Dennett's Echo1

Dennett’s echo1 Catherine Dennett Spaulding n the spring of 1922, the newly appointed U.S. Postmaster General Dr. Hubert Work ordered the placement of this Ibulletin in every post office across the United States: IT IS A CRIMINAL OFFENSE To Send or Receive Obscene or Indecent Matter by Mail or Express The author is a member of the Class of 2014 at the The forbidden matter includes anything printed or writ- Georgetown University School of Medicine and the great- ten, or any indecent pictures, or any directions, drugs or great-granddaughter of the essay subject. This essay articles for the prevention of conception, etc.2p52 won first prize in the 2013 Helen H. Glaser Student Essay Competition. Except as noted, all illustrations are courtesy of Taken from Section 480 of The Postal Laws and Regulations the family archives of Sharon Spaulding, great-granddaughter of the United States of America of 1913,3 this abridged version of Mary Ware Dennett. of the federal criminal code reflected the sentiment of the Dennett’s echo male-dominated hierarchy of the day. The purpose was to could not provide financial support, Dennett strove to avoid enforce the Comstock Act of 1873, a series of federal laws the notoriety that Sanger actively sought. Instead, Dennett that banned the dissemination of any “obscene, lewd or advocated for the legalization of birth control through political lascivious” materials containing information on the prevention action—protesting, lobbying, and rallying public support by of conception.4 Commonly known as the Obscenity Laws, the expressing her opinion in journals such as the Birth Control Comstock Act rendered all information on sex education and Herald, a newspaper she edited from 1922 to 1925. Even though birth control illegal in America from 1873 to 1972. Dr. Work she expressed sympathy to the hundreds of women who wrote had been a Republican state chairman and former president to her pleading for birth control information, Dennett believed of the American Medical Association, and believed that the it was not her role to distribute such material until she could do distribution or mailing of materials such as pamphlets on so legally. Her response to these women was always the same: family planning encouraged sexual activity for reasons other than procreation—reasons that he, and many others of the era, It is absolutely illegal to mail any contraceptive information considered sinful and spiritually weakening. At the time he was anywhere in the country: and in many of our states . it is appointed Postmaster General in 1922, Dr. Work would have illegal to give information by any means whatever. been well aware of the growing desire among his constituents . That is why it is time to repeal [the Comstock Act]. to overturn the Comstock Act. By ordering the prominent I hope you will help us accomplish it.5 display of the federal law, he made it clear that he intended to ensure that such laws remained in force. She ended her letters by encouraging her writers to direct fur- The story of the fight to legalize contraception and eliminate ther questions to their physicians. the censorship of sex education is a heroic and impassioned one While many have heard of Margaret Sanger, almost no one that is virtually unknown today despite current debates about knows about Mary Ware Dennett. Almost uniformly, Dennett’s birth control. The American birth control movement arose achievements are either credited to Sanger or left out entirely. from the fires of the women’s suffrage movement of the early Even though Dennett was referenced over a hundred times twentieth century and culminated in the striking down of the and wrote several letters to the editor in the New York Times, last remnants of the Comstock Act in the 1970s. Its heroines a recent article from the newspaper mistakenly credits Sanger, are Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett, two feminists not Dennett, with the founding of the National Birth Control and radical thinkers to whom the birth control movement owes League (NBCL).6 Very few American history textbooks actually much of its success. Revolutionaries in their day, these women mention Dennett’s name, and as Constance M. Chen points began the fight as colleagues but became rivals as their visions out in her biography of Dennett, one book, Federal Censorship: diverged. Dennett strove to legalize contraception for all men Obscenity in the Mail, even spells her name incorrectly.7pxi and women, both rich and poor, while Sanger insisted that such Dennett’s story has thus been buried in history and er- information be accessible to the public only at the discretion roneously deemed unsuccessful. But she was hardly a failure. of a physician. For years, Dennett tried to convince Sanger From 1919 to 1926, Dennett fought to push a “clean repeal” bill that