December 28, 2012

feminist manifesto

гендерный переход
Патриарховодство
есть резон разбить Манифест по проблемам (например, Вводная часть о феминизме, трудовые права, репродуктивные права, борьба с сексистскими стереотипами, определение и отказ от культуры насилия, проблемы просвещения, сексуального в том числе, вопрос об оплате труда по воспроизводству населения, проблема проституции, и т.п.), и каждая сможет взять на себя ответственность за разработку текста по конкретной проблеме, собирая мнения из сети, записывая их и формулируя параграфы, которые войдут в Манифест. В феврале этот текст можно будет собрать целиком, обсудить окончательный вариант и с ним выйти на съезд.

December 26, 2012

Alfred Sauvy

В блоге Российского евгенического союза -- статейка про евгенические рассуждение Альфреда Сови.

December 24, 2012

Anarchy in the U.S.A.

‘Sasha and Emma,’ by Paul Avrich and Karen Avrich

новая книжка про им.порт и импорт.ёров анархии и террора в США, вышла недавно. Пол Аврич -- оч известный историк анархизма, одессит
реценция NYT
Саша и Эмма
Выступление Э. Голдман
the bullet from Berkman’s pistol . . . went straight through the heart of the Homestead strike. (рабочее движение США не пошло в сторону террора, а вот наше пошло: сначала индивидуального, потом массового, потом необоснованно массового, и никак не может с него свернуть)

непонятная фраза: Except for a brief period after Berkman’s release 14 years later, their sexual relationship ended, but they remained friends and comrades and maintained their — one can only call it love — for the rest of their lives.
(видимо отношения между ними были какой-то разновидностью постреволюционного БДСМ, мб, Тургенев-Виардо, только хуже)-- Berkman was a difficult man, kind to those close to him but constitutionally incapable of accepting authority

любопытно: Candace Falk, the director of the Emma Goldman Papers project

почти Вовочка: Berkman’s life. Born in 1870, the son of a wealthy merchant in Russia, he was inspired by the political ferment that resulted in the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881.

фактура: In 1919, after serving their sentences, Goldman and Berkman, neither of whom was an American citizen, were deported to Russia. Critical of the authoritarian Bolsheviks, they left the Soviet Union in 1921 and began years of exile in Europe, mostly in France. Berkman died in Nice in 1936, killing himself in response to continued ill health. Goldman, who had the opportunity to work with anarchist forces during the Spanish Civil War, died in Toronto in 1940.

When she petitioned to be allowed to enter the United States in 1934, her request was supported by Sherwood Anderson, John Dewey, Sinclair Lewis, Margaret Sanger, Eugene O’Neill and Dorothy Canfield Fisher. “Everyone is an anarchist who loves liberty and hates oppression,” Goldman declared during that visit. That would be pretty much everyone. 

December 21, 2012

Sandra Fluke

Sandra Fluke
In Sandra Fluke, women found an inspirational leader who channeled Sanger’s call to arms, and was widely compared to Sanger in the press, both positively and negatively. As the attacks on Sanger continued and intensified, and the Sanger Papers expanded its outreach to bring attention to the only resource that students, scholars and the general public can turn to for accurate information in historical context.

source 

December 20, 2012

Darwin museum collected Koltsov memorial

основное сообщение в евгеническом блоге

December 18, 2012

60: Population Council Timeline

For more than 60 years, the Population Council has been generating ideas, providing evidence, and delivering solutions that have improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

timeline itself (forgotten, sorry)

Dittrick Medical History Center

It is comprised of the museum, archives, and collections of rare books, artifacts, and images. The Center originated as part of the Cleveland Medical Library Association (est. 1894) and today functions as an interdisciplinary study center within the College of Arts and Sciences of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.

December 17, 2012

Aletta Jacobs

Алетта Якобс -- пионерка современного контроля рождаемости, первая женщина, выпускница Гронингенского университета

надо установить каким образом она связана с самым современным контрацептивом (Dutch cap)

упг: с сотрудником ежэ снюхался, обещано содействие, но уже праздники, и ваще подозреваю, что автора уже нет с нами

astrology

любопытно, что с Сэгнер мы одного еврознака Virgo ♍ (Virgo is said to be dedicated to serving.  They are independent, critical and analytical.  According to huffingtonpost.com, "In ancient times, a Virgo was a woman who was not the property of a man and therefore had the legal right to just say 'no'."):
As early as 1917, Sanger commissioned astrological charts from Elizabeth Aldrich, a New York astrologer.   More early evidence of this preoccupation appears in April of 1922.  Sanger is quoted as saying, "We must get all our work done before 1925. For my horiscope tells me I must begin then to do spiritual work & lie low with public causes."  However, the majority of discussion of astrology appears in letters to her good friend, Gladys Plummer DeWitow.  They write back and forth, discussing Sanger's "chart" and other spiritual musings.  They address what "birthdays mean cosmically" and the necessity of spirituality.

For more on Sanger and psychic phenomenon, see "Hands Up!" published in our Newsletter in 2003.

ист
из вики: Люди, рождающиеся под мутабельными знаками, обладают подвижностью ума, быстрой реакцией на внешние события, стремятся уйти от давления на них, склонны интриговать, а не добиваться своего напрямую. Имеют в себе свойства и кардинального и фиксированного креста, а потому в глазах окружающих кажутся нестабильными в своем поведении, изменчивыми.

copyright anarchy

В 1891 году Лев Толстой отправил в редакцию журналов «Русские ведомости» и «Новая жизнь» письмо, в котором написал:
Милостивый государь, вследствие часто получаемых мною запросов о разрешении издавать, переводить и ставить на сцене мои сочинения, прошу вас поместить в издаваемой вами газете следующее моё заявление: Предоставляю всем желающим право безвозмездно издавать в России и за границей, по-русски и в переводах, а равно и ставить на сценах все те из моих сочинений, которые были написаны мною с 1881 года и напечатаны в XII томе моих полных сочинений издания 1886 года, и в XIII томе, изданном в нынешнем 1891 году, равно и все мои не изданные в России и могущие вновь появиться после нынешнего дня сочинения.
мысль Толстого укреплял философ Николай Фёдоров, «московский Сократ», работавший в Румянцевском музее. Граф относился к нему с бесконечным уважением, почитая за святого и праведника, на которого надо равняться. С его идеями он познакомился в 1881 году

December 13, 2012

Survetta House

... many  ... well-known political and cultural figures have chosen to stay at Survetta House, including Gregory Peck, Evita Peron, and Japan's Crown Prince Akihito.

MSPP
Sanger's travels
по ссылке фотка Сэнгер на коньках (большая, взял себе)

Gloria Feld at MSPP

GF: I don’t waste my breath. They usually are deliberately misrepresenting the facts. They are mostly people who want women barefoot and pregnant again.

Мне кажется, что всё-таки не  misrepresenting, а какая-то странная логика, причём именно в духе Логоса, какого-то неведамага демиурга a la Hegel. На земле как-то всё попроще и поживее. Но иррациональная логика = логика. Если человек считает, что главное спасти душу, то women barefoot and pregnant again его очень мало колышут.

December 9, 2012

unfortunately understand nothing

Tres científicos prueban que las políticas contraceptivas no frenan sino que disparan el aborto
Expertos de Moscú y Rostock han confirmado las misteriosas diferencias estadísticas entre Rusia, Bielorrusia y Ucrania.
гугел ЖЖот: Три политологи проверить контрацепции выстрел, но не остановить аборты Эксперты из Москвы и Росток подтвердил таинственное статистических различий между Россией, Белоруссией и Украиной.

November 30, 2012

Women and Social Movements, 1840 --

Бег алкоголекофф по кромке
Women and Very Social Movements
Women and Social Movements, International is a landmark collection of primary materials. Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made, this collection lets you see how women’s social movements shaped much of the events and attitudes that have defined modern life. We will be adding regularly to the database to bring it to its final complement of 150,000 pages of documents.

