The Bayeux Tapestry and Me

 

Hundreds of thousands of tiny wool stitches sewn by unknown women became the first news banner telling the story of the 1066 Battle of Hastings. The Bayeux Tapestry is 230 ft.x 20 in.

It tells the story of *William the Conqueror's defeat of King Harald Godwinson for the English crown in 58 scenes. The Battle changed English history and culture.

Legend has it Queen Matilda, William's wife commissioned it, but Bishop Odo, William's half brother was also said to be responsible. The first historical mention was in an inventory of the Bayeux Cathedral in 1476.

Although I knew of the tapestry, I didn't expect to see an exact duplicate of it when my train broke down in Reading England. It was three hours before the next to London.

What to do?

The Reading Museum provided shelter from the rain and more interesting than a café. Displayed was a copy of the Bayeux Tapestry. The original was on my bucket list, but not in my immediate future. 

Elizabeth Wardle, a member of the Leek Embroidery Society, had seen the original and felt England should have its own copy. She made it happen in 1885. Plagiarism in wool?

On a trip to France to meet old friends, my husband and I saw the original. I could imagine women sitting on stools, buckets of green, brown, black and red colored yarn at their feet, dipping their needles in and out as the story took shape.

At the souvenir shop -- there's always a souvenir shop --I bought a metal tray with one of the scenes. I use the tray daily.

The original tapestry was shipped to the UK for display this week. Over 100,000 tickets have already been sold.  

What a story. Artists and seamstresses as reporters. Their work survived peace and war through the ages. 

*Note: It was a thrill to stand at the tomb of William the Conqueror. Only a thigh bone is said to remain. Yet, to be in the same place as even part of a historic figure who changed history in 1066 brings the story to real life in my mind.
 

 

 

Coat Hanger and Knitting Needles Lawrence Lader

Not all pro-life legislators are men, but policy makers usually are.

Texas is one example where 80% of the legislators are men and have pushed through laws that close access to women’s health services. Between 2010 and 2014, childbirth deaths in Texas doubled from 18.6 per 1,000 live births to 35.8, the highest in the nation. 

When it comes to women’s rights, I have discovered there are two kinds of men. Those that want to control women, for reasons far beyond me to explain. And those who understand and help women.

Before rejecting the idea, think of Horatio Robinson Storer (1830–1922) of the early American Medical Association who led the “physicians' crusade against abortion.” Under his urging a Committee on Criminal Abortion was formed, a report made, then presented and approved by the association in 1859.

Abortion, which had been somewhat accepted before quickening, was now campaigned against with such furor that women were consigned to the back alleys as, state by state, laws were written and approved outlawing the practice.

Birth control, which prevents pregnancy and the need for abortion, was also outlawed. Women, according to many men in the late 1800s, were on this planet to produce babies, although they didn’t phrase it that way. It was spoken under the guise of “morals.”

Committees on women’s rights and health in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures were/are often made up entirely of men. The result: defunded Planned Parenthood clinics which had provided health services such as mammograms, uterine cancer checks and birth control for women at a price even the poor can afford.

Mostly male legislators in Georgia in 2011 wanted to make a law (HB1) requiring that miscarriages be investigated as murder, just one of too many examples of male-promoted laws limiting women’s control of their own bodies.*

Lader, an Unlikely Crusader for Women’s Rights

On the other side, there are men who fight for women’s rights with a passion. Lawrence Lader was one of those.

He was born in 1919 in New York City. His father worked in a family business making food additives. Not much in his childhood would have led anyone to predict he would become a crusader for abortion.

When he was a student at Harvard University, he met Jean MacInnis, whom he married in 1942. She kept her maiden name and had her own bank account, almost unheard of in the 1940s.

Although they divorced in 1946, Jean had a long-term positive influence on Lader. In 2003, some 57 years after they were divorced, he wrote in Ideas Triumphant, Strategies for Social Change and Progress: “It was established between us that her personhood was independent, and she was guaranteed all social and legal rights.”

His writing career was jump-started by World War II. Lader served in the Pacific theater for the Armed Forces Radio and his reports were often published in The New Yorker. After the war, he wrote for many leading magazines.

He wanted to write a book but had difficulty finding a subject until he stumbled across Margaret Sanger, the woman who fought so hard for women to have access to birth control. He spent three years writing her biography, including spending time with Sanger, who was then in her seventies. He adopted her belief in “inviolable personhood,” the idea that a woman owned her own body.

