her by shaving or having his hair cut. Whenever we caught a fish or shot a wolf or slaughtered a lamb, whenever we pulled a weed or pruned a fruit tree, we too frustrated nature. Disease germs were perfectly natural little fellows which had to be frustrated before we could get well. As for the alleged “safe period” which _Rhythm_ now set forth, what could be more unnatural than to restrict intercourse to the very time when nature had least intended it?

But, taking one consideration with another, it seemed to me then that the birth control idea was rolling merrily along. I could sympathize with an indignant old radical who left a birth control congress sniffing, “This thing has got too darned safe for me.”

_Chapter Thirty-four_

SENATORS, BE NOT AFFRIGHTED

“Should the Federal Laws Be Changed?” was the subject of my debate with Chief Justice Richard B. Russell of Georgia, who had had eighteen children by two wives. I always welcomed a debate, although after the first few years it had been almost impossible to find anyone to defend the other side, and therefore I was pleased to be called to Atlanta, in May, 1931, for this one.

The old judge, white-haired and with white eyebrows and mustache, his figure still erect, fixed me with a glance, sometimes satiric and sometimes flaming with the rage of an Old Testament prophet. He talked of the sacredness of motherhood, the home, and the State of Georgia. “We don’t need birth control in Georgia. We’ve had to give up two Congressmen now because we don’t have enough people. If New York wants to wipe out her population, she can. We need ours.... I can take care of all the children God sent me. I believe God sent them to me because they have souls. Poodle dogs and jackasses don’t have souls. I have obeyed the command of God to ‘increase and multiply.’”

His children and their wives and their relatives occupying several rows of seats down front applauded vigorously.

On the train coming back I bought a paper and noted with surprise that I had been awarded the American Women’s Association medal for accomplishments on behalf of women, and was supposed to be receiving it that night in New York. I sent a telegram of thanks to Anne Morgan saying that I had just learned about it and there was no way of my attending.

It was nice to be handed a medal instead of a warrant; at the postponed dinner, organized by John A. Kingsbury, a director of the Milbank Fund, I sat there listening to the beautiful tributes and asked myself, “Is it really true? Am I awake? Or is it a dream?” I never thought of the medal as being given to me as a person, but to the cause, the women I represented, and, representing them, went through the act of accepting it.

As I was trying to express this, a little woman who used to appear frequently on all sorts of occasions came up through the well-groomed audience, climbed to the platform, offered me a bouquet of flowers from the Brownsville mothers. “You are our Abraham Lincoln,” she said, unconscious of the smiles, amused yet sympathetic, of the audience. She left a kiss upon my brow and hurriedly went back to her place. To me she embodied the spirit of Mrs. Sachs, who had died so long ago—all I was still working for, though through channels which had broadened immeasurably since then.

In the beginning of the birth control movement the main purpose had been the mitigation of women’s suffering, Comstock law or no Comstock law. Its very genesis had been the conscious, deliberate, and public violation of this statute. Later, to change it became imperative, so that the millions who depended upon dispensaries and hospitals could be instructed by capable hands.

In 1918 Mary Ware Dennett had dissolved the old National Birth Control League into the Voluntary Parenthood League, which had for its aim the repeal of the Federal law. This seemed fine on the surface but repeal would permit anyone to give and send contraceptive devices as well as information to anyone through the mails regardless of standards or quality. Mrs. Dennett still looked upon the movement as a free-speech and free-press issue, just as I had done before going to the Netherlands. Now I considered no one had sufficient knowledge of the possible consequences of some contraceptives to permit them to be manufactured or distributed without guidance or direction. They might kill the birth control movement as well as some of the women who used them. No sponsor could be found until in 1923 Senator Cummins had introduced her repeal, or so-called open bill, in which the lack of safeguards was severely criticized. Therefore she had had it reintroduced in 1924 with a clause added that all literature containing contraceptive information must be certified by five physicians as “not injurious to life or health.” This bill, practically impossible of application, died in committee.

Since we believed information should be disseminated only by doctors we had kept very quiet and out of it during those years. But we had our own ideas of what sort of legislation we preferred. When Mrs. Dennett retired and her organization ceased its work Mrs. Day, Anne Kennedy, and I, in January, 1926, went down to Washington on a scouting expedition to take a survey of the mental attitude of Congressmen and discover whether their reaction was more favorable towards a repeal bill or our proposal of an “amended doctors’ bill.” We set up headquarters and began interviewing senators until we had satisfied ourselves that personal sentiment was more in favor of our policy.

