Margaret Sanger (18831966) after she served as a nurse
on New York 's impoverished Lower East Side, as noted in her autobiography,
became a crusader for birth control. In 1917 she founded the National
Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America.
During these years in New York trained nurses were in great demand.
Few people wanted to enter hospitals; they were afraid they might
be "practiced" upon, and consented to go only in desperate
emergencies. Sentiment was especially vehement in the matter of
having babies. A woman's own bedroom, no matter how inconveniently
arranged, was the usual place for her lyingin. I was not
sufficiently free from domestic duties to be a general nurse,
but I could ordinarily manage obstetrical cases because I was
notified far enough ahead to plan my schedule. And after serving
my two weeks I could get home again.
Sometimes I was summoned to small apartments occupied by young
clerks, insurance salesmen, or lawyers, just starting out, most
of them under thirty and whose wives were having their first or
second baby. They were always eager to know the best and latest
method in infant care and feeding. In particular, Jewish patients,
whose lives centered around the family, welcomed advice and followed
it implicitly.
But more and more my calls began to come from the Lower East Side,
as though I were being magnetically drawn there by some force
outside my control. I hated the wretchedness and hopelessness
of the poor, and never experienced that satisfaction in working
among them that so many noble women have found. My concern for
my patients was now quite different from my earlier hospital attitude.
I could see that much was wrong with them which did not appear
in the physiological or medical diagnosis. A woman in childbirth
was not merely a woman in childbirth. My expanded outlook included
a view of her background, her potentialities as a human being,
the kind of children she was bearing, and what was going to happen
to them...
As soon as the neighbors learned that a nurse was in the building
they came in a friendly way to visit, often carrying fruit, jellies,
or gefilte fish made after a cherished recipe. It was infinitely
pathetic to me that they, so poor themselves should bring me food.
Later they drifted in again with the excuse of getting the plate,
and sat down for a nice talk; there was no hurry. Always back
of the little gift was the question, "I am pregnant (or my
daughter, or my sister is). Tell me something to keep from having
another baby. We cannot afford another yet. "
I tried to explain the only two methods I had ever heard among
the middle classes, both of which were invariably brushed aside
as unacceptable. They were of no certain avail to the wife because
they placed the burden of responsibility solely upon the husband-a
burden which he seldom assumed. What she was seeking was selfprotection
she could herself use, and there was none.
Below this stratum of society was one in truly desperate circumstances.
The men were sullen and unskilled, picking up odd jobs now and
then, but more often unemployed, lounging in and out of the house
at all hours of the day and night. The women seemed to slink on
their way to market and were without neighborliness.
These submerged, untouched classes were beyond the scope of organized
charity or religion. No labor union, no church, not even the Salvation
Army reached them. They were apprehensive of everyone and rejected
help of any kind, ordering all intruders to keep out; both birth
and death they considered their own business. Social agents, who
were just beginning to appear, were profoundly mistrusted because
they pried into homes and lives, asking questions about wages,
how many were in the family, had any of them ever been in jail.
Often two or three had been there or were now under suspicion
of prostitution, shoplifting, purse snatching, petty thievery,
and, in consequence, passed furtively by the big blue uniforms
on the corner.
. . .
Pregnancy was a chronic condition among the women of this class.
Suggestions as to what to do for a girl who was "in trouble"
or a married woman who was "caught" passed from mouth
to mouth-herb teas, turpentine, steaming, rolling downstairs,
inserting slippery elm, knitting needles, shoehooks. When
they had word of a new remedy they hurried to the drugstore, and
if the clerk were inclined to be friendly he might say, "Oh,
that won't help you, but here's something that may." The
younger druggists usually refused to give advice because, if it
were to be known, they would come under the law; midwives were
even more fearful. The doomed women implored me to reveal the
"secret" rich people had, offering to pay me extra to
tell them; many really believed I was holding back information
for money. They asked everybody and tried anything, g but nothing
did them any good. On Saturday nights I have seen groups of from
fifty to one hundred with their shawls over their heads waiting
outside the office of a fivedollar abortionist.
These were not merely "unfortunate conditions among the poor"
such as we read about. I knew the women personally. They were
living, breathing, human beings, with hopes, fears, and aspirations
like my own, yet their weary, misshapen bodies, "always ailing,
never failing, " were destined to be thrown on the scrap
heap before they were thirty-five. I could not escape from the
facts of their wretchedness; neither was I able to see any way
out. My own cozy and comfortable family existence was becoming
a reproach to me.
. . .
. . . No matter what it might cost, I was finished with palliatives
and superficial cures; I was resolved to seek out the root of
evil, to do something to change the destiny of mothers whose miseries
were vast as the sky.
Source: Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography (New York: W.W. Norton
and Co., 1938), pp. 8689, 92.
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© Paul Halsall, March 2023