The result was Margaret Sanger: And the Fight for Birth Control, which was published in 1955 when Lader was 36. The book delves into Sanger’s crusade, which had been outlawed from the 1870s because it was considered immoral and allegedly encouraged prostitution and venereal disease.

A new copy of this book is available on Amazon for $625 (as of July 2017), although used editions, when available, can be purchased for normal book prices.

He said of Sanger: “undoubtedly…the greatest influence on my life.”

Although he had in-depth conversations with Sanger, abortion wasn’t included. Sanger’s knowledge was limited to the horrible back-alley stories.

Lader thought there would be a logical step from birth control to abortion for his next book, but when he started researching the subject he found almost nothing. Today, when I was researching this book I found books, videos, magazine articles, testimonies, historical documents, etc. readily available.

In an interview with Body Politic (a Canadian monthly magazine published 1971-1987), he said, “It was an issue no one discussed...I was trying to make the jump from birth control to an abortion right that not only didn't exist but was an underground, abhorrent topic.” He went on to write Abortion, published in 1966. The book offered a thorough, carefully documented examination of the topic, starting with the words “Abortion is the dread secret of our society.” He examined the underground system for descriptions of ways to abort a baby to philosophical/religious attitudes as far back as Plato.

Lader also argued that based on the 1965 Supreme Court decision on privacy in family planning, Griswold v. Connecticut, which allowed married women to get birth control information, the right should be extended to abortion.

Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, which ratcheted up the woman’s movement (whom Lader had met her through his first wife when Friedan was a student at Smith College), said of Abortion that “it was an authoritative study of the hypocrisy and absurdity of abortion practices.”

Because of Abortion, the topic was discussed in important places. It was cited eight times in Roe v. Wade.

Abortion II was published in 1973.

Fighting for Repeal and Medicine

Writing about abortion wasn’t enough for Lader. In February 1969 he attended the First National Conference on Abortion Laws: Modification or Repeal? There were mixed opinions among those who thought abortion should be limited to casesof rape, incest or to save the mother’s life andthose who thought it should be the woman’s choice under any circumstances. Lader, along with others,wasonthewomen’schoiceside.Thewomen’schoicepointofviewwonattheconference.

Friedan has called him “the father of the abortion rights movement” while anti-abortion groups have referred to him as “abortion's chief propagandist.”

These activities led to the founding of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) in July 1968. Lader served on the board. The organization worked on the reformation of abortion laws in New York. They succeeded in 1970.

After his board position with NARAL ended in 1975, Lader formed Abortion Rights Mobilization (ARM). Much of its work was the fight to lift the U.S. ban on RU-486 (Mifepritone), developed in France in 1980. The French began to use it as an abortion drug, combining it with Misoprostol in 1987. During the first 50 days of pregnancy the drug has a 95% efficiency rate to end a pregnancy. RU-486 is sometimes confused with the morning after pill (levonorgestrel or ulipristal acetate). RU-486 was unavailable in the U.S.

Lader and a pregnant social worker, Leona Benten, flew to London where he bought a dozen RU-486 pills to take to the U.S. To make sure the issue received proper attention he faxedU.S. customs officials, who met him at Kennedy Airport and confiscated the medicine. He wrote two books:

RU-486, the Pill That Could End the Abortion Wars and Why American Women Don't Have It (1991)

 A Private Matter, RU-486 and the Abortion Crisis (1995)

The Supreme Court heard Benten's appeal on the confiscation. Lader got his hands on a Chinese copy of the drug and synthesized it. Abortion Rights Mobilization (ARM) sponsored clinical trials. Hundreds of women received the pill free from ARM.

In 2000 the Food and Drug Administration gave their blessing to RU-486.

Not everything Lader did worked. His lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, alleging it allowed the Roman Catholic Church tax exemptions when it was playing politics with its fight against abortion laws, failed.

He wrote that the 1965 Supreme Court decision in Griswold vs. Connecticut, which overturned the state's right to outlaw birth control, was broad enough to apply to abortion.

His discussion of the legal history of abortion was repeatedly cited in the majority opinion for Roe v. Wade. Being footnoted in that landmark decision, Lader later said, was “one of the things I'm proudest of.”

In addition to the Sanger biography and Abortion, Lader also authored:

  The Bold Brahmins: New England's War Against Slavery (1961)

 Power on the Left: American Radical Movements Since 1946 (1980)

 Politics, Power and the Church (1987

 A  Private Matter, RU-486 and the Abortion Crisis (1995). 

