The power of Post Office censorship, with the subtle despotism involved, is the greatest menace to liberty in the United States. When Congress was authorized to establish a public mail carrying service, it was never intended that the latter should pass upon the political, religious or moral opinions of the matter to be conveyed. The Post Office was supposed to be mechanically efficient, and nothing beyond that. That it should now dictate on ethical questions is as absurd as if the railroads and street car companies were legally empowered to refuse to accept passengers whose ideas they did not like.
The Woman Rebel was a voice trying to deliver a message to the working women of America. That message-Birth Control-was objected to by officialism running riot. Let the issue be clear. It was the idea of birth control, not to be language used, that the Post Office was determined to suppress. But it branded the articles as being "obscene" under the law, and therefore unmailable. A Federal Grand Jury took the same view and indicted me for pub" publishing them.
The case was one that threatened woman's freedom. If the people of the United States had been willing to concede the power of censorship demanded by the Post Office and the District Attorney's office in connection with The Woman Rebel, it would have meant silencing the most urgent human and economic demand of our day. Fortunately, the power was not conceded in this particular instance, though it remains, to be invoked legally at any time. Defeated by public opinion, the Government dismissed its case against me, but it has never released the seized copies of the magazine. I reprint the censored articles, with their message of birth control, and challenge any one to find matter in them that could cause the simplest minds to become depraved.
MARGARET SANGER
" It will also be the aim of THE WOMAN REBEL to advocate the prevention of conception and to impart such knowledge in the columns of this paper." The Woman Rebel, March, 1914
From "THE WOMAN REBEL," March, 1914 THE PREVENTION OF CONCEPTION
Is there any reason why women should not receive clean, harmless, scientific knowledge on how to prevent conception ? Everybody is aware that the old, stupid fallacy that such knowledge will cause a girl to enter into prostitution has long been shattered. Seldom does a prostitute become pregnant. Seldom does the girl practicing promiscuity become pregnant. The women of the upper middle class have all available knowledge and implements to prevent conception. The woman of the lower middle class is struggling for this knowledge. She tries various methods of prevention, and after a few years of experience, plus medical advice, succeeds in discovering some method suitable to her individual self. The woman of the people is the only one left in ignorance of this information. Her neighbors, relatives and friends tell her stories of special devices and the success of them all. They tell her also of the blood-sucking men with M.D. after their names, who perform operations for the price of so-and-so.
But the working woman's purse is thin. It's far cheaper to have a baby, "though God knows what it will do after it gets here." Then, too all other classes of women live in places where there is at least a semblance of privacy and sanitation. It is easier for them to care for themselves, whereas the large majority of the women of the people have no bathing or sanitary conveniences. This accounts too, for the fact that the higher the standard of living, the more care can be taken and fewer children result. No plagues, famines or wars could ever frighten the capitalist class so much as the universal practice of the prevention of conception. On the other hand no better method could be utilized for increasing the wages of the workers.
As is well known, a law exists forbidding the imparting of information on this subject, the penalty being several years' imprisonment. Is it not time to defy this law? And what fitter place could be found than in the pages of The Woman Rebel ?
From "THE WOMAN REBEL," May, 1914 OPEN DISCUSSION
Science has fully vindicated our right to discuss whether our ancestors were monkeys or whether the species was specially created. Then let us discuss and decide if it is to children's advantage to be born, and if we as individuals are ready for the responsibilities which each new child brings. If we are not, let us by all means prevent the coming into to the world of a child we are not physically, mentally, or financially prepared to accept and care for.
Holland is perhaps the only country in which artificial restriction has been extended to the poor, instead of, as in other countries, being adopted by the rich and educated classes only. Members of the medical profession there have openly approved and helped to extend artificial restriction; and not only has health, as shown by the death rate and infantile mortality, improved faster than in any other country in the world, but it was stated at the recent Eugenics Congress that the stature of the Dutch people was increasing more rapidly than that of any other country by no less than four inches within the last fifty years. The explanation is that the knowledge of hygienic methods of limitation by the workers enables them to have smaller families, which they can look after better.
Abortion is at times justified where prevention fails, but when once the damnable prudery and hypocrisy of society have been sufficiently exposed to enable people to discuss preventive means openly, there will then be much less cause for abortions, and people will work together for a common benefit and contribute their experiences for the use of all.
