Debate on birth control. Margaret Sanger and Winter Russell

by Margaret Sanger; Winter Russell

We know that the death rate, maternal death rate, has not been falling in the United States of America, although the death rate from diseases has been falling. That shows woman is given the last consideration in scientific and medical lines. But then woman will never get her own freedom until she fights for it, and she has to fight hard to hold and keep it. We know too that when the children that come to this mother against her will and against her desires, when they come into the world, that we have an appalling number of 300,000 babies each year in this country who die each year before they reach one year of age—300,000 if you please, and it is safe to say and anyone who has gone among these mothers and these children—it is safe to say that the great percentage of these children that are born have been unwanted. The mother knows that that child should not come to birth, when the five or six or seven that she has have not enough to eat. That takes common sense and every working woman has that common sense.

We have these 300,000 babies, this procession of little coffins, and we shake our heads sadly and say something must be done to reduce the number, but nevertheless we go right on allowing 600,000 parents to remain in ignorance of how to prevent 300,000 more babies coming to birth the next year only to die from poverty and sickness.

We speak of the rights of the unborn. I say that it is time to speak of those who are already born. I also say and know that the infant death rate is affected tremendously by those who arrive last. The first child that comes—the first or second or third children who arrive in a family, have a far better chance than those who arrive later.

We know that out of a thousand children born that 200 of them live [sic] when they are either the second or third. When the seventh arrives there are 300 that die out of that thousand, and by the time that the twelfth child arrives, 600 of this thousand passed away, and so we can see that the man or woman who brings to birth two or three children has a far better chance of bringing them to maturity than if they continued to have nine or ten or twelve children.

Those are facts. They are not generalities or opinions. The United States Government stands behind these facts. Then we also, through our maternity centers and child welfare means and other means, we finally rescue some of these children, and do not allow them to die under one year of age, and then when the mother is pregnant again—if maternity was not forced upon her—she would be able to bring that child through. Another one begins to come, and we find that this child that was rescued from dying during its first year now succumbs before its fifth year, and then we have 150,000 children who die before they reach the fifth year of age and so we can enumerate all of these conditions which are so despicable and so difficult in this country because we will not get to fundamentals. We will not deal with the cause of things while we are anxious to deal with the cure. When a mother does finally bring her children through the adolescent period, what is the next thing she has for that? We find in the South that where children come according to Nature, every year and one-half, that as soon as they are able, they are shuffled and hustled on in to take the place and compete with their father in the factories. That is the place that society has for children of the poor. We find in other states, too, where it is only a question of a few years later that also the children as soon as they are able to take their place in industry, are pushed out of home, not because the mothers of these children are not just as anxious to see them in universities and colleges but because of the pitiless earnings that she must have to support those who are coming behind them.

Most of us know this. We know something about the actual conditions of life as it is among us. In some of the factories of Lowell and Fall River, Mass., it was found that of the children who work and toil there, under ten years of age, that 85 percent of them come from families of eight—their mothers have given birth to eight children—and we find in the south very much the same thing, excepting a higher percentage of 90 to 93 percent of the children there.

That is not the only thing. We have conditions again that are more disastrous to the race than child labor or infant mortality, and that is the transmission of the venereal diseases to the race that is to come.

We know that the mothers and fathers of today produce the race of tomorrow, and know that unless we have a clean child and a clean stream of blood pouring through that child that the race of tomorrow is a doomed foregone conclusion. We know, too, that out of this terrible scourge of disease that we have 90 percent of the insanity in this country, due to syphilis. Anyone who is dealing with fundamentals would know that these people should use means to protect themselves against having children. They should absolutely in due regard to themselves, to their children and to the race, not allow a child to be born while that disease is running riot in the system, and then we have that terrible consequence which is insanity.

We have fifty percent of the still births of this country, in other words, dead babies, that are dead when they are born—50 percent are due to this disease. You may think that these things are taken care of, but if I told you that they are not—syphilitic women today are allowed to bring forth progeny even in the face of all officialdom, and all the kind and humane things and other kind of things that are doled out to women today—that women are bringing forth children when they themselves are syphilitic.

Not long ago we took a syphilitic woman to 43 hospitals in the city and every one of them said, “We will cure her disease. Leave her here. We will do the best we can for her, but don’t ask us to give her the information to control birth. That is not our office. That is not for us,” and so that little syphilitic woman went back again to her home and will become pregnant only to abort again, which was a great kindness.