This release includes about 4,600 sources spanning approximately 150,000 pages, as well as links to 124 online resources. More»

Women Activists Discuss Their History
The editors of Women and Social Movements International organized two extraordinary sessions at the 2011 Berkshire Conference in Women’s History, assembling six leaders who have shaped women’s international activism through the United Nations’ Conferences on Women, 1975-1995. Click here to link to these sessions.

WIG Blog and Discussion Group launched, October 2010

IPPF timeline


скрал с сайта IPPF
жаль опубликовали после моего опуса :(

November 29, 2012

Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau

Leaders Of Birth Control Clinic At Court 
MS with the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau physicians and nurses who were arrested in the 1929 police raid. From left: Sigrid Brestwell, Antoinette Field, Elizabeth Pissort, Margaret Sanger, Hannah Mayer Stone, and Marcella Sideri. (Corbis)
MSPP
For more on the Clinical Research Bureau raid, see Sanger’s “The Birth Control Raid.”

Полиция действовала в стиле наших нонешних ментов, и потерпевшие получили широкую поддержку не только гражданского общества (the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters), но и от врачебной корпорации, поскольку менты унесли истории болезней.

Бюро начало работу в 1923 году
Лига образовалась за полгода до предоставления женщинам избирательных прав в апреле 1920 (19 поправка, предлженная впервые в 1878 году Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton)

main idea

Что любопытно?
Начинала она свой нелёгкий, но успешный путь в левой тусовке Ист Сайда с любимым автором Ленина и красной Эммой, а потом даже за Кеннеди не голосовала, поправела.
Левая шайка хорошо генерит идеи: давай-давай, но работать не умеет, даже эксу не может провести, нужен профессионализм.
Правая сторона сильна реализацией, доведением не столько до ума, хотя и этого хватает, но до серийного выпуска.
Мб, успешность и состоит в этом переходе от идеи к практике.

November 28, 2012

Happy 60th Birth Day, IPPF

эта статейка была написана для демоскопа, но он поставил её неаккуратно, хотя ролик присутствует, что для них -- технологический прорыв :) Ниже в основном то же самое с небольшими поправками и дополнением, письмом из редакции, enjoy ...
me 4 demoscope ippf 60

Самое успешное социальное движение

ХХ века

60 лет Международной Федерации Планируемого Родительства

Отделение сексуальности от репродукции стало самым высоким и дальним прыжком из царства необходимости в царство свободы, сделанным человечеством в ХХ веке. Свершению этого прыжка в немалой степени поспособствовала Международная федерация планируемого родительства, МФПР (International Planned Parenthood Federation, IPPF). По мнению Александра Сэнгера - внука Маргарет Сэнгер и директора МФПР по Западному полушарию, движение за контроль рождаемости является наиболее успешным социальным движением ХХ века.

(нужное место/фраза с 1 мин 55 сек)
29 ноября этого года в Кейптауне (Южно-Африканская Республика) пройдёт чествование Международной Федерации Планируемого Родительства в связи с её 60-летием.
Sanger+Gandhi
М. Сэнгер в гостях у Махатмы Ганди

Организация и структура

МФПР является общественной благотворительной организацией, продвигающей всеобщий доступ к контрацепции и безопасному аборту, репродуктивные и сексуальные права, гендерное равенство; она предоставляет услуги по планированию семьи, профилактике инфекций, передающихся половым путем, включая ВИЧ/СПИД, уделяя особенное внимание уязвимым слоям населения - бедным, молодёжи, подростками и др.
МФПР состоит из ассоциаций-членов, АЧ (member associations, MA), как правило, национальных или субнациональных. Сайт МФПР сообщает о 152 АЧ, работающих в 172 странах [думаю: тут они путают, на самом деле наоборот]. Только в 2011 году члены Федерации предоставили услуги 33 миллионам человек, предотвратили 2,1 млн. нежелательных беременностей и 624 тыс. небезопасных абортов.
На сегодняшний день исполнительный орган, секретариат МФПС, включает в себя центральный офис в Лондоне и шесть региональных представительств в:
  • Африке (Найроби, Кения)
  • Арабском мире (Тунис)
  • Восточной, Юго-Восточной Азии и Океании (Куала-Лумпур, Малайзия)
  • Европе (Брюссель, Бельгия)
  • Южной Азии (Нью-Дели, Индия)
  • Западном полушарии (Нью-Йорк, США)
Каждое региональное бюро курирует, помогает, в частности финансово, ассоциациям-членам Федерации. Региональные представительства посылают четверых своих делегатов на собрание совета управляющих, которое проводится раз в два года и определяет глобальную политику Федерации. Миллионы волонтёров сотрудничают с АЧ по всему миру. Добровольчество и самостоятельность – кредо МФПР, унаследованное от матерей-основательниц, которые были тесно связаны с анархическими движениями, в частности, волонтёры принимают участие в планировании и управлении.

История и демография

Идея планируемого родительства - рождения желанных детей в подходящее для семьи время - имеет длинную историю, начиная с XVIII века; её первыми выразителями принято считать Томаса Мальтуса и Фрэнсиса Плейса. Одним из первых исторических событий, способствовавших её распространению, был процесс королева против Брэдлоу и Безант (1876), последние обвинялись в аморализме за публикацию книги Нолтона о контроле рождаемости и применении контрацепции. В результате процесса Брэдлоу стал депутатом английского парламента и была организована Мальтузианская лига (1877). Лига занималась просветительской работой, боролась за свободу обсуждения методов планирования семьи, контрацепции, предполагая, что причиной бедности и страданий рабочего класса являются нерационально большие размеры семей.

Вслед за Британией аналогичные лиги были организованы в Германии, Франции и Голландии. В 1892 году голландская лига (д-р Алетта Якобс) открыла в Амстердаме первую в истории клинику планирования семьи. В клинике обучали использованию изобретённой в 1880е д-ром Вильгельмом Менсингой диафрагмы, известной также как голландский колпачок (Dutch cap). В период действия лиг рождаемость упала во многих странах. О причинах этого падения единого мнения нет, но мальтузианцы [на самом деле уже неомальтузианцы, разницы между ними оставим на потом] склонны считать это своим успехом.

После ряда международных неомальтузианских конференций (в 1925 году состоялась шестая) лидеры движения поняли, что нуждаются в расширении поддержки. В 1927 году в Женеве по инициативе Маргарет Сэнгер (при поддержке её мужа крупного бизнесмена Н. Сли и гранта Фонда Рокфеллера) прошла первая международная конференция по народонаселению. Несмотря на то, что идея контроля рождаемости наткнулась на дружное сопротивление участников конференции (практически все -- мужчины, а руководила женщина, не характерно для того времени), важность демографического фактора для решения социальных, экономических и политических проблем объединила всех. Во исполнение решений конференции в 1928 году был учреждён Международный союз по научному изучению народонаселения (International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, IUSSP).

Однако, против неомальтузианцев сыграло изменение объективной ситуации в мире после первой мировой войны, закончившейся разрухой и кризисом, перешедшим в длительную депрессию и сопровождавшимся массовой безработицей. Практически одновременно в 1936 году в Британии вышли книги Гласса, Карра-Сондерса и Кучинского, предупреждавшие о реальности депопуляции при сохранении текущего демографического режима. Газета Таймс опубликовала обзор результатов исследований демографов с некоторыми преувеличениями, как это водится у журналистов. Разгром движения довершила начавшаяся вторая мировая война, нацисты запретили деятельность соответствующих организаций на подконтрольных им территориях.