ABORTION IN THE UNITED STATES
It is a well recognized fact that "criminal" abortion prevails to-day to such an extent that it is estimated that one-third of all pregnancies result in criminal abortion.
It is said 100,000 criminal abortions occur each year in the United States and 6,000, at the lowest estimate, die yearly from the direct result of this. "Criminal" abortions arise from a perverted sex relationship under the stress of economic necessity, and their greatest frequency is among married women
Prominent authorities claim that criminal abortions are 50 per cent. of all abortions that occur, and this is considered a conservative estimate.
Just why there is so much danger in abortions can be readily understood when we realize the process of growth of the embryo. During the first six weeks after conception the ovum becomes implanted in the uterus. The second six weeks is occupied with the formation of the placenta (afterbirth). This is the period when abortion most easily occurs, because of the firmly adhering covering of the embryo to the walls or lining of the uterus.
When instruments are used they often rupture the membrane and the entire placenta may be left, though the foetus comes away. The covering or envelope of the ovum may come away in a shred-like discharge after an abortion, all of which necessitates a careful curettage (scraping) to avoid resulting conditions of blood poisoning and disease. Most of the deaths are the result of sepsis (or decay) of some kind. Often the foetus is found macerated (or softened) and the whole region of the reproductive organs is in a highly inflamed condition. Rarely if ever is an abortion complete, and only in a very small percentage, authorities claim, is there reason to believe the ovum is expelled unbroken. Consequently the uterus needs careful investigation after each case of abortion.
When an abortion is properly done by one specialized to do so, the cost is usually tremendous. What a wholesale lot of misery, expense, unhappiness and worry will be avoided when woman shall possess the knowledge of prevention of conception!
In Paris, up to a few years ago, the instruments to produce abortion were sold openly in the market place, while all the mechanical preventives were, and are, openly displayed in the windows of the drug stores. Abortions, with their horrible consequences, are quite needless and unnecessary when the subject of preventive means shall be open to all to discuss and use. How soon this shall be depends on you.
CAN YOU AFFORD TO HAVE A LARGE FAMILY?
The question which each individual should ask himself is: Can you personally afford to keep a large family? You may have a fixed income or a wage, sufficient to enable you to maintain a family of two or three children in comfort, and to lay by a few dollars for a "rainy day." But your income or wage, divided amongst a family of six or seven, would be quite inadequate to provide proper food clothing and housing. Your means would be swallowed up in living from day to day, and sickness or other misfortune would find you unprepared and defenseless. The care of a large family, too, exhausts the mother by unceasing and harrassing toil, and frequent confinements tend to undermine her health. These are some of the disadvantages attendant Upon too large families.
How can these evils be averted? By regulating the size of your family according to your means. Many well-meaning, but not well informed, people imagine that parents cannot control the size of their family. But this is a mere delusion, for science teaches us that there are innocent but safe methods by which this control can be ensured, without the slightest danger to health and without transgressing any moral law.
The French peasantry seldom have more than two or three children to a family; and these people do not trust to "chance" in a matter of such vital importance, but avail themselves of all possible knowledge.
The laws in the United States forbid the imparting of this knowledge which it is necessary for you to have in order to intelligently regulate the size of your family. It is almost impossible for you to obtain this scientific knowledge unless SOMEONE defies these laws. Are you prepared to back up The Woman Rebel in this fight?
From "THE WOMAN REBEL," July, 1914 THE BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE
The recently organized and much needed Birth Control League of America has for its aim as follows:
1. To carry on an extensive, nation-wide campaign of education, of literature, to prove to the workers that it is to their interest to have a thorough knowledge and understanding of the means for regulating the size of their families.
2. To agitate most vigorously for the repeal of the State and Federal laws against the spreading of knowledge relative to methods for the prevention of conception.
3. To render all possible aid to those who are prosecuted under these laws, and to bring their cases to the attention of the entire thinking world.
The headquarters of the league will be in New York City, while autonomous locals will be organized all over the country to carry on the propaganda.
Suffragettes, feminists and all women's organizations will never make much progress until they recognize the fact that women cannot be on an equal footing with men until they have full and complete control of their reproductive functions.
We are anxious to hear all advocates of woman's emancipation, in connection with the question raised above.
