He told me to tell them to stir their stumps;
When ‘Clubs!’ is the order, then clubs is trumps.
What else would it be when I’m just a cop
And he is a Reverend Archbishop?”
ARTHUR GUITERMAN
In confirming my conviction in 1918, Judge Frederick E. Crane of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York had for the first time interpreted the section of the state law which permitted a licensed physician to give contraceptive advice for the “cure or prevention of disease”; and, further, he had taken from Webster’s Dictionary the broad definition of disease as any alteration in the state of body which caused or threatened pain and sickness, thus extending the meaning of the word far beyond the original scope of syphilis and gonorrhea. But, never satisfied, I wanted women to have birth control for economic and social reasons.
Therefore, in January, 1921, Anne Kennedy and I went to Albany to find a sponsor for a bill which was to change the New York law. It was not only a question of amending it, but also a means of educating the public, of explaining our cause through the medium of legislation. Months of preparation were required, hours of tramping the floors of State buildings at Albany, interviewing one person after another, securing promises of help, breaking down hostility.
When people said that women who would not have children were selfish and preferred lap dogs, I replied, “All right. Then it is better for the children not to be born.” That type of woman should die out biologically, just as did the different species that were caught in the mire and slime and could not reproduce themselves. It is a principle that applies to human beings also, that they must work through their environment in order to survive.
As soon as you could get out of people’s minds what birth control was not, they almost invariably said, “Why, yes, certainly, that sounds reasonable.” Many of the lawmakers themselves believed that the measure might be of great benefit, but the party whip cut too deeply.
Birth control was once described by Heywood Broun as dynamite from the point of view of the politician. If he supported it, he might lose votes; if he opposed it, he might lose votes. “There is nothing a politician hates more than losing votes. He would much rather the subject never came up.”