После войны оказалось, что территория Европы практически полностью зачищена от идей контроля над рождаемостью, их осколки остались только в незатронутых войной уголках континента, в частности в Швеции. В 1946 году Шведская лига сексуальногообразования собрала представителей Британии, Голландии, Дании, Норвегии и США. На этой первой послевоенной встрече было принято решение организовать постоянно действующую международную организацию. Также было решено через два года провести более представительную встречу, для подготовки к которой создать оргкомитет.
ippf 60 supporting pix
ДДТ

Следующая встреча состоялась в Четлхеме в 1948 году. Энциклопедический словарь «Народонаселение» относит создание МФПР именно к этому событию (второй конференции 1948 г.), что противоречит мнению самой МФПР. После второй конференции оргкомитет получил грант в размере $5000 от Фонда Бруша по улучшению человека (The Brush Foundation for Race Betterment) и бесплатное помещение от евгенического общества (Eugenics Society), ныне институт Гальтона. Члены оргкомитета (по два от Британии, Голландии и Швеции и трое от США) продолжили ежегодные встречи в Лондоне и установили контакты с представителями около 20 стран.

После второй мировой войны изменились и объективные обстоятельства - технологии стали быстро распространяться по всему миру, включая страны за пределами Европы и Северной Америки. В частности, огромное влияние оказало применение ДДТ, практически уничтожившее переносчиков малярии, что привело к существенному снижению смертности во всём мире и соответственно к заметному росту населения. Огромный эффект в борьбе со смертностью дало широкое применение антибиотиков. Остававшаяся высокой рождаемость стала угрожать экономическому росту. Это способствовало возрождению неомальтузианской идеи.

Рис 1. Динамика ожидаемой продолжительности жизни при рождении в некоторых странах после 1950 года, мужчины (оценки ООН)

В 1948 году в Японии по инициативе социалистической партии был принят закон о защите евгеники (優生保護法, Yusei Hogo Hō, англ. Eugenic Protection Law), определивший правила стерилизации и декриминализовавший аборт по медицинским показаниям, дополнение 1949 года легализовало аборт по социальным показаниям. По оценке, с 1948 по 1955 гг. в Японии было произведено более миллиона абортов в рамках закона и приблизительно столько же за его рамками. В 1954 году консультативный совет по населению рекомендовал правительству Японии включить контрацепцию в программы медицинского или социального страхования, чтобы она была доступна бесплатно, либо по приемлемым и доступным ценам.

me 4 demoscope ippf 60В отчёте о результатах переписи населения Индии 1951 года было записано, что рождение в семье, в которой уже есть трое или более живых детей является непредусмотрительным. Правительство Индии обратилось к Всемирной Организации Здравоохранения с просьбой провести обследования о возможностях использования метода ритма и безопасного периода. Это говорит о том, что контрацептивная технология того времени находилась на уровне 1880х годов, то есть не продвинулась дальше голландского колпачка. Премьер-министр страны Д. Неру неоднократно заявлял о необходимости предоставления контрацепции желающим. В 1951 году Ассоциация планируемого родительства Бомбея провела всеиндийскую конференцию по планированию семьи. Узнав об этом, М. Сэнгер обратилась с просьбой к лидеру Ассоциации леди Рама Рау принять международную конференцию.

Вице-президент Индии и маршал Тито
Третья международная конференция по планируемому родительству состоялась в ноябре 1952 года в Бомбее (ныне Мумбаи). Именно эта конференция стала учредительной для МФПР. В ней участвовало 487 делегатов и наблюдателей из 14 стран мира. Открыл конференцию вице-президент Индии д-р Сарвепалли Радхакришнан, известный нашему читателю по двухтомнику «Индийская философия», вышедшему на русском языке в середине 1950-х (английское издание увидело свет в середине 1920-х)   [в 1949 году д-р Радхакришнан был послом Индии в Советском Союзе, в 1962-67 гг. — президентом Республики Индия]. В приветственной речи он согласовал традиции местных религий и учение Махатмы Ганди о недостижимом идеале и дозволенном в таком случае поведении с практикой уклонения от нежелательных рождений и ограничения размера семьи.

me 4 demoscope ippf 60
Элизе Оттисен-Йенсен (Оттар)
Первыми президентами МФПР стали Маргарет Сэнгер и леди Рама Рау, представлявшие США и Индию. Другими основателями стали ассоциации планируемого родительства Великобритании, Голландии, Гонконга, Западной Германии, Сингапура и Швеции. О Маргарет Сэнгер и её анархистской закваске уже писал, она представляла американскую федерацию Планируемого родительства (Planned Parenthood Federation of America, PPFA), также известную как просто Planned Parenthood, начавшую свою историю ещё в 1916 году, а настоящее имя получившую в 1942. В организации конференции активное участие также приняла Элизе Оттисен-Йенсен (Оттар), одна из основательниц Шведской лиги сексуального образования, которая и сейчас является ведущей организацией в области сексуального и репродуктивного здоровья и прав. Оттар тесно сотрудничала с анархо-синдикалистской центральной организацией рабочих Швеции (Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganisation, SAC).

Сразу после конференции Индия приняла первый 5-летний план, включивший финансирование программы планирования семьи по линии министерства здравоохранения в размере £540 тыс. В том же году начал работу Совет по народонаселению Нью-Йорка (Population Council of New York). Совет имеет свои корни в дискредитировавшем себя движения евгеники. Первым председателем Совета стал Фредерик Осборн, лидер американского евгенического общества. Совет известен своими биомедицинскими (ему принадлежит патент Norplant) и демографическими исследованиями, oн издаёт один из лучших в мире демографических жyрнaлов Population and Development Review.

В 1953 году в Стокгольме состоялась очередная конференция движения за планируемое родительство. На ней была принята конституция организации, определившая целью №1 прогресс посредством образования и научных исследований в части доступности планирования семьи и ответственного родительства в интересах благополучия семьи и общества. Кроме этого, было определено два условия для принятия будущих членов: (1) отсутствие коммерческих интересов, (2) расовой или иной дискриминации.

эновид
Эновид
В 1954 г. в Риме состоялась всемирная конференция по народонаселению, впервые под эгидой ООН. МФПР приняла в ней участие в качестве наблюдателя. Сотрудничество с ООН постоянно расширялось и углублялось, и в 1973 году Экономический и социальный совет ООН присвоил МФПР высший консультативный статус, признавая таким образом участие Федерации в большинстве мероприятий ООН. С 1954 по 1994 конференции ООН по народонаселению проводились каждые 10 лет, в Белграде, Бухаресте, Мехико и Каире. Кроме этого, в 1954 г. при содействии МФПР Грегори Пинкус году получил небольшой грант для исследования контрацептивных свойств соединений прогестерона. Он же в 1959 году возглавил исследовательский комитет МФПР, одновременно были учреждены медицинский комитет федерации во главе с Аланом Гутмахером и подкомитет полевых испытаний во главе с Кристофером Титце. С тех пор и до настоящего времени МФПР издаёт Руководство по предоставлению медицинского обслуживания в области сексуального и репродуктивного здоровья.

На конференции МФПР 1955 года в Токио участники заслушали два доклада о методах контрацепции, вскоре перевернувших мир: Тенери Такео Оты и Ацуми Исихамы о внутриматочной спирали и Грегори Пинкуса о работе в области гормональной контрацепции. В 1959 году на конференции в Нью-Дели Пинкус уже доложил о результатах полевых испытаний, показавших 96% эффективность нового метода контрацепции. На заключительном заседании конференции д-р Радхакришнан сказал: «…неправильно думать, что сексуальный инстинкт и инстинкт продолжения рода, хотя они идут вместе, всегда должны идти вместе. Секс является выражением любви и средством продолжения рода. Эти две вещи могут различаться, и неправильно считать, что вы должны подавлять сексуальный инстинкт, если вы не хотите иметь ребёнка. Репрессии не являются правильным средством».