Lader died of colon cancer in 2006.

*Not all pro-life legislators are men, but policy makers usually are. Texas is one example where 80% of the legislators are men and have pushed through laws that close access to women’s health services. Between 2010 and 2014, childbirth deaths in Texas doubled from 18.6 per 1,000 live births to 35.8, the highest in the nation.

A Mole

 

Our studio feels like a mole hole.

During the canicule (heatwave) we draw the drapes. A fan provides air. We keep lights to a minimum. 

This has been going on since mid June. No relief predicted until later this month.  

Our landlord has put umbrellas on the patio outside our door and we can feel the difference. It helps.

There are stairs to get to the garden with its shady mulberry tree but even the tree doesn't help in the 36°-41°(96-106°) temperatures. 

At night it drops to 17° (62°) degrees. That's when we throw open everything that can be thrown open. It's necessary in the morning to be aware of the temperature creeping up to go back to being a mole.

There is a reason I would never, ever live in the south. I'm a lover of fall colors and brisk air. I want a couple of months of snow.  I love spring when a few brave flowers poke their way up through the dirt. 

We are in our Geneva home now thinking that it would be cooler than the south of France. There are fires nearby to our French village according to neighbors there who say there's the smell of smoke. It's not as bad as the fires across the border in Spain, many of which the news says were set.

According to the forecast nothing but high heat until later in the month. YUCK! 

Maybe next summer we can spend in Northern Scotland or Sweden. 

I will try and remember how lucky I am there is no genocide around me, my family is safe and bombs are not falling. Home is not a tent. My pantry is full. 

Maybe we will just go on being a mole until next month.  

 

Celebrity Scams

  

I gotta give the scammers credit for originality. No more I'm (give a name and a place). They go on to say I've just had my wallet stolen, they say. Send money. 

So many friends have received these calls including the one allegedly from my pal Mary. Mary was sitting in my office with me when I got the message. Scams.

My first ALLEGED celebrity contact was from Il Divo's Urs, a Swiss like me and my favorite of the four singers. He started out saying he liked to contact fans even if his manager didn't know he did. He wanted to make sure I didn't have any press connections.When I didn't answer he went away but not before mentioning money. I'm still a fan of the group.

Because I'm a writer, I've been e-mailed or Facebooked by ALLEGED writers John Irving, Stephen King, Donna Leon and this morning by James Patterson.

John Irving - I had a relation with him in my head because I loved his writing. Same birth year, both of us lived in Exeter NH but not at the same time. My masters degree thesis was on repeated symbolism in his books. However, that would not be a reason for him to contact me so I played along for a bit and when I asked for authentication he went away.

Stephen King - I'm not a fan of his genre although I admire his style. I don't think I've ever mentioned him on the Internet. He could have found my name from my books, articles, etc. I didn't play along at all.

Donna Leon - I hoped she was real. We both live part time in Geneva, Switzerland. I imagined having a fondue at the Café du Soleil and talking about how we write our mysteries and what living internationally has done to our writing. She also knew a bit about my writing, unlike the other celebrity writers. However, as soon as I asked for verification, she disappeared. A tiny bit of me still wishes she was real.

James Patterson - His message was totally blank. Maybe I should write back and offer to check his marketing.

Each day I get one to five emails offering to publicize my books because they happened to come across them and like my style, plots, characters, etc. without ever mentioning the title. I suspect hidden in some AI data center is the same letter to send out. And yes, I check the internet to see if they are real companies. 

All in all these e-mail or Facebook interruptions are a change from my writing, reading, playing with the dog, doing things with my husband, but I do wish they would be more original. Maybe I can do a short story about a scammer. 

 

 

Plashing and Pinocchio

   

My last text message from her said that it was almost impossible to type with her arthritic fingers. A friend was doing it for her. He died a few years back. 

One of the hardest things about aging is losing people who were important along the way.

This couple was 10+ years older than me. It was a second successful, happy marriage replacing two unhappy ones. They bought the condo over mine in Boston. 

We became friends, sharing meals and events together. When we traveled for business or pleasure, we looked after each other's teenagers, who were too old for a sitter, but young enough to have an adult on call and maybe a meal or two.

When they moved to Maine, I visited them first in their condo and second in their old farmhouse. Their red depression glass table settings, found in antique stores and flea markets over several years, brought forth so many memories of other meals.

