From Birth Control to Fertility

One cloudy October morning, a long line of women in shawls, some of them holding babies, formed before a tenement in the slums of Brooklyn. When the doors were flung open, a young nurse with red hair welcomed the women in. Thus did Mrs. Margaret Sanger open the first U.S. birth-control clinic, 25 years ago last week.

For eight days, hundreds of mothers crowded the little clinic. But on the ninth day came a woman "large of build and hard of countenance"--a police spy. Next day the clinic was raided. Mrs. Sanger and her sister, Mrs. Ethel Byrne, who helped her, were sentenced to 30 days on Blackwell's Island for "operating a public nuisance." Sister Ethel went on a hunger strike, was the first woman to be fed forcibly in U.S. prison history. When the case was appealed Mrs. Sanger lost, but the way was opened for physicians to give birth-control advice. After she was released she stumped up & down the U.S., campaigned all over Europe and the Orient, found time to raise three children.

Last week in Manhattan, a crowd of notables celebrated the 25th anniversary of Mrs. Sanger's clinic. They noted with pride that: 1) there are now more than 620 contraceptive centers all over the country, serving millions of women in 46 States (distributing birth-control information is still illegal in Massachusetts and Connecticut); 2) in a recent Gallup poll, 77% of U.S. citizens favored the teaching of contraception through Government health clinics.

Because of this success, the Birth Controllers have recharted their course, turned fertilitarian. Worried by the long-trend fall of the birthrate, they dropped their old cry of "limited" families. Instead, they urged U.S. parents to have as many babies as they can afford, to "space" them two years apart. To show they meant it, last year they changed the name of their Journal of Contraception. Its new title: Human Fertility.

Last fortnight 13,000,000 people in the U.S. sneezed, wheezed and sniffled with colds, reported the Gallup Poll. Mr. Gallup plans to ask the U.S. about its colds every fortnight this year.

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