We thought it advisable also to sound out the Catholic stand. Getting together was the trend of the times. Eugenists, the Voluntary Parenthood League, the American Birth Control League, all were trying to meet each other. People of tolerant opinions had always felt the Catholic Church was too clever to oppose a movement that inevitably it would some day have to sanction, and the tumult and interference was simply the result of local ignorance and bigotry; if we could reach the scholarly heads themselves, if we could all “sit at a table and talk things over,” we would find their ideals of humanitarianism were much like our own.

Consequently, Anne had an interview with members of the Catholic Welfare Conference, including Monsignor John Ryan, John M. Cooper, Ph.D., Father Burke, and other prelates. We thought we would agree on the doctors’ bill—that they surely wanted the public safeguarded from the misuse of contraceptives. But they unequivocally set forth their objections; not even a physician’s indisputable right to save lives swayed them. They declared it was their office to see that no “social or moral” legislation passed Congress that did not conform to the tenets of Catholic doctrine; they would attempt to prevent any such bill from becoming a law. Anne wrote out a report of the interview, including this shocking statement, and showed it to them so they might have an opportunity to correct it if they so desired. They left it essentially as written.

Considering this a fundamental issue of liberty and life not affecting birth control alone, I took the presumptuous document to H. L. Mencken, supposedly the outstanding libertarian in America. He had the power to evoke a response from thinking minds, even though they were rock-bound in patriotic dogmas; he had knocked down a great many gods, chiefly along political and religious lines.

Trusting that Mencken would make an effective protest in the _American Mercury_, I talked to him, explained the situation, predicting that if we let this go unnoticed we should all have to endure the future consequences. He admitted the Catholic action was brazen, but mentioned the fact that he had too many friends of that faith in Baltimore for him to attack their church. I gained the impression he was out to slash and hit where the cause was obviously popular, but had no intention of leading a forlorn hope or playing the role of a pioneer for freedom. He never fulfilled the expectations I once had of him; he was not a tree bearing fruit but a spoon stirring around, very much of a “Yes, but-er.” He said, “Oh, yes, that is grand, but, on the other hand, there is this to be said for the other side.”

In our campaign of educating the public in the necessity for changing the Federal statute I began having regional conferences in the East, South, Middle West, West, and linking them all into an organization to support the bill. One of these was at Los Angeles. At first most of the Westerners wanted an open bill such as Mrs. Dennett’s, and I stood rather alone on the doctors’ amendment, which was only approved on the last night of the Conference by a very narrow margin.

As the people filed out I saw at the end of the room a thin, almost emaciated woman with gray hair, somewhat shabby, but not unusually so. She held out a bony hand to clasp mine, saying practically nothing, just a word or two, and her name, Kaufman, came to me. I remembered it because Viola Kaufman had been one of the small subscribers to birth control in the past, and I was familiar with most of these names. I thought nothing further of it at the time.

Wanting all the endorsement I could get for the doctors’ bill, and particularly that of the American Medical Association, I made a special trip to Chicago to see Dr. Morris Fishbein, who was a power in that organization. I asked for advice or help, and offered to draw up a bill in any way which would suit them. Dr. Fishbein appeared sympathetic and turned me over to Dr. William C. Woodward, the legislative director; we had a pleasant conversation and that was all. Though he made no comment as to its merits or demerits, I put the bill on record in their office.

Tried and true friends, whose abilities and loyalties had been tested and proved, rallied around the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, which established its headquarters in Washington in 1931. Frances Ackermann assisted my husband as Treasurer. For Vice President we had Mrs. Walter Timme who had left the League of Women Voters, a fine speaker, a clear-thinking crusader, a devoted ally of long standing. Tall, large-framed, broad-shouldered, she could harangue audiences in the strong, convincing, and forceful fashion of the early, suffrage, soapbox days—nothing delicate or fragile. When she had an idea, it was an idea, and she stated it as an idea. More than once our bank account would have faded to a mere wraith had it not been for Ida Timme’s money-raising talents.

Mrs. Alexander C. Dick was Secretary. She had the old-fashioned head of a daguerreotype, but was thoroughly modern in her verve and gay personality and her quick agility of mind. Since 1916, when I had first known her, she had been really interested in the research end of birth control, and definitely had agreed with the then new war cry that it should be under medical supervision. It was mainly due to her and her late husband, Charles Brush of Cleveland, that Ohio had had from the beginning one of the best organized and conducted state leagues.

