Due in large measure to Lord Dawson’s eloquence, the Bishops at Lambeth gave us one of our greatest triumphs by voting 193 to 67 in favor of birth control. Bernard Shaw believed the Church of England was making a “belated attempt to see whether it could catch up with the Twentieth Century.”

Ever since the outburst of religious intolerance at Town Hall, it had been apparent that in the United States the Catholic hierarchy and officialdom were going to be the principal enemies of birth control. From city to city you could feel this. At Albany we could not have a hall because the police commissioner was a Catholic. In Cincinnati the Knights of Columbus almost succeeded in barring us from the hotel. At Syracuse the mayor had to veto the ordinance of the Catholic Council before we could hold a conference there. When I was to give a lecture in Milwaukee the Catholic Women’s League came to protest the meeting to Socialist Mayor Hoane. He had told them, however, “If I prevent Mrs. Sanger from speaking because you protest, I shall also have to prevent you from speaking when others object to Catholic doctrine. Free speech must prevail in Milwaukee.”

Tactics aiming to bring about a reconciliation between the Anglicans and Rome had been rendered futile by the endorsement of the Bishops. I suspected the demand for a clear statement from the Vatican on the question originated in the United States where Catholic women were showing a gradual yet persistent spirit of independence. In spite of Church canons they were using contraceptives, and the Church, in its wisdom, was obliged to change the law to keep its parishioners from breaking it. In December came the answer in the form of a Papal Encyclical. The world moved but the Pope sat still. He declared that he was “looking with paternal eye—as from a watch-tower.” But what was he looking at?

The Pope said over and over again that sexual intercourse, unless definitely designed to produce children, was against nature and a sin; he roundly condemned any contraceptive and he affirmed that in the matter of limiting families continence alone was permissible. Yet in the selfsame document he nullified his previous insistence that procreation was the sole justification of marital relations by countenancing them at times when pregnancy could not result. These times he made indefinite; they might refer to sterility, post-menopause, or the so-called “safe period” during the menstrual cycle; in fine, he was saying first, that you might not have intercourse unless you expected to have a child, and, in the same breath, that you might have intercourse when you could not possibly have a child. This Jesuitical inconsistency allowed a loophole for the issuance of the Latz Foundation booklet entitled The Rhythm of Sterility and Fertility in Women, published with “ecclesiastical approval” and recommended by Catholic societies.

It had become part of my routine to answer every challenge to the cause, just as I tried to answer every question at a meeting. Here again was the hoary “nature” argument which should have been in its grave long since. The contention that it was sin to interrupt nature in her processes was simple nonsense. The Pope frustrated her by shaving or having his hair cut. Whenever we caught a fish or shot a wolf or slaughtered a lamb, whenever we pulled a weed or pruned a fruit tree, we too frustrated nature. Disease germs were perfectly natural little fellows which had to be frustrated before we could get well. As for the alleged “safe period” which Rhythm now set forth, what could be more unnatural than to restrict intercourse to the very time when nature had least intended it?

But, taking one consideration with another, it seemed to me then that the birth control idea was rolling merrily along. I could sympathize with an indignant old radical who left a birth control congress sniffing, “This thing has got too darned safe for me.”

Chapter Thirty-four
SENATORS, BE NOT AFFRIGHTED

“Should the Federal Laws Be Changed?” was the subject of my debate with Chief Justice Richard B. Russell of Georgia, who had had eighteen children by two wives. I always welcomed a debate, although after the first few years it had been almost impossible to find anyone to defend the other side, and therefore I was pleased to be called to Atlanta, in May, 1931, for this one.

The old judge, white-haired and with white eyebrows and mustache, his figure still erect, fixed me with a glance, sometimes satiric and sometimes flaming with the rage of an Old Testament prophet. He talked of the sacredness of motherhood, the home, and the State of Georgia. “We don’t need birth control in Georgia. We’ve had to give up two Congressmen now because we don’t have enough people. If New York wants to wipe out her population, she can. We need ours.... I can take care of all the children God sent me. I believe God sent them to me because they have souls. Poodle dogs and jackasses don’t have souls. I have obeyed the command of God to ‘increase and multiply.’”

His children and their wives and their relatives occupying several rows of seats down front applauded vigorously.