На этой же конференции М. Сэнгер отошла от дел и руководство МФПР перешло к Элизе Оттисен-Йенсен (Оттар), к числу наиболее известных ее высказываний относится: «я мечтаю о том дне, когда каждый новорожденный будет желанен, когда мужчины и женщины будут равны и когда сексуальность будет выражаться в близости, радости и нежности». В мае 1960 г. Управление по контролю качества пищевых продуктов и лекарственных средств США (FDA) разрешило продажу эновида в качестве контрацептива. В 1960-70-е гг. произошла мировая сексуальная революция, выразившаяся в распространении контрацепции, появлении откровенных сцен в кинофильмах и СМИ, терпимости к внебрачному сексу и альтернативным сексуальным отношениям, а также декриминализации аборта. За всем этим стоит сами понимаете кто ...

Консервативный откат

Не бывает революций без контрреволюций. В конце ХХ века репродуктивное и сексуальное здоровье вновь стали предметом активной политической борьбы. Относительно недавно норвежская ассоциация даже сменила название на «Секс и политика» (Sex og politikk). Откат начался со всемирной конференции в Мехико в 1984 году, когда США известили мир, что отныне их политика помощи в области планирования семьи не будет распространяться на программы, практикующие аборт либо отстаивающие право на аборт. Изменение политики было основано на принятой в 1973 году американским конгрессом поправки Хелмса: американская помощь не может быть использована для оплаты аборта как метода планирования семьи, а также для мотивирования или принуждения любого лица к аборту [No foreign assistance funds may be used to pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortions]. После конференции в Мехико американское влияние на мировую политику улучшения сексуального и репродуктивного здоровья в мире заметно упало, появились другие спонсоры. Сама политика получила название правила глобального кляпа (global gag rule), или политики Мехико (Mexico City Policy). Эта политика была отменена сменившим Р. Рейгана президентом-демократом Биллом Клинтоном в январе 1993 года, вновь введена в действие в январе 2001 года президентом-республиканцем Д. Бушем и вновь отменена 23 января 2009, через 2 дня после вступления в должность Б. Обамы. Политика отражает внутриамериканскую общественную дискуссию и отражает степень влияния религиозных неоконсерваторов, существуют обоснованные подозрения, что морализаторство по проблеме абортов и однополых браков стоили М. Ромни Белого дома на недавно прошедших выборах.

Рис 2. Коэффициент суммарной рождаемости в некоторых странах после 1950 года (оценки ООН)


Планирование семьи в России

Социалистические страны, исключая Югославию и Польшу, практически игнорировали существование МФПР. После падения Берлинской стены положение сменилось на противоположное, и в настоящее время только Белоруссия и Туркмения не имеют национальных ассоциаций, сотрудничающих с МФПР и являющихся членами Федерации.

Российская ассоциация «Народонаселение и развитие» (РАНИР, ранее известная как «Российская ассоциация планирования семьи»), основана в 1991 году и является аккредитованным членом МФПР с 1993 года. Это добровольная неправительственная некоммерческая организация. Демоскоп писал об этой организации в связи с ее 15-летием.

Термин "планирование семьи" сегодня непопулярен в нашей стране. Противники свободы репродуктивного выбора, а их немало, намеренно искажая суть планирования семьи, связывают его исключительно со снижением рождаемости и сокращением численности населения. К сожалению, их активная пропаганда приносит результаты. Требуется определенное мужество, чтобы отстаивать необходимость программ планирования семьи в России. РАНИР, как все, кто работает в этой сфере, часто встречает непонимание и даже противодействие. Для специалиста очевидно, что планирование семьи является средством достичь желаемого числа детей в оптимальные для родителей сроки и ведет не к снижению рождаемости, а к сокращению абортов. Хорошо налаженная служба планирования семьи может способствовать повышению рождаемости за счет улучшения репродуктивного здоровья населения. Девиз РАНИР, с которым трудно не согласиться, - "каждый ребенок имеет право быть желанным, любимым и здоровым".
Несмотря на временные откаты, мировое движение за планируемое родительство неуклонно растёт. Причина этого неуклонного роста вполне очевидна: движение отвечает глубинным потребностям человека, являясь организационным отражением объективного процесса мировой истории -- демографического перехода, в частности, перехода рождаемости от неконтролируемой к полностью осознанной.
Всё прогрессивное человечесто желает Международной федерации планируемого родительства дальнейших успехов и плодотворной работы не только на благо всех нас, но наших противников, которым наши услуги также нужны.
Борис Денисов,
специально для блога МС по-русски
а регрессивное не желает -- 
планировал event ещё как-то отпиарить и обратился в одну газету с предложением напечатать эту заметку, ответили следующим образом:


Уважаемый Борис Петрович!

Боюсь, что в таком виде статью мы опубликовать не сможем. Слишком комплиментарно по отношению к этой организации написано, а ведь ее деятельность неоднозначна как в прошлом, так и в настоящем, что вызывает оживленные дискуссии не только в нашей стране.

Хотелось бы, чтобы в статье были представлены разные точки зрения, пусть читатель сам решает, кто прав. И надо бы поближе к медицинским аспектам проблемы, а не к социальным. Я бы не стал не страницах нашей газеты обвинять в мракобесии противников однополых браков. Они и в более сексуально раскрепощенной Европе  принимаются отнюдь не на "ура!", как показывают последние события. В общем, надо дать несколько в другом ключе, более беспристрастном, а спешить с публикацией смысла нет - всё равно к дате мы уже не успеваем....

С наилучшими пожеланиями
...ХхХ...
Примечание: на фотке вице-президент Индии и маршал Тито -- в Кремле в 1956 году начинают движение неприсоединения, теперь уже его, наверно, никто и не вспомнит

November 15, 2012

Who is Dorothy Brush ?

Dorothy H. Brush, Planned Parenthood activist, whose wealth came from Charles Francis Brush (1849–1929), who invented the arc lamp for street lights and founded the Brush Electric Company. Draper's version of Planned Parenthood was to pass the Involuntary Sterilization laws in 15 different U.S. States.

November 9, 2012

I love them both

The University of British Columbia recently conducted a poll of liberal Democrat and conservative Republican academics in an effort to find out whether they share any common moral ground.  The study showed participants photographs of influential historical figures of the 20th Century and asked them to rate them. Researchers were trying to determine whether there were deep divides between American liberals and conservatives.  In the main, they found more consensus than they expected.
The study looked for five moral foundations or themes and asked the subjects to rate whether each person embodied the following moral foundations:
  • Care, or “basic concerns for the suffering of others, including virtues of caring and compassion.”
  • Fairness, or “concerns about unfair treatment, inequality, and more abstract notions of justice.”
  • Loyalty, or “concerns related to obligations of group membership, such as loyalty, self-sacrifice and vigilance against betrayal.”
  • Authority, “concerns related to social order and the obligations of hierarchical relationships, such as obedience, respect, and proper role fulfillment.”
  • Purity/sanctity: “concerns about physical and spiritual contagion, including virtues of chastity, wholesomeness and control of desires.”

From the most divisive to those who most agreed upon:
  • Margaret Sanger
  • Ronald Reagan
  • Margaret Thatcher
  • Harvey Milk
  • Ho Chi Minh
  • Che Guevara
  • Eleanor Roosevelt
  • V.I. Lenin
  • Billy Graham
  • Muhammad Ali
  • Robert Kennedy
  • Winston Churchill
  • Pope John Paul II
  • Ayatullah Khomeini
  • Mikhail Gorbachev
  • Charles Lindbergh
  • Mao Zedong
  • Teddy Roosevelt
  • Marilyn Monroe
  • Franklin Roosevelt
  • Martin Luther King
  • Nelson Mandela
  • Princess Diana
  • John F. Kennedy
  • David Ben-Gurion
  • Mohandas Gandhi
  • Rosa Parks
  • Andrei Sakharov
  • Emmeline Pankhurst
  • Mother Teresa
  • Bill Wilson
  • Lech Walesa
  • Helen Keller
  • Anne Frank
  • Tenzing Norgay
  • Bruce Lee
  • Jackie Robinson
  • Edmund Hillary
  • Adolf Hitler
  • Pelé
For more see the UBC press release or the study itself.

source

Mothers, do not kill. do not take life, but prevent

Sanger modeled the Brownsville Clinic after the birth control clinics she had observed in Holland in 1915. For ten cents each woman received Sanger’s pamphlet What Every Girl Should Know, a short lecture on the female reproductive system, and instructions on the use of various contraceptives. The Clinic served more than 100 women on the first day and some 400 over the next few days.