We want the help and co-operation of all enlightened women-mothers and potential mothers-who see the danger and criminality of reckless and indiscriminate child-bearing- women who are not afraid to learn the physiology and hygiene of their own bodies.
THE MARRIAGE BED
The marriage bed is the most degenerating influence of the social order, as to life, in all of its forms-biological, psychological, sociological-for man, woman and child.
In order to attain to the highest development of the sex nature, man should not possess a sex slave, whom he can compel by both legal and conventional standards to serve him sexually at his will. He should, on the contrary, have the constant necessity to use his personal powers to win every opportunity to exercise his sex-functions, just as he needs to do with any other part of his make-up, as to the development of his nature to higher and finer issues. The easy way-the groove way- though a desirable way enough for attained physical habit which has been regulated to the sub-consciousness of the individual, for that special stage of its development-is the way of degeneration and death, as to starvation of higher ideals and powers.
In order to attain the highest development of sex-nature, the woman should not have the good of a master; such good destroys her native spontaneity-or it fosters physical habit to hypertrophy-or it arouses bitter antagonism and rebellion-as it prevents the development of her sex nature to higher psychological issues.
As to the child, in its vertical evolution, its heritage,-the degenerating influences in the parents must inevitably handicap its faculties and powers,-and the extension of such influences in the form of traditional ideals, into its horizontal evolution its environmental devolopment-must tend to foster such degeneration, and to more and more hinder the development of higher and finer ideals physical, psychological, sociological.
Thus, we see, that scientifically considered as to physical, psychological, sociological hygiene poetically considered, as to love-artistically considered, as to the aesthetic nature- spiritually considered, as to the flowering of the soul- the marriage bed is a decadent institution, a reactionary development of the sex instinct, an institution that arrays itself against the great fundamental principle of life -self -preservation.
Let this institution then be anathema to all thinking minds. -Alice Groff
ARE PREVENTIVE MEANS INJURIOUS ?
It is often asked by those interested in the control of offspring whether the use of preventive means does not injure the health. According to investigations carried on among physicians in Paris, the families who average about two children each and who have practiced and used preventive means have certainly not found the means harmful.
The people of each country have found means of prevention differing from those used in other countries. The people in this country shall soon demand such knowledge just as they do preventive medicine and anti-toxins, and open discussion of these means. To-day the women and men of the middle and upper classes certainly use preventives the death rate among them is proportionately small. It is the working class who do not use these means! that fill the hospitals of the country as well as the graveyards.
There is greater harm being done to-day where women, only half and poorly informed, use strong solutions, which are often injurious to the delicate membraneous linings of the generative organs.
There are, however, harmless preventives, which, when used, have a temporary effect, and when the woman later desires a child she will be in condition to have one.
These are the sane measures to be advanced; and the stupidity of Comstock as well as the "morality" of the Post Office censors shall never prevent your knowing these preventive means or passing on this knowledge to your shop mate; for every time you place your information into the hands of your fellow-workers, you are building the foundation of a clean and intelligent society.
NOTE: After three issues of The Woman Rebel had been suppressed as "obscene," without my being able to find out from the Post Office what was meant by obscenity, I printed the following " Defense of Assassination," by Herbert A. Thorpe. This was done m order to force definite action, assassination and arson being included in Section 211 of the Federal Law, as "obscene" subjects. Had it been ignored, I would have followed it up with an article on arson. But it had the desired effect. I may point out that this " Defense of Assassination " consists largely of quotations from the works of a highly respectable New England reformer --Wendell Phillips.
A DEFENSE OF ASSASSINATION
It is generally agreed that lower forms of life must give place to higher types, and when the pioneer of civilization makes his way into the forest, he must of necessity destroy the man-killing animals living therein,. Exterminating warfare is also waged against the savage members of the human race wherever they oppose the establishment of conditions necessary for the development of the more highly organized types. Of course, where improvement by instruction and subsequent co-operation is possible, this extreme of annihilation need not be practiced, but unless it can be shown that there is room enough on earth for both savage and civilized, the savage must go.
Having thus indicated the operation of the law of the survival of the fittest, it would seem that we should apply the same treatment accorded to wild animals and savages to those men in civilized countries whose natures skill display traits characteristic of the tiger, and wolf, and who, owing to the nature of our social fabric, are beyond the reach of correction.
