American Birth Control League

• Founded in 1921 by Margaret Sanger, it had its roots in the Brownsville Clinic, a New York based birth control facility.
• It was also preceded by the Birth Control Review, a magazine that began publishing in 1917.
• Both the American Birth Control League and the magazine sought to embody a broad-based national platform of education, research, and legislative reform.
• The following text are the aims of the League as articulated in Margaret Sanger's The Pivot of Civilization,

The American Birth Control League aims to enlighten and educate all

sections of the American public in the various aspects of the dangers of uncontrolled procreation and the imperative necessity of a world program

of Birth Control.

The League aims to correlate the findings of scientists, statisticians,

investigators, and social agencies in all fields. To make this possible,

it is necessary to organize various departments:

RESEARCH: To collect the findings of scientists, concerning the relation of reckless breeding to the evils of delinquency, defect and dependence.

INVESTIGATION: To derive from these scientifically ascertained facts and

figures, conclusions which may aid all public health and social agencies in the study of problems of maternal and infant mortality, child-labor, mental and physical defects and delinquence in relation to the practice

of reckless parentage.

HYGIENIC AND PHYSIOLOGICAL instruction by the Medical profession to

mothers and potential mothers in harmless and reliable methods of Birth

Control in answer to their requests for such knowledge.

STERILIZATION of the insane and feebleminded and the encouragement of

this operation upon those afflicted with inherited or transmissible diseases, with the understanding that sterilization does not deprive the individual of his or her sex expression, but merely renders him

incapable of producing children.

EDUCATIONAL: The program of education includes: The enlightenment of the

public at large, mainly through the education of leaders of thought and opinion--teachers, ministers, editors and writers--to the moral and scientific soundness of the principles of Birth Control and the imperative necessity of its adoption as the basis of national and racial

progress.

POLITICAL AND LEGISLATIVE: To enlist the support and cooperation of

legal advisers, statesmen and legislators in effecting the removal of state and federal statutes which encourage dysgenic breeding, increase the sum total of disease, misery and poverty and prevent the

establishment of a policy of national health and strength.

ORGANIZATION: To send into the various States of the Union field workers

to enlist the support and arouse the interest of the masses, to the importance of Birth Control so that laws may be changed and the

establishment of clinics made possible in every State.

INTERNATIONAL: This department aims to cooperate with similar

organizations in other countries to study Birth Control in its relations to the world population problem, food supplies, national and racial conflicts, and to urge upon all international bodies organized to promote world peace, the consideration of these aspects of international

amity.

The American Birth Control League also proposes to hold an annual

Conference to bring together the workers of the various departments so that each worker may realize the inter-relationship of all the various phases of the problem to the end that National education will tend to encourage and develop the powers of self-direction, self-reliance, and independence in the individuals of the community instead of dependence

for relief upon public or private charities.

• The League held the first American Birth Control Conference on November 10, 1921.
• By 1926, membership exceeded 37,000.
• While many of the League's aims as articulated above were eugenically based, its work throughout the 1920s consisted mainly of birth-control lobbying and education.
• Sanger left the League in 1928 and founded the Birth Control Council of America in 1937. In 1939, the American Birth Control League and the Birth Control Council of America merged to become the Birth Control Federation of America.
• In 1942, the Birth Control Federation changed its name to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Sources

[1] Margaret Sanger, The Pivot of Civilization. Project Gutenberg Ebook, 2008. http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/8/1689/1689.txt

[2] Ruth C. Engs, The Progressive Era's Health Reform Movement: a Historical Dictionary, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003.

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