Boardwalk Empire

оказывается МС, или её дух присутствует в американских сериалах
подробнее тут
и тут

«Подпо́льная импе́рия» (англ. Boardwalk Empire) — американский телесериал кабельной сети HBO о зарождении крупного игорного центра Атлантик-Сити в 20-е годы XX века во времена «сухого закона».

birth control following the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920

Felipe Puerto Carrillo (1872-1924)
Roberto Haberman
It seems that he was one of a group who translated her 1914 pamphlet, Family Limitation, reprinted it, and through the Socialist Party distributed thousands of copies to the people of the Yucatan.
The result of this propaganda has been the popularizing of the pamphlet to such an extent that the first edition of 5,000 has been exhausted the day after its appearance, and the necessity of the printing of another of 10,000 which is going to be distributed to all school teachers, and marrying officials throughout the State. (Haberman to Sanger, Mar. 22, 1922, Sanger Papers, Library of Congress microfilm, reel 19, frame 253.)
What was unique about the Mexican situation in 1922, was that the government supported birth control and that the power of the law and the courts defended the work of birth control activists. When the Knights of Columbus sought to have the pamphlet banned, District Attorney Arturo Cisneros Canto (1887-1963) released a statement refusing to prosecute:
“The Attorney General’s Office cannot shape its manner of proceedings to the narrow-minded and antiquated criteria of morality, the result of deep-rooted religious prejudices, which crops out in your petition. The Executive of the State wishes to have it made clear that forever have gone the prosecutions which have no other cause than moral fanaticism which filled with horror the vast period of clerical domination of the Middle Ages. As long as the present socialist government directs public destiny, the Attorney General’s office will not undertake any  prosecutions for futile ideas of morality, since prosecutions in the name of morality have at all times been the most odious pretext of which religion made use so as to destroy its enemies.” (From the Diario Official, Mar. 14, 1922, as published in the Birth Control.)
In 1924 Governor Carrillo Puerto was assassinated, and support for feminist and socialist reforms there evaporated.

trip to Germany

Sanger's tour of several German cities in the summer of 1920 informed her reform work for years to come. Her insights into the plight of poor German women gave a new urgency to her belief in the need for women everywhere to define and assert their reproductive rights. Her observations of German children shaped her views on eugenics and humanitarianism. Everything she saw reinforced her faith in Malthusian theory--her understanding of how over population inevitably leads to distress and human suffering, and forces political leaders to follow a path of expansionism and war." (Sanger's Hunger Games-A Postwar Germany Odyssey, Fall 2012.)

"The old-fashioned warrior who entered with sword and killed his victims outright has my respect after witnessing the 'Peace' conditions of Germany," she wrote shortly after leaving Europe. She aimed for shock value a few months later in a dinner speech before the Women's Economic Club in Philadelphia, when she suggested that rather than sending aid for starving children in Germany and other European countries, the United States should "send over a quantity of chloroform to put them out of their misery," because that would be the best thing for the children and the future of the world." (Sanger's Hunger Games-A Postwar Germany Odyssey, Fall 2012.)

For much more on Sanger's 1920 tour, see the newsletter article, Sanger's Hunger Games-A Postwar Germany Odyssey, Fall 2012, and Sanger's two-part article, "Women in Germany, Dec. 1920 and Jan. 1921, Birth Control Review.

foto: Margaret Sanger in the fall of 1920 after returning from her trip to Germany. (Courtesy of the Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College)

source 

Eleanor Roosevelt

September 28, 1933
It was President Roosevelt who had the courage, foresight and vision to raise his voice on behalf of the forgotten man, and is it not time for the enlightened women of this country to raise a voice in unison on behalf of the most forgotten of all living creatures, the overburdened child-bearing woman? Why not a new deal for the 43 million women of child-bearing age in this country whose future life, liberty and pursuit of happiness depend absolutely upon the knowledge of how to control the physiological function of motherhood?
We ask a “new deal” for the mother immortalized in poetry but neglected in fact–
A New Deal for the mother whose life is shadowed by constant fears of unwanted pregnancies–a New Deal for the mother who goes down into the valley of the shadow of death for every baby born–
A new consideration for the women who appeal for contraceptive knowledge to hospitals, clinics, and social agencies, and are denied this by priest and politician alike.
The solidarity of woman is as noble as the brotherhood of man and the opportunity is here today for all of us whose lives have been benefited by such knowledge to pass that right and privilege on to the underprivileged woman who is too poor, too weak, too inarticulate to battle for her own rights.

In 1933, Sanger was enmeshed in a multi-year lobbying campaign to remove birth control from the list of obscene materials that could not be mailed in the United States. This battle would not be won in Congress, but three years later in the courts, with the U.S. v. One Package decision.  Sanger’s papers document the struggles women endured to secure reproductive freedom, and should serve as a warning about what might occur should we be unwilling to work to keep them.

For more on Sanger and Eleanor Roosevelt, see our newsletter article, “Margaret Sanger and Eleanor Roosevelt – The Burden of Public Life.”

source

Helen Gurley Brown

Though Brown is best known as the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Magazine, it was her first book, Sex and the Single Girl that brought her to the public eye and secured her position at Cosmo. The book was a celebration of a single life in which women enjoyed as much sexual freedom as men did.....

Born in Green Forest, Arkansas, an outpost of the Ozarks, to a “hillbilly” family, Brown remembered her difficult upbringing as she searched for an alternate road; one unlike that of which her parents had experienced. Offering women a different view, and celebrating a lifestyle that didn’t conform to the societal norms for women at the time, was what drove her career....

Helen Gurley Brown’s landmark work Sex and the Single Girl was published in 1962 on the brink of the Sexual Revolution. Featuring the terms “sex” and “single girl,” the title alone was enough to incite collective gasps amongst traditionalists emerging from the sexually suffocating 1950s, a decade dedicated to celebrating the ins-and-outs of housewifery. Sex and the Single Girl offered a new path, one for women who failed to fit into the happily married mold....

What Every Girl Should Know was considered so controversial that the Post Office banned one of the columns since it dealt with venereal diseases. Because the words “gonorrhea” and “syphilis” were included in the article, they violated the Comstock Law of 1873, which outlawed lewd, lascivious, indecent, and obscene publications. Instead of the column, its readers turned to the The Call one Sunday morning, to see the article masthead — “What Every Girl Should Know” and then the words: “NOTHING by order of the Post Office.”..... (как же жывучы идиоты :)



Хелен Гёрли Браун (18 февраля 1922, Гринфорест, Арканзас - 13 августа 2012, Нью-Йорк) — американская писательница и журналистка, феминистка, знаменитый редактор женского журнала Cosmopolitan.

Sanger, “Tell Girls Things they Should Know,” 1916

Astor House Hotel, Shanghai

The highlight of Sanger’s trip to Shanghai was her April 30 speech on birth control at the Labor Museum. Sanger addressed the third anniversary meeting of the Family Reform Association, a group of about 800 people. Things went well until Sanger got to some of the more practical parts of her talk, when her interpreter, a young woman, became overcome with embarrassment by the frankness of Sanger’s topic.  She faltered and then suggested that a male doctor there complete the interpreting. MS suggested that she hand out pamphlets and give an extra supply to the Family Reformation Association to give to their members; and she was thanked elaborately by the Chairman. (New York Times, June 10, 1922.)