It is immaterial whether such men are conscious or unconscious of their natures and the effect of their actions on others. If their position in modern life is an entirely false one, as in the case of the czar or king, this is their misfortune: but, like the savage or wild animal, they should not be permitted to live upon or block the march of the many toward better conditions.
There is no difference, ethically, between killing a man instantly or slowly, over-working or starving him to death. Yet those are the conditions imposed upon millions of workers throughout the world to-day, owing to the brute force of the employing and official classes, and their ability to control large armies of ignorant police and soldiers to intimidate the workers whenever a clash occurs between Capital and Labor.
Another weapon used by these undeveloped czars of industry, whose egoism runs riot, is to dictate to their legislative hirelings what laws shall be enacted, or, if any exist that balk their selfish desires, to coerce their judicial puppets so to intrepret them as to nullify the beneficial
The point I wish to bring out is this----that since the great mass of people are bye force of circumstances unable to use the same weapons employed by the better educated and priviliged class, this does not preclude the working class from using whatever other means of defense may e at its disposal, such as the strike, boycott, sabotage or
The assassination of tyrants has been practiced throughout history in all parts of the world, and in regard to "nihilism! m Russia, Wendell Phillips has this to say "Nihilism is the righteous and honorable resistance of a people crushed under an iron rule. Nihilism is evidence of e. Nihilism is the last weapon of victims choked and manacled beyond all other means of making the oppressor tremble. God means that the unjust power shall be insecure and everyone owe of the giant prostrate in chains whether be to lift a single dagger or stir a city's revolts IS a lesson in justice. One might tremble for the future of the race if such despotism could exist without provoking the bloodiest resistance. Honor Nihilism since it redeems human nature from the suspicion of being utterly vile ma e up only of the heartless oppressors and contented slaves. Every line of our history, every interest of civilization bids us rejoice when the tyrant grows pale and the slave rebellious
"We cannot but pity the suffering of any human being, however richly deserved but such pity must not confuse our moral sense. Humanity gains "
The attention of our editors and judges is called particularly to the he following from the same speech-- I know what reform needs. and all it needs, in and here discussion is free, the press untrammeled and where public halts protect debate. In such a land he IS doubly and trebly guilty who, except in some extreme case, disturbs the sober rule of law and order "
History shows that individuals can be so high' organized and so sensitive to human suffering as to be irresistibly impelled to seek relief by killing the person responsible directly or indirectly for the suffering imposed and when the assassin merely obeys an uncontrollable natural Impulse to eliminate destructive oppression it seems to me that individual's outraged better nature. expression of the Governments, of course, exercise their power to restrain and punish common criminals by imprisonment an Bath, but since the average intelligence does not perceive there are many more ways of stealing and murder throat-cutting other than by Pocket-Picking and throat-cutting scores of less a parent and more insidious crime go unpunished, and it is left to the more discerning to denounce the greedy commercial and official octopuses that prey upon society from behind legal barricades
There is no reason why those members of society possessing highly social and sympathetic qualities should not attempt to create an environment suitable to their natures and if the removal of the tiger, the savage, the political or industrial tyrant, conduces to that end, such removal becomes a necessary duly.
If assassination has failed to achieve very much the way of reform, it may not be because the method is wrong but because it has not been Practiced persistently enough. Where physical force is employed, numbers mean strength, and while one may fail to produce substantial results, one hundred will succeed. The American revolution is a case in point. If we concede the right to a group to reams tyranny or injustice by violence, we must also concede the same right to the individual. It must not be supposed from the foregoing that I have any scheme of wholesale slaughter in mind. My idea is that if during an industrial crisis such as a strike or lockout, when sometimes the way to a settlement is blocked by the stubborn selfishness of a single man, it might prove a good lesson to the employing class if such an obstacle were promptly and effectively removed.
HERBERT A. THORPE
TWO IMPORTANT BOOKS By MARGARET SANGER What Every Girl Should Know Price 25 and 50 cents; paper and cloth bound What Every Mother Should Know Price 25 and 50 cents; paper and cloth bound Published by Max Maisel 424 Grand St. New York City TO APPEAR: Woman and Birth Control By MARGARET SANGER