Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.Sanger, Margaret
History
Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- United States -- Biography; Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966
Two uniformed policemen came for me, and with them I was willing to ride
in the patrol wagon to the station. As we started I heard a scream from
a woman who had just come around the corner on her way to the clinic.
She abandoned her baby carriage, rushed through the crowd, and cried,
“Come back! Come back and save me!” For a dozen yards she ran after the
van before someone caught her and led her to the sidewalk. But the last
thing I heard was this poor distracted mother, shrieking and calling,
“Come back! Come back!”
_Chapter Eighteen_
LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST
“_All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long._”
OSCAR WILDE
Looking back upon this period fraught with emotional distress, I have no
regrets. But, looking ahead, I am grateful that there looms no necessity
for repeating those passionate, dangerous, and menacing days.
Out of the raid four separate cases resulted: Ethel was charged with
violating Section 1142 of the Penal Code, designed to prevent
dissemination of contraceptive information; Fania with having sold an
allegedly indecent book entitled _What Every Girl Should Know_; I,
first, with having conducted a clinic in violation of the same Section
1142, second, with violating Section 1530 by maintaining a public
nuisance.
I claimed that Section 1142 which forbade contraceptive information to,
for, and by anyone was unconstitutional, because no state was permitted
to interfere with a citizen’s right to life or liberty, and such denial
was certainly interference. Experience had shown it did the case no good
merely to defend such a stand in a lower court; it must be carried to a
higher tribunal, and only a lawyer versed in whereases and whatsoevers
and inasmuch-ases could accomplish this. But I was still hopeful of
finding one who was able to see that the importance of birth control
could not be properly emphasized if we bowed too deeply before the slow
and ponderous majesty of the law.
The attorney who offered himself, J. J. Goldstein, had a background
which made him more sympathetic than other lawyers, even the most
liberal. He was one of those young Jewish men of promise who had been
guided through adolescence by Mary Simkhovitch, founder of Greenwich
House, and Lillian Wald, founder of the Henry Street Settlement. The
seeds of social service had been planted in him; his legal training only
temporarily slowed down their growth.
J.J. had placed himself in a difficult position for a youthful Tammany
Democrat, some day to be a magistrate; he might have been forgiven more
easily had he received a larger fee. Though he had to be convinced that
we declined to have anything to do with political wire-pulling, he
fought for us valiantly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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