Neo-Malthusianism, Family Limitation, and Conscious Generation

While she supported some aspects of eugenics when it came to improving health and strengthening the human race, her goal  remained, first and foremost, to give all women the same freedom and autonomy enjoyed by men.  “Feminists,” she wrote in her 1938 autobiography (pp. 107-8), were trying to free women “from the new economic ideology but were doing nothing to free her from her biological subservience to man, which was the true cause of her enslavement.”
Sanger’s launched the movement in 1914 to give women that freedom, but the new movement needed a new name. As she and her colleagues sat around sifting through various options, she recalled,  she found that the terms already in use — Neo-Malthusianism, Family Limitation, and Conscious Generation seemed stuffy and lacked popular appeal.” She didn’t mind the word “control” but found the term “limitation” too narrow. She wrote, “my idea of control was bigger and freer.” Sanger wanted each woman to have the freedom to make her own choices and decisions. So they came up with the phrase “birth control.” That settled it–”the baby” as she dubbed the new movement “was named.”

source

Lunching on Millionaire’s Row

Born and raised in Corning, New York, Sanger came from a working class family in a factory town about two hours south of Buffalo. Her father worked as a stonemason, while several of her brothers worked at Corning Glass Works, the backbone of Corning’s economic success since its founding in 1851. Sanger returned to Corning numerous times– mostly to stay with her father or brothers who continued to live in in the city after she left home, and once to give a speech on birth control.

+ her relation to Buffalo

IPPF 60

Alexander Sanger: ... the most successful movement of the 20th century

IPPF started its journey in 1952, when 8 family planning associations joined together to fight for a cause.
60 years later and the organization is nearly 20 times larger. It works in 172 countries, delivers millions of services all over the world. And drives major changes in global policy.
Together, IPPF’s family makes up the largest sexual and reproductive health and rights organization in the world.
None of this would have been achieved without the untiring efforts of IPPF’s staff and volunteers, and our partners in government, civil society and business.
There is so much the Federation can be proud of: it continues to improve the health of millions by contributing to health systems strengthening around the world. It provides services where no government facilities exist, it trains health workers, reacts rapidly in emergency situations and provides expertise that others can learn from.

IPPF EN celebrates IPPF's 60th anniversary video

Meeting Gandhi


On December 3, she and Gandhi discussed birth control, population, and the status of women in India. Although Gandhi ultimately refused to endorse the use of contraception to control population growth, Sanger was deeply grateful for his hospitality and time: “Needless to say,” she wrote, “these three days were not ever to be forgotten or parallel in human experience.” (“The Humanity of Family Planning,” Third International Conference on Planned Parenthood, Report on Proceedings (Nov 26, 1952), 12, 54-55. [MSM S72:0776].)

Affordable Care Act (ACA)

Beginning last week, August 1, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), all new insurance policies provided by employers are required to cover contraception without any co-pay or deductibles, making birth control more widely accessible for women around the country.
This mandate comes as part of a larger package of eight new preventive care services for women, including annual well woman visits, domestic and interpersonal violence counseling, sexually transmitted infections counseling, and breastfeeding support and equipment.
Nearly 100 years ago, Margaret Sanger began a global birth control movement, stating famously that “no woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body” (“A Parents’ Problem or Woman’s?” Birth Control Review, March 1919, 6-7). Today is a clear victory for this movement, though it continues to be challenged. In breaking down the financial barrier between women and their necessary health care, the Affordable Care Act takes in important step in fully granting what Sanger strongly felt was “the means by which woman attains basic freedom.” (“Woman’s Error and Her Debt,” Birth Control Review, Aug. 1921, [MSM S70:0911-2]).
As an activist, Sanger spent much of her time advocating for the poor and working class women who lacked both the education and the money to practice birth control.
“We know that the well-to-do and those able to have a private or family physicians are equipped with knowledge. But the mothers seeking medical advice from hospitals or dispensaries are refused all help even though the life of a woman is endangered by another pregnancy. This can be remedied only when public health policies include this teaching in state programs” (“Birth Control and Civil Liberties,” Community Church of Boston, Oct. 13, 1940, 3-18 [MSM S72:0216]).
Almost a century later, the economic burden of contraception continued to fall on women.  According to a study by the Center for American Progress (CAP), 55 percent of women ages 19 to 34 struggled with the cost of birth control, leading to inconsistent use. CAP also found that women of reproductive age spent 68 percent more on out-of-pocket health care costs than men did, largely due to contraceptive expenses. The ACA mandate reconciles these inequities; it is not only about safe sex and bodily integrity, but also gender equality and fairness. Women’s contraception is not about luxury, as some anti-birth control advocates ignorantly argue, but justice.
Sanger, writing in 1918–even before women achieved the vote–knew this well:
“ Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal” (“Morality and Birth Control,” Birth Control Review, Feb.-Mar. 1918, 11 [MSM S70:793]).
To be sure, yesterday’s mandate does not mark an absolute victory. For one, it only applies to insurance policies that began on or after August 1; many other plans that have been “grandfathered in” are exempt from the law’s requirements to includes these preventive services. In addition, uninsured women who don’t receive Medicaid will have to wait until 2014 to access co-pay free contraception, when the ACA mandates everyone to have insurance (or pay a monetary penalty).
And there is the possibility that the law will be overturned. Extremely dedicated opponents of Obama’s health care reform that continually seek to undo and undermine all that the ACA will accomplish. Some states have already pledged to reject the expansion of Medicaid that the federal government offers, thereby cutting health insurance–and thus accessible contraception–to many of its poorer citizens.
Today, we must all recognize–as Margaret Sanger argued passionately–that everyone benefits from the broad access to contraception. As Amanda Marcotte at Slate notes, if you take the irrational sexual hysteria out of the equation, this contraception mandate is equivalent to the government mandating seatbelts in cars: “Just as people who resisted mandatory seatbelts have benefited along with the rest of us from lower rates of traffic fatalities, they will also benefit from the reduced social and health care costs that stem from reducing unplanned pregnancies.”
As Sanger said, “No adult woman who is ignorant of the means to prevent conception, can call herself free. No woman can call herself free who cannot choose the time to be a mother or not as she sees fit. This should be woman’s first demand” (“Condemnation is Misunderstanding,” Typed draft speech, April-July 1916 [LCM 129:32]). The Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate finally delivers on Sanger’s demand: removing the barrier of co-pays and deductibles, all women–rather than their insurers–will control the decisions they make about their own bodies.

Kitty Marion

Kitty Marion Selling Birth Control Review
Kitty Marion, sometimes mistaken for Margaret Sanger -- this particular photo, stood on New York street corners for thirteen years (1917-1929), dedicated to selling copies of the Birth Control Review.

By 1929, Marion had become a public figure in New York, just by selling copies of a newspaper.

In a 1936 article in The New Yorker, Marion estimated that she alone sold over 99,000 copies of the Review. (“More Memories,” Birth Control Review [May 1923]; “Biographical Note,” Kitty Marion Papers.)

July 1920


левая фотка: М Сэнгер с Гербертом Уэллсом и Отисом Скиннером (точной даты нет), правая -- путешествие по Британии
подробности в блоге MSPP 
бонусы:
Margaret Sanger, "Clinics the Solution," Jul 1920.
Published article. Source: Birth Control Review, July 1920, 6-8 , Margaret Sanger Microfilm S70:843 .
This article was introduced by a short recap of Sanger's trip to England by the Birth Control Review editor.
Margaret Sanger, "Comstockery in America," journal article, 1915.
Margaret Sanger became nationally famous for organizing a birth-control movement. In this 1915 issue of the International Socialist Review, Sanger discusses working women.

July 19, 2012

A Tempest in a British Teapot: Sanger’s Moratorium on Babies

Sixty five years ago, in July of 1947, Europe was still reeling from the effects of World War II, with widespread housing shortages due to war destruction, reports of thousands starving, the dislocation of refugees, and massive unemployment barring any quick recovery. The United States feared that political instability in Europe would pave the way for the acceptance of communism, and on June 5, 1947 announced an international aid strategy, known as the Marshall Plan, to prop up the European economy and undercut Soviet influences.

