Читать книгу The Changing Face of Sex - Wayne P. Anderson PhD - Страница 19

Two women were very powerful influences on the Victorian anti everything sexual philosophy: Margaret Sanger with her push for birth control information and Coco Chanel with her freeing women from clothes that effectively made them prisoners.

Sanger’s family situation had made her very aware of problems connected with a lack of birth control. Her mother had been pregnant 18 times, gave birth to 11 live babies and died at 45 from tuberculosis and cervical cancer. Although Sanger didn’t complete her nursing degree, she went to work in the slums of New York City.

There Sanger met women who were worn out by too many children, including one case where a woman had been told by the doctor to have no more children or she might die; but he would give her no information on birth control because it was illegal. He told her to have her husband sleep on the roof. He didn’t; she got pregnant and died in childbirth. Motivated to do something about the problem, Sanger got into trouble with the law by writing a pamphlet for poor women entitled “Family Limitation.”

In 1913 she began publishing The Woman Rebel, a monthly newsletter that advocated contraception in which she coined the term “Birth Control.” This was enough to bring her to Comstock’s attention, and to avoid prosecution she fled to Europe (D’Emilio, & Freedman, 1988). She used her time there to learn more about birth control and make contacts with leaders in the fight against censorship of sexual materials.

Her relationships with several of her mentors went beyond the professional; she had affairs with both Havelock Ellis and H.G. Wells. Later after she returned to America, some of her contacts in Europe were to help her smuggle diaphragms into the U.S. Shortly after she returned, her five-year-old daughter Peggy died, a loss that she said haunted her for the rest of her life.

In 1916 Sanger opened the first family planning and birth control clinic in the U.S. in Brooklyn. After it was raided nine days later, she served 30 days in jail. In jail she took the opportunity to give sex lectures to the women in prison with her.These were mostly very poor women and prostitutes, all of whom wanted to know more about sex. The prison authorities made her stop trying to educate them about sex on the premise the women were bad enough already.

A bit later the heavy hand of Comstock was still on the case, and she was to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Many women showed up in the courtroom showing their support, and fortunately for Sanger, Comstock died. Seeing the support Sanger had from the community, the judge then dropped the case against her.

In 1921 Sanger married the oil tycoon, James Noah H. Slee, who provided her with funds to do considerable international travel promoting birth control including seven trips to Japan. In 1923 she established the first legal birth control clinic in the U.S. with grants from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. This was done anonymously so that the public would not associate the Rockefeller name with the operation.

She spent the rest of her life working to educate women and give them control over their bodies and their lives. Sanger died in 1966 at the age of 86, a few months after the Griswold vs. Connecticut decision that legalized birth control for married couples in the U.S.