Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.Sanger, Margaret
History
Margaret Sanger: an autobiography.
Sanger, Margaret
Birth control -- United States -- Biography; Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966
After the second number the focus had been birth control. Within six
months we had received over ten thousand letters, arriving in
accelerating volume. Most of them read, “Will your magazine give
accurate and reliable information to prevent conception?” This I could
not print. Realizing by now it was going to be a fairly big fight, I was
careful not to break the law on such a trivial point. It would have been
ridiculous to have a single letter reach the wrong destination;
therefore, I sent no contraceptive facts through the mails.
However, I had no intention of giving up this primary purpose. I began
sorting and arranging the material I had brought back from France,
complete with formulas and drawings, to be issued in a pamphlet where I
could treat the subject with more delicacy than in a magazine, writing
it for women of extremely circumscribed vocabularies. A few hundred
dollars were needed to finance publication of _Family Limitation_, as I
named it, and I approached Theodore Schroeder, a lawyer of standing and
an ardent advocate of free speech. He had been left a fund by a certain
Dr. Foote who had produced a book on _Borning Better Babies_, and I
thought my pamphlet might qualify as a beneficiary.
Dr. Abraham Brill was just then bringing out a translation of Freud, in
whom Schroeder was much interested. He asked whether I had been
psychoanalyzed.
“What is psychoanalysis?”
He looked at me critically as from a great height. “You ought to be
analyzed as to your motives. If, after six weeks, you still wish to
publish this pamphlet, I’ll pay for ten thousand copies.”
“Well, do you think I won’t want to go on?”
“I don’t only think so. I’m quite sure of it.”
“Then I won’t be analyzed.”
I took the manuscript to a printer well known for his liberal tendencies
and courage. He read the contents page by page and said, “You’ll never
get this set up in any shop in New York. It’s a Sing Sing job.”
Every one of the twenty printers whom I tried to persuade was afraid to
touch it. It was impossible ever, it seemed, to get into print the
contents of that pamphlet.
Meanwhile, following the March issue the May and July numbers of the
_Woman Rebel_ had also been banned. In reply to each of the formal
notices I inquired which particular article or articles had incurred
disapproval, but could obtain no answer.
At that time I visualized the birth control movement as part of the
fight for freedom of speech. How much would the postal authorities
suppress? What were they really after? I was determined to prod and goad
until some definite knowledge was obtained as to what was “obscene,
lewd, and lascivious.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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