such a “medical monopoly” on contraceptive information through Congress to reverse the ban on mailing and distribut- would prevent birth control from reaching the hands of women ing birth control by striking the words “preventing conception” in poverty, who perhaps needed it the most.2p203 Dennett and from the obscenity laws. The bill eventually died in committee, Sanger never agreed on this point, and this disagreement but she was the first person not only to attempt to dismantle created a chasm that eventually splintered the movement. the Comstock Act, but also to bring the taboo topic of birth While the significance of Sanger’s work is without ques- control to the floors of the House and the Senate for debate. tion, her flamboyance overshadowed Dennett’s contributions, Several years later, in 1929, Dennett found herself tried and many of which were critical to the eventual disbandment of the convicted of violating the very laws she had sought to repeal; Comstock Laws and the legalization of contraception. Sanger the verdict was overturned a year later on appeal. The over- thrived in the spotlight: in 1914, she was charged with nine in- turn set a new legal precedent and led to several of the most dictments for the distribution of a pamphlet on contraception monumental rulings on censorship of the time, including the (though such charges were later dismissed), and in 1916, she defeat of the Customs ban on James Joyce’s Ulysses in U.S. vs. spent thirty days in jail after opening the country’s first birth One Book Called Ulysses and the defeat of the government in control clinic.2 In contrast, Dennett made a concerted effort to the 1936 case U.S. vs. One Package of Japanese Pessaries. Each remain within legal boundaries for both personal and philo- of these rulings helped to pave the way for the eventual full sophical reasons. After surviving the public shame and scrutiny legalization of contraception in the United States in the 1970s. of a highly publicized divorce in 1913, Dennett was granted While many of Dennett’s achievements have been obscured by sole custody of her two young boys. In an era in which divorce time, her victories are real, measured not through the passing for any reason was scandalous and custody was almost always of new federal legislation but by the effect her voice had on awarded to the father based on the assumption that a woman shifting the public discourse. 6 The Pharos/Spring 2014 The Pharos/Spring 2014 7 The birth control movement in the United States in class. This was America in 1910.7pix the early 1900s Such discussions about sex and contraception had been The U.S. birth control movement arose in the West Village illegal since the last quarter of the nineteenth century in large of Manhattan around 1910, an area filled with the leading in- part because of the work of Anthony Comstock (1844–1915), a tellectuals, feminists, and patriots of the day. Known as “Little young man shocked by the promiscuous behavior of Civil War Bohemia,” on a stroll through Washington Square one might soldiers. Comstock became consumed with worry over the strike up a conversation with the feminist writer Charlotte moral indecency of the American public, and joined the Young Perkins Gilman or listen to an impassioned speech on anar- Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), seeking comfort in their chist philosophy by Emma Goldman. Turning right onto West use of Christian principles to foster the “spiritual, intellectual Fourth street towards the Hudson, one could purchase a print and physical well-being of individuals.” 8 In the spring of 1873, by a follower of William Morris, the founder of the Arts and he founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, Crafts Movement, or hope to sneak a pamphlet on family an organization solely concerned with purging society of its planning from Margaret Sanger. This was the neighborhood “morally indecent” characters. Several months later, Comstock Dennett was welcomed into when she first moved to New York convinced a unanimously unopposed Congress to sign into in 1910. federal law the infamous legislation that became known as the While Dennett was surrounded by radicalism and progres- Comstock Act. The bill rendered illegal the discussion, dis- sive thought, most of America was shrouded in conservatism tribution, or mailing of any scientific or common knowledge and censorship. Imagine a world in which a mother could not of birth control. The penalty for noncompliance included five legally talk to her daughter about the methods of family plan- years in jail, a fine of $5000, or both. Comstock spent his life ning2p3-4, 7pix or a physician could not discuss contraception ensuring that laws such as this were not ignored, even if they with his patients, let alone distribute any such materials.2p5-6 were unenforceable.

Load more