They came to see me in Geneva. When they went to Italy, they asked me to join them in a house on a hill. The village was in Collodi where Carlos Collodi had written Pinocchio. The village souvenir shop was full of Pinocchios some in the image of George Bush. It was during Iraq.

We walked in a garden with a fountain and he and I commented on the "plashing" fountain at the same moment.

"Amy Lowell, Patterns," he said at the same time I did.

I was shocked that he knew it. I was shocked that he didn't change plashing to splashing. This was why we were all friends. Shared interests, shared appreciation for tiny things. 

We were never together again as we drifted into an email friendship, a condolence to her on his loss. There may be a void of contact but there will never be a void of memory, of warmth. 

I walk down the garden-paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden-paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon—
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No,” I told him.
“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

 

 

Communism/Socialism Aren't Dirty Words

My mother and grandmother never missed a minute of the televised 1950s McCarthy Hearings. They avidly read every word about it in our morning and afternoon newspapers. They talked about the danger of communists in our midst. Their friends were also scared.

As kids we hid under desks for regular bomb tests when the siren blew.

The TV Show I was a Communist for the FBI  and a companion radio program reinforced the fear of communism.

It took years for people to realize even after Lawyer Joseph Welch said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" cCarthy was red baiting.

There was also the fear of creeping socialism which I discovered as a cub reporter covering Reading's Town Meeting. What was the creeping Socialism? Fluoride in the town water. 

It's happening again. Only this time the president is using the threat of communism is the scare tactic. The president said, “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.

“Communism is the enemy of free people everywhere, everywhere in the world, never works, it’s the enemy of the Constitution, above all, it’s the enemy of July 4, 1776 – it is the enemy indeed.

"Americans will never let anyone take our freedom away . . . And all these talks from the communists, they haven’t got a chance. We don’t want communists in our country. Never worked, and it never will work. . .Right now, it’s happening in New York and California, but you’ll live in squalor . . .There will be no food, there will be no housing, there will be no military, and there will be no law and order. There will be no nothing. You’ll be a Third World country in every way, and everyone will suffer or die. That’s what happens. Crowds of evangelicals and Catholics who are part of the nonprofit Faith and Freedom Coalition which advocates for traditional family values and religious liberty. "These ruthless communists will attack all religions, but in particular Christianity. They always do."

Many countries have communist parties some in almost total control like China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea.

When I was first in France I was shocked to see election posters saying "I'm a communist and I vote"  Je suis communiste et je vote. At work in Switzerland, a very un-communist country, one of my staff was communist as was all her family. I see offices for the communist party sometimes as I drive through towns in France. 

There's nothing like a scare technique to promote a political party. We've had: Hordes of insane immigrants swarming the border to take jobs. Soon the immigrants will take over the whites. Now its the communists that are the danger.

Freedom House, Founded in 1941 in Washington, D.C. to promote Freedom and pro-democracy puts out a list each year on the ranking of Freedom Countries.

Notice the U.S. is on the bottom of the list. Notice at the top of the list are the countries the current American government considers socialist. 

 

 

 

 America is not in danger of being taken over by communists, democrats, democratic socialists. They are in danger of being destroyed by the current administration starting with their scare tactics.

On Rape and Politics

 

I’ve been a card carrying feminist since forever.

I’ve had friends raped. I have friends and myself who have been sexual harassed in different degrees. I deplore it all.

Now we come down to the Maine Senatorial candidate.

I don’t know if he’s guilty or not. The timing is such and as filthy as politics are, it could be a move for the opposition to get rid of a candidate that could unseat Susan Collins.

Rapists should not sit in Congress. I also remember that:

• The U.S. president is a convicted rapist.
• A supreme Court Justice is a suspected rapist.
• Susan Collins voted to put a suspected rapist on the Supreme Court.

All three of them should not by in office.

The reality is that even if Platner is innocent, his chances of being found innocent in time for the election put the results of the November election in jeopardy.

As a feminist I want to think the woman is innocent. 

But how would you prove her guilty? How do you prove that with no rape kit, no bank account verification that she is being paid off? 

Just writing about the possibility of guilt or innocent about another woman bothers me, but in this toxic world, that thought runs through my mind along with the words "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sor...) marching through my head.

 

 

 

Free Write - Expletive Deleted

 

In place of a photo prompt for our weekly Free Write, Rick chose two words...Oh, Shit... making it a slightly different challenge. Since all three of us are in the same country now for these sessions, we decided instead of taking turns giving a prompt, we would decide on the prompt together and write for ten minutes. There are several other people whom we send to prompts so they can do a free write from a stranger's prompt.