Kate Hepburn was Chairman. In her long public career she had learned great efficiency and was so careful of minutiae that she never let our witnesses run over their time. Just as we were swinging along briskly she invariably tugged at a coat and passed over a little slip—“time up in one minute.”

Best of all our lobbyists was Mrs. Hazel Moore, our Legislative Secretary, who had left the Red Cross in the South to support us. Nothing could withstand her indefatigable enthusiasm, and it took a stout Senator to harden his heart against her feminine ruses and winning manners.

We now began to be initiated into the A B C of Federal legislative procedure. After your bill had been drawn up, you had to find a Congressman to introduce it. Sometimes he believed in it a hundred percent; sometimes he believed in the individual a hundred percent; sometimes he sponsored it only to be accommodating and agreeable, in which case it was called “by request,” a very weak way since you knew he was not going to fight for it. When introduced, the bill was read in the House or Senate and at once referred to a committee, those having to do with changing a law to the Judiciary. Ours was difficult to manage at first, because we were trying to alter several statutes simultaneously, not merely Section 211 and everything pertaining to mails and common carriers, but also laws relating to imports. We had a general principle back of us, but we had to keep whacking off clauses so that it would not be thrown into the wrong committee.

If you were fortunate enough to secure a Senate hearing for your bill the chairman of your committee appointed a sub-committee of about three; in the House, the entire committee might attend the hearing. A day was set and you began preparing your ammunition; the opposition was allowed an equal amount of time to the second. After the hearing a vote was taken. If they were against it, they killed it then and there; if they recommended it, it came up before the full committee and, if then approved, went to the Senate or House for debate on the floor.

To the frantic, worried, harassed, driven Congressmen of 1931 the announcement of a birth control bill was like a message from Mars, only less interesting and more remote. The mind of each Senator resembled a telephone switchboard with his wary secretary as the operator. All the wires were tied up with foreign debts, unemployment relief, reparations, moratoriums, sales taxes, prohibition, budgets and bonuses, war in Manchuria, peace conferences, disarmament, and the tariff—issues of vital concern to themselves for which they needed every vote; and their principal endeavor was not to cause conflict or get themselves disliked. What chance had we to plug in?

When the vigilant secretary found we were not direct constituents, we were told the Senator was busy—in conference, in committee, meeting an arriving delegation. Would we come back later, tomorrow, next week? Always we came back promptly and on the dot. For months it was almost impossible to see any of them. Often as many as forty calls were made, and if we succeeded in getting two interviews, we considered that a good day’s work. When finally we did reach them, few of the younger, still fewer of the older, Senators knew what we were talking about. When we were able to make this clear, young and old alike, just as in the state legislatures, were full of fears—fear of prejudices, fear of cloakroom joshings, mainly fear of Catholic opposition.

Though Senator Norris had approved the repeal bill, he believed that ours had a better chance of passing because antagonism to the former was even greater than in 1926. He himself had Muscle Shoals and the Lame Duck Amendment on his hands and several more pet projects to boot, and suggested we get somebody to introduce the bill who would not be up for re-election. Our choice fell on Senator Frederick Huntington Gillett of Massachusetts, for years Speaker of the House, and now about to retire. He was a gentleman born, gray-haired, typically New England, without children or any particular philosophy regarding birth control. Our Southern helpers, notably Mrs. J. B. Vandeveer, were persistent and determined. They would not be put off with polite, routine dismissals, but asked point-blank, “Will you introduce this bill for us?” Senator Gillett, recognizing their earnestness, agreed. But we heard no more of it.

When I returned at the next session of the same Congress someone remarked, “Aren’t you lucky to have had your bill introduced?”

“What?” I stared with wide-open eyes.

“Yes, Senator Gillett remembered it a few days before the session closed.”

I called on him at once. “Where’s our bill gone?”

It had gone nowhere. “We’ll just send it around to the Judiciary Committee,” said the Senator. “Norris is Chairman and he’s friendly. He’ll pick out a good sub-committee for you.”

We gathered our witnesses together the night before the hearing, which was to be February 13th, and asked, “What do you want to say? How long do you want in which to say it?” We had eight people to testify in the space of two hours; moments had to be carefully parceled out to each. We were permitted to deduct ten from our allotment the first day to be used the following one for a rebuttal.

William E. Borah of Idaho and Sam G. Bratton of New Mexico had been assigned to us with Senator Gillett, but Borah did not appear. The audience, mostly women, crowded the committee room, imposing with marble pillars, glossy mahogany, gleaming windows.