Who Am I? September 2022

I was born in Corning, N.Y., the 6th of 11 children! The fact that my mom bore 11 children and had 7 miscarriages had a huge effect on me. Her body was weakened by that entire trauma and she died at a relatively young age. I attended Claverack College and the Hudson River Institute and received nursing training at the White Plains Hospital. I later worked as an obstetric nurse for Lillian Wald’s Visiting Nurses’ Association.

First of all, I would like dispel the rumors and correct some misinformation circulating about me. I am not a member of the Jewish faith. My heritage is Irish-Catholic; however, I feel the rules could be bent a little and that I should be included as a “Who Am I?” candidate due to several reasons which I will disclose in my brief bio which follows. To begin with, in 1902 I married a German-born Jewish architect who came from an observant Jewish family. I took his name and bore him 3 children. I’ve worked extensively with immigrant Jewish and Italian families who then tended to have large families. My New Jersey bona fides are solid. I lectured in Silver Lake N.J., a community split between Belleville and Bloomfield. Furthermore, my husband and I participated in the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike. I was a colleague of Emma Goldman. Emma often included the importance of contraception in her lectures in the Lower East Side.

Brownsville, an eastern residential neighborhood in Brooklyn, had the second largest Jewish population in America in 1916. It was a socialist stronghold teeming with Jewish immigrants, most of them working class people. So, it was there on Amboy Street that I established a clinic to dispense information on family planning. It should be noted that under the Comstock Act which was in force at that time, our mission was illegal. Federal and state anti-obscenity laws had the final say to determine what they considered to be obscene. Those archaic laws lingered on the books until the 1960’s and Comstock itself was not totally repealed until 1971! I felt that contraception was a preferable alternative to abortion which was also illegal. Women who did not want to bear their offspring often were obliged to have rogue abortions in back alleys or worse yet, horrible self-induced ones with coat hangers or knitting needles or possibly just taking a tumble down the stairs and hoping for the best. My thought was that if women could decide when to bear children they would be free to pursue careers and lead healthier lives. I was an early proponent of ‘free speech’ who believed women should be in charge of their own bodies. On a grander scale, I also feared over-population could lead to famine and even war. The establishment of my Brownsville clinic led to my arrest, trial and appeal for the right to disseminate information and advice on contraception. By 1936 my efforts led to laws allowing physicians to prescribe contraceptives for ‘medical reasons’ and not long after, the A.M.A. adopted contraception as a normal medical service. Does a lot of this sound familiar in 2022?

I traveled to the Far East – to China, Korea and Japan to observe and promote family planning. In the U.S. I lectured at church gatherings, clubs and theaters and to all strata of society. I answered thousands of letters and inquiries. My work in establishing a clinic in Harlem earned plaudits from Black leader W.E.B.DuBois. In the late 1930’s I began an effort called, “The Negro Project,” to bring clinics to the rural south.

My reputation was tarnished somewhat by my limited embrace of “eugenics” which posited the idea that the ills of society could be traced to bad genes. At the time, even well known people like Teddy Roosevelt and Alexander Graham Bell were proponents of that pseudo-science. American universities even offered coursework in eugenics in the early 20th century. Eugenics was a slippery slope that led to compulsory sterilization in some states and the Supreme Court even upheld that practice in the Buck v. Bell case in the late ‘20’s which led to approximately 60,000 sterilizations over the next 40 years. I saw value, at the time, in sterilizations to prevent birth defects. I felt that the human race might be improved by reducing the reproduction of those thought to be unfit; however, I disagreed with the racial focus of eugenics as promulgated by the Nazis. That being said, I was still stained by my association with the eugenics movement.

I take pride in my life’s work which led to a marked shift in sexual attitudes which made contraception socially and legally acceptable. My efforts led to the inclusion of Sex-Ed in the curriculums of many school districts. I’m pretty sure you know me by now. That’s me in the photo below.

(1a) Who am I? (1b) 2 of my essential assistants in establishing my Brownsville clinic were Jewish women. What were their names? (1c)What phrase am I credited with coining? (2a)What organization of mine preceded my “Planned Parenthood Federation of America?” (2b)Jewish women directed the B.C.C.R.B. in the early 1920’s. What is the name associated with that acronym? (3a)I wrote a column on health and sex for the socialist daily “New York Call.” What was the name of that column? (3b) a Yiddish version of that column was available for $.33. Who published it? (3c)For a long time I recommended a ‘pessary’ as the most reliable form of birth control. What is a ‘pessary’? (4)Why is the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut legal case important? (5)Finally, what is it that links me, Katherine McCormick, and Gregory Pincus together?