Rick's Free Write

"Oh, shit," in my personal vocabulary, is shorthand for something I’ve done that’s stupid but not of serious consequence.

Spilled spaghetti sauce on my pants.

Dropped a dish in the sink and chipped the edge.

Hit a bad shot on the golf course.

For issues of electronics such as computer software glitches or balky printers, I’m inclined to other expletives. The semi-meaningless F***! Or, for emphasis, F*** F*** F***. These issues may eventually prove inconsequential, or not, but they are not (usually) my fault. More likely one of Bill Gates’s minions who like to tinker with program updates just for the hell of it.

I don’t swear a lot (I don’t think), and generally only at home in private.

I get it out of my system and then start trying to solve the problem.

To my recollection, I’ve never smashed a computer in anger.

Clothes will wash.

Dishes can be replaced.

The bad golf shot… well, that’ll stay with me awhile.

(Postscript: After we returned home from this free write session, I dropped a glass in the sink and it broke. Yes, I automatically said ‘Oh, shit.’)

Julia's Free Write 

Oh shit indeed!

This morning as I checked messages, I saw one from a friend and opened it.

Now, usually he sends as reel, a cartoon or an article on politics: nope, it was today’s free write prompt “Oh shit.”

And that was exactly in tune with my sentiments: turning one’s mind away once one knows is not easy!

I tried but probably wrote it a half a dozen times before we actually met.

I was brought up in a very conservative family, and environment, where we weren’t even exposed to “dirty” words.

I remember one famous road trip where my mother actually ended up forbidding the word “man”. We had it down pat, inflection, emphasis and all exactly like “damn”.

Now damn had we said damnation would have been o.k., after all, it was in the Bible.

Then there are language differences: when I first came to France my then boyfriend had me convinced that the parrot in the coffee shop was called “merde” (the French version of shit).

I still cannot use the word shit but find the German “Scheisse” ever so satisfying!

D-L's Free Write 

Gina had spent six Tuesday nights from 6:30 to 9:30 in a cake-decorating course. She had watched every episode of The Cake Boss. 

Now she was ready.

Measure the flower, add two eggs, chocolate and the other ingredients. Beat air into the batter as if she were a sadist.

Grease the pans just so. Bake, but set the times four minutes in advance of being done. Mix the sugar and chocolate for the frosting. The frosting was perfect.

Add the cowboy, cow and fence figurines and if Evan was 32, he still loved cowboys. The cake was for him along with cowboy boots for his birthday. 

Gingerly, she put every decoration on the cake. She carried the plate into the dining room which had been decorated like a western ranch house.

 Phoebe the dachshund ran under her feet. The cake flew through the air landing against the giant television.

Oh Shit! 

Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, a weekly newsletter reporting the airline industry  top stories . He is the author of The Robot in the Simulator. AI in Aviation Training.  

Visit D-L.'s website  https://dlnelsonwriter.com, She is the author of 15 fiction and three non fiction books. Her 300 Unsung Women, bios of women who battled gender limitations, can be purchased  at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/300-unsung-women-d-l-nelson/1147305797?ean=9798990385504 

Visit Julia's blog. She has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends.  Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/ 

 

Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles

 

Fertility Fights

 

What frustrated Sanger was how many women she met had tried self-induced abortions. Most had been told when they asked their doctors how to prevent pregnancy—abstinence

When Margaret Sanger became active in fighting for women to have access to birth control, she was often ignored. The message that too many children could destroy a family because of inadequate resources took years to reach lawmaker’s ears.

Margaret Higgins Sanger (1879-1966) made the term “birth control” popular. Much of her early adult life was spent crusading for women to have access to birth control. To do it, she had to break the law.

Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins in Corning, New York.

Her father, Michael H. Higgins, was an Irish immigrant who left the Catholic church.

Although he wanted to be a doctor, he ended up working as a stonemason.

Her mother, Anne, emigrated from Ireland during the potato famine. The couple had 11 children and seven unsuccessful births. Anne died at 49.

How being a child from such a large family shaped Sanger’s attitudes about birth control is conjecture.

Her older sisters helped Sanger go to Claverack College and Hudson River Institute. She started nurses training at White Plains Hospital.

She married William Sanger in 1902. They had three children.