As she boarded a plane for England on June 30, 1947, Margaret Sanger gave her own spin on European redevelopment and recovery, telling reporters:

[Hungry] countries should not have another child for a decade. They should do all in their power to help keep women from having children for that period--until the food and economic situations are adjusted. . . . In this country we have achieved a favorable balance of population and resources. This situation has contributed greatly to the raising of our national standard of living. But it will do us little good if in the end European and Asiatic countries, and some of our possessions, continue to overflow their boundaries, crowd their resources and breed themselves into new famines. Many of them will ultimately breed themselves into another war. For that reason the whole world should be interested in the intelligent limitation of population. (New York Daily News, July 1, 1947).

Sanger's proposition, which she noted "definitely" included England, caused a massive stir as the London Daily Mirror told her to go back to America, as "her proposal would be about as practical as telling the sun to stand still or the tide to turn back." Man-on-the-street polls in both the United States and England ran heavily against her position, some calling it "very foolish and extremely stupid," "so ridiculous that it barely merits discussion," and "perfectly fantastic." One Briton offered "I am afraid this Mrs. Sanger underestimates the--shall we say emotional needs?--that lead to the production of babies." (New York Daily News, July 1, 1947 and Boston Globe, July 4, 1947.)

For her part, Sanger was surprised by the reaction, writing to Mary Compton Johnson, one of her secretaries in New York on July 5:

Never have I needed a helper more than I have since I left LaGuardia. My tossing a challenge at American reporters brought an avalanche on my head in London. The 10 year moratorium on babies! Every paper in London sent reporters to the Savoy (except the Times). I was so weary & tired as I had not slept all night on the plane & as I had no prepared statement on the 10 year moratorium idea. It was the most trying and exhausting experience Id really had. Photos, snaps, movies, the Pathe - Paramount took pictures. The RKO and others wanted me to go to the studios. I refused."

ONE MINUTE NEWS

Clearly Sanger touched a nerve when she included Europeans and especially the British into her definition of "hungry" or "overpopulated" countries. People were used to hearing pundits propose that individual families should only have children when they could afford them, or even that underdeveloped or poor nations should curb their birth rate in order to increase standards of living. But Europe? As a woman interviewed in New York said: "Europe, as a whole is not overpopulated. The people there had no trouble in feeding themselves before the war. Everything has been destroyed and they need just a little help from here and there until they get on their feet." (Daily News, July 1, 1947.)

Sanger had long argued that the only thing that parents could do when they did not have the resources to raise children was to postpone having them until conditions improved, and her suggestion for Europe was little more than that same practical advice, ramped up in scope. Sanger wrote her secretary Florence Rose on July 26 about the over-reaction: "Is England included? Do you mean England? Have you been fed by the press that England is starving? My reply: “Ive only just landed in England you don’t look hungry (to the reporters) but if you are yes England too!!! That set John Bull off & retorted that “Granny Slee better stay home & teach the American G.I.s how to avoid leaving illegitimate children for England girls to work for!!!"

Sanger's main purpose in going to England was to attend a family planning conference, but because of the furor, she decided not to attend. She did work with activists in England to plan the International Congress on Population in Relation to World Resources, held without such ado, a year later in Cheltenham, England.

family limitation

On Monday June 25, the Library of Congress opened an exhibit in Washington on "Books That Shaped America". The exhibit celebrates 88 works that shaped American life and thought, including Margaret Sanger's 1914 pamphlet "Family Limitation", which was a basic instructional manual of basic family planning techniques.

"Of course, it is troublesome to get up to douche, it is also a nuisance to have to trouble about the date of the menstrual period. It seems inartistic and sordid to insert a pessary or a suppository in anticipation of the sexual act. But it is far more sordid to find yourself several years later burdened down with half a dozen unwanted children, helpless, starved, shoddily clothed, dragging at your skirt, yourself a dragged out shadow of the woman you once were."

Read more about "Family Limitation" in this blog post, or read the pamphlet yourself here!

Queen’s Hall Meeting on Constructive Birth Control

One activist, Maude Royden, sent a message of greeting that said

"Every child has a right to be desired before it is conceived, loved before it is born, and provided for while it is helpless. Every mother should have time and health to give the fullest measure of love and care to every child she bears, and to give it without an intolerable strain upon her own vitality. Who will deny these things in theory? Who will not admit that they are so true as to be truisms? And yet the brutal denial of these "truisms" in actual everyday life is seen everywhere, and gives us our terrible infant death-rate, our perhaps still more terrible infant "damage-rate" and a mass of almost inarticulate suffering amongst married women..."


Featured speaker Dr. E Killick Millard implored the audience open up to revolutionary new ideas (ie birth control) that could shape the world for the better:

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is time, high time, that we abandoned old ideas, swept away misapprehension and prejudice; it is high time we abandoned false sentimentality and faced facts as they really are. Now, we know, or we ought to know, that means do exist for preventing concpetion and restraining excessive fertility without the mutilation of marriage or the placing of an intolerable and entirely unnatural strain upon married couples. I submit that the experience of vast number of intelligent and thinking people who have used these mean has demonstrated that they are on the whole effective and harmless. I do not think that we can overestimate the fundamental and far-reaching importance of this great question. This question of birth control really underlies so many other great questions of the day. The whole welfare of humanity may be said without exaggeration to be bound up with it."


The London Family Planning Summit: 1921/2012

complexity of the present and that of the past

"Dear Mr. Grant,

I have been considerably disquieted by the letter you showed me yesterday, suggesting a working alliance between the American Eugenics Society and the American Birth Control League. In my judgement we have everything to lose nothing to gain to such an arrangement.

[The American Birth Control League] is controlled by a group that has be brought up on agitation and emotional appeal instead of on research and education... With this group, we would take on a large quantity of ready-made enemies which it has accumulated, and we would gain allies who, while believing that they are eugenics, really have no conception of what eugenics is and are actually opposed to it.

[At a recent international birth control conference] two members of our advisory council ... put through a resolution at the final meeting, urging that people whose children gave promise of being of exceptional value to the race should have as many children, properly spaced, as they felt that they feasibly could. This is eugenics. It is not the policy of the American Birth Control League leaders, who in the next issue of their monthly magazine came out with an editorial denouncing this resolution as contrary to all the principles and sentiments of their organization.

If it is desirable for us to make a campaign in favor of contraception, we are abundantly able to do so on our own account, without enrolling a lot of sob sisters, grand stand players, and anarchists to help us. We had a lunatic fringe in the eugenics movement in the early days; we have been trying for 20 years to get rid of it and have finally done so. Let's not take on another fringe of any kind as an ornament.

Sincerely,
Paul Popenoe

Birth Control and Eugenics: Uneasy Bedfellows?

Sarah Sachs story

We could not locate the Sachs family in the 1910 census, on Grand Street or anywhere else in Manhattan. But we did locate Jacob and Sarah Sacks, who in 1910 lived on 105 Attorney Street in the Lower East Side, only a few blocks from Grand Street. Both were from Russia, they had three children, Joseph (5), Harry (3), and Dora, who was one and a half. The family does not appear in the 1920 census, with or without Sadie.


Birth of a Movement: the Case of Sadie Sachs

Dear Madam, I Abhor You

If you want to read more on the hate mail that Sanger received in her lifetime, visit our article "Dear Madam, I Abhor You" at the Sanger Papers Newsletter!

example: “Dear Madam: You have been a shameless “murderess on parade” for a long while. However, you never looked more hellishly ludicrous than at present when the government is about to launch a campaign to encourage as many births as possible as has been done for sometime in Europe. Perhaps this will see and end to your shameless debasing of Parenthood. You, if you ever had any real Christian upbringing, must have developed a cast iron conscience to be able to carry on your soul the innumerable times you are guilty of having the Commandment--Thou shalt not kill--broken by poor innocent people who listened to your advice. The average schoolboy or girl knows more about contraceptives than you do and that is well-known; which makes your birth-controllers hopelessly out-dated. If you were a sincere person you would devote your time to something clean worthwhile.” (Aug. 28, 1941, Brooklyn, N.Y. [LCM 50:135].)

