Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.Sanger, Margaret
History
Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- United States -- Biography; Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966
Three days later Ethel received the anticipated summons. On her way out
she picked up the mail at the door. In it was a letter from a California
acquaintance of hers who did not know where I was but had her address.
“Will you please give the enclosed forty-five dollars to Margaret Sanger
from her sympathizers?”
Ethel handed it to me with the resigned comment, “Well, here’s your
check from God.”
The editor of the _Woman Rebel_ had struck her single match of defiance,
but she could be of slight significance in the forward march towards
“women’s rights.” In Feminist circles I was little known. With my
personal sorrow, my manifold domestic duties, my social shyness, I
avoided meeting new people. My attitude thus created some reluctance
among those who might otherwise have hastened to my aid. Indeed, I
wanted a certain type of support, but I could not take the initiative in
asking for it.
This was suddenly done for me. One afternoon I was invited to a tea
arranged by Henrietta Rodman, Feminist of Feminists, in her Greenwich
Village apartment. Wells was particularly sanctified among her group and
I must be all right if he approved. As a result of that meeting the
suffrage worker, Alice Carpenter, set the wheels in motion for a dinner
at the Brevoort Hotel to be held January 23rd, the evening preceding my
trial. I was to be given a chance to say my say, speak my piece before a
gathering of influential people. Although I did not see her until some
years after, I thanked her in my heart many times for what she had done.
In the ballroom were collected several hundred people. Mary Heaton
Vorse, Dr. Mary Halton, Jack Reed, Dr. Robinson, Frances Brooks
Ackerman, Walter Lippmann, then of the _New Republic_, and Mrs. Thomas
Hepburn, the Kathy Houghton of my Corning childhood, all were there.
As we were about to go in to dinner, Rose Pastor Stokes, the Chairman,
took me aside and said, “Something very disturbing has happened. We’ve
just been talking to Dr. Jacoby. He has a speech ready in which he
intends to blast you to the skies for interfering in what should be a
strictly medical matter. Remember he’s greatly admired and he’s speaking
here tonight for the doctors. We meant to have you come at the end of
the program but now we’re going to put you first so that you can spike
his guns.”
My trepidation was increased. Nevertheless, I plunged into my carefully
prepared maiden speech in behalf of birth control. Fortunately I had
already planned to upbraid the doctors who daily saw the conditions
which had so moved me and yet made it necessary for a person like
myself, not equipped as they were, to stir up public opinion. It was
like carrying coals to Newcastle; they should have been teaching me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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