After a fire destroyed the Sanger couple’s home in Hastings-on Hudson, the family moved to New York City.

The marriage ended in 1921. Although she remarried, she continued her work under the Sanger name.

Not Preventing Pregnancy Led to Abortions

Sanger worked in the slums as a visiting nurse. Her husband was an architect. Both were social activists. What frustrated Sanger was how many women she met had tried self-induced abortions. Most had been told when they asked their doctors how to prevent pregnancy—abstinence.

The advice was unrealistic and unsatisfactory.

Sanger considered women controlling their own fertility mandatory. Her method of activism to promote her belief that contraception and empowerment were linked was through the written word.

She created pamphlets, which could not legally be distributed through the mail because of the Comstock Laws. Instead she used family-planning and birth control clinics such as Harlem Birth Control, which she founded, boosting distribution to several hundred thousand copies.

The clinic had all-female doctors and a 100% African-American advisory council. Later, African-Americans were added to the staff.

She created a monthly newsletter, The Woman Rebel. Its slogan was “No Gods, No Masters,” borrowed from the Industrial Workers of the World who used it in the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike. Sanger’s pamphlets with detailed descriptions of contraception methods challenged the Comstock Laws.

The Postal Service suppressed seven of 11 issues of her newsletter. Sanger was arrested. She escaped to the U.K. in 1914. While there, she came under the influence of Havelock Ellis, who believed sex should be safe and pleasurable for women.

Sanger wrote two articles for New York Call that would produce some outrage for their frankness:

•  “What Every Mother Should Know”
•    “What Every Girl Should Know”
•  Theywerepublishedin bookformat in1916. A1917 editionalso hadinformation on: Cervical cap
•    Diaphragms
•   Douches
•  Herbook,Family Limitation,cause her to be prosecute ununder theComstockLaws. It is still available in a 2017 edition. On Amazon, many of the reader reviews show a lack of understanding of the danger that this advice, the best available at the time, brought her.

It is hard to believe today that something like distributing birth control information would lead to 30 days in a workhouse and include force-feeding. That happened to Sanger’s sister and fellow birth-control advocate Ethel Byrne. 

Even more disturbing, at Sanger’s trial the judge said that women did not have the right to “to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception.”

Sanger would be arrested eight times.

She refused to promise she would not break the law again. A victory of sorts happened when Judge Frederick E. Crane ruled in the New York Court of Appeals that doctors could provide contraception information. The catch was that they should only prescribe birth control for reasons of health.

In 1917 Sanger began publishing the Birth Control Review, which was designed to promote support to the medical and legislative communities as well as the middle and upper classes. It encouraged readers to join the American Birth Control League (she founded ABCL in 1921), which later became Planned Parenthood. Publication stopped in 1929. The themes were:

        Children should be conceived in love

        Children should be born of their mother’s conscious desir        Children should be created only under conditions which make possible the heritage of health

 Sanger had the financial support of John D. Rockefeller Jr. for her ABCL.

Her work was not limited to the U.S. She discovered that the method of family planning in Asia was infanticide, most often of a female baby. She worked with writer and 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature winner and fighter for women’s rights Pearl Buck to open a family planning clinic in Shanghai.

Sanger had internal political problems with one group. Recently, her belief in eugenics sparked criticism that surfaced again in the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign for U.S. president.

• Sangerdivided societyinto groups:
•  The educated and informed, who limited family size
•  The intelligent and responsible, who wanted to control family size despite lacking in some of the resource
•   Irresponsible and reckless people with “religious scruples” She felt that the third group should be stopped from reproducing. She continued to lecture and write, including:

        Woman and the New Race

        The Pivot of Civilization

        My Fight for Birth Control

        Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography

        Motherhood in Bondage—500 letters from women desperate for birth control information.

Her National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, a lobbying group to overturn restrictions on contraception, began in 1929.

Frustrated by lack of results, she ordered a diaphragm in 1931 by mail, which was confiscated.

Finally, in 1936, a court decision overturned part of the Comstock Laws. Doctors could order contraception products.

A greater victory came in 1937. The American Medical Association decided contraception was a medical service and was added to the curriculum of many medical schools.

She was nominated for but did not win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sanger died at age 86 from congestive heart failure, but she lived to see the Griswold v.

Connecticut Supreme Court decision legalizing birth control for married women.

Today birth control in many forms is considered normal. Many people today cannot imagine that not only was birth control once considered immoral it could result in prison.