July 18, 2012

story

This post originally appeared on Alexander Sanger's blog.

"In my family, being pro-choice comes naturally. This is not just because the ghost of my grandmother, Margaret Sanger, would rise from her grave to wreak vengeance on any of her relations who dare stray from the path.

It is also because the guys have the model of my grandfather, William Sanger, to emulate. My grandfather was an interesting man, who didn’t quite realize who he was marrying. To be fair, my grandmother didn’t know the groundbreaker she would become as she walked down the aisle either.

William Sanger was a radical, advanced in his thinking, and he supported his wife when she started her birth control advocacy, which began after ten years of mostly sedate marriage. My grandmother promptly got herself indicted for obscenity under the Comstock Laws and fled the country before she could be convicted and jailed.

Anthony Comstock decided the next best thing would be to jail her husband. So, he sent an undercover police officer to my grandfather’s architectural office pretending to be the father of a large brood, who couldn’t afford any more children, and begging for one of my grandmother’s contraband pamphlets. My grandfather rummaged through his desk and found one, handing it to the undercover officer. Anthony Comstock appeared and personally made the arrest.

At his trial at the Tombs, William Sanger made an impassioned plea for liberty, free speech, and the liberation of women from the shackles of the Comstock Laws. My grandfather said this from the witness stand:

I deny the right of the state to compel the poor and disinherited to rear large families and to drive their offspring to child labor when they should be at school and at play. I deny the right of the State to exercise dominion over the souls and bodies of our women by compelling them to go into unwilling motherhood. I deny the right of the State to arm an ignorant, irresponsible, and prudish censorship with the right of search and confiscation, to pass judgment on our art and literature, and I deny as well the right to hold over the entire medical profession the legal ban of this obscenity statute.

My grandfather was convicted of distributing an “immoral and indecent pamphlet” and sentenced to thirty days in the Tombs, thus having the distinction of going to jail for advocating birth control before my grandmother did.

As for me, I continued my family's legacy as a college student. While sitting in my dorm room, I got a phone call from a high school friend I hadn’t seen in two years. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “You’re the only person I can call.” Back then, abortion was totally illegal in Massachusetts, where she lived, as was birth control, which is probably why she got pregnant. I start asking around campus for a doctor to help my friend and pretended I was her boyfriend in order to engender sympathy. I got the name of a doctor in Washington, DC and called him from a pay phone. Giving no names, I told the doctor my girlfriend needed help. He told me to have her arrive at an address in Arlington, Virginia with $300 cash the following Wednesday. My friend didn’t have $300, so I made another round of calls to collect the money and wired it to her. She had the abortion without complications.

The doctor, Milan Vuitch, was an OB-GYN, who performed abortions on the side. A year after my friend went to meet him, Dr. Vuitch was arrested. His case went to the US Supreme Court the year before Roe. The court, though it upheld his conviction, laid the groundwork for the landmark case by giving a broad interpretation to the “health exception" in the DC abortion statute. Dr. Milan Vuitch went to jail.

After that incident, I vowed that no woman, and no physician helping her, should have to suffer that kind of consequence. I began forging my own path in the ongoing fight for sexual and reproductive rights, and it is one I continue to tread."

June 5, 2012

Debate On Birth Control: First Speech

12 Dec 1920.
Published speech. Source: Debate Between Margaret Sanger, Negative and Winter Russell, AffirmativeNew York, Sept. 19, 1921, 9-18 , MSM S76:0923 .

Sanger debated New York lawyer John Winter Russell under the auspices of the Fine Arts Guild at the Parkview Palace in New York City. The debate, chaired by Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, had as its subject: "Resolved: That the spreading of birth control knowledge is injurious to the welfare of humanity." Knopf's introduction and Russell's three speeches have not been included. Below is Sanger's first speech, in response to Russell. For her second speech see "Second Speech."

April 18, 2012

Sandra Fluke Continues Battle that Margaret Sanger Began


Sandra Fluke

An hour before her live Q&A with the Huffington Post, Sandra Fluke met with me at a Starbuck's (even though she doesn't drink coffee) to talk about her campaign to empower women.
The contraception debate and Rush Limbaugh's personal insults are what placed Fluke in the spotlight, and her concerns are not over. The Affordable Health Choices Act requires all university health care plans to provide free contraception starting in August 2012. But religiously affiliated universities are allowed to request a one-year delay in providing contraception -- and those requests are being made right now, often without student input.
"This is inevitable at this point -- there's no reason to deny coverage for another year and make these women wait longer when they have real medical needs right now," Fluke said, who goes to a Georgetown Law -- a university affiliated with the Catholic Church. She encourages students to find out what decisions their administrations are making, and take action to make sure contraception is on the agenda. "Students will soon become engulfed in finals, so the time for action is today."
But Fluke is also using her media spotlight to highlight a number of other issues that women in America are facing today -- continuing a century-long struggle that Margaret Sanger began in the 1910's.
Sanger, who was one of eleven children, devoted her life to legalizing birth control, beginning her advocacy during a time when women did not even have the right to vote. Although birth control prevented unwanted pregnancies, Sanger was concerned with the health risks associated with many womens' self-conducted abortions (often leading to illness or death). Of women who aborted their own pregnancies, 76 percent faced health complications.
In 1921, after years of opposition and getting herself arrested for providing contraception illegally, she founded the American Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood. But although Sanger can be criticized for some of her other political positions, Fluke says the women's activist started a war for justice that women are still fighting today.
"I'm not sure it's even a different battle, it's just an ongoing one," Fluke said. "Clearly, Ms. Sanger lived in a different time and not all of her positions are ones that I would agree with, but she was definitely a pioneer in thinking about women's reproductive health and needs and standing up for them."
Particularly important to Fluke is the Violence Against Women Act - a bill that is up for reauthorization this year. Some members of Congress are attempting to make the services that the bill gives to victim's of sexual assault less available to women, by lowering the age group that services are available to (including counseling, legal aid, victim programs, and funding for rape crisis centers, and protections for victims of domestic violence).
"Domestic violence is still rampant in our country and that's unacceptable in the type of industrialized wealth country that we have," Fluke said. "I'm hoping that young women will contact their senators about that. What we need is for Senator Harry Reid to bring the bill to the floor for a vote as soon as the Senate gets back in session in April."

What disappointments Fluke is that the bill, which has been around since 1994, is causing bipartisanship in Congress, with conservatives fighting against expanding the budget for domestic violence programs. The new version of the bill would increase free legal assistance to victims of domestic violence, include women who are victims of stalking, and increase coverage to include illegal immigrants and same-sex couples.
Another cause that Fluke, who is unsure about her own post-graduation plans, is taking up: bringing more women into politics. Currently, women make up only 17 percent of Congress, and Fluke thinks this number should be closer to 50.
"If we had equal representation in government, we'd pay more attention to the issues that affect women," she said. But those women who do make it into powerful political positions are the ones that Fluke admires.
"Women who are in powerful political positions are real role models for us and I'd love to see more and more women going in that direction," she said.
Her own role model? Sandra Day O'Conner, the first female member of the US Supreme Court.
"She was the first woman on the Supreme Court and she had the same first name that I did," Fluke said, remembering her childhood heroes. "I thought that was just really cool when I was really little. She went on the court in 1981, and I was born in 1981, so when I was little that was a pretty big deal - it's still a pretty big deal."
Although rumors about Fluke running for office have been spread by the media, one thing is clear: she will continue to fight for women's issues.
"There are so many issues, and to assume as a generation that the work has been done for us and we can just move on without engaging on those issues is just absolutely wrong," she said, before rushing to her Live Q&A with the Huffington Post.
 
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