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ESC Budapest 18-History of Birth Control-Short - EL - DIABLO SABE - MUCHO, PORQUE -.--- ES VIEJO. What this lecture is going to be about The right to exert control over one’s How shall fertility was acquired only after strenuous fights. Lessons from History must be taken we change into account. The pendulum, currently, is frighteningly swinging back in a number of the law ? European countries, where new constraints are being placed upon contraception and, Cover of the 1919 even more, on legal abortion. Today, the Birth Control Review threat to reproductive freedom is still a published by virulent strain in our political culture. Margaret Sanger In this context, … Richard Carlile (1790-1843) English freethinker, The English radical tireless advocate of free thought, the abolition and freethinker of monarchy, the Richard Carlile establishment of secular education, (1790-1843) women’s emancipation deserves and sexual rights, sexual pleasure, and greater notoriety. birth control. 1 Carlile dared to write that… “It is absurd to consider that chastity - a constrained abstinence from sexual commerce - is a virtue, and that the indulgence of choice in all cases is a vice. This admirable The disposition of mind which gratifies itself stance could upon the principle of mutual equality, mutual have served as desire, and mutual pleasure, is unfairly and m ost unreasonably called unchaste. a manifesto True chastity is in the mind which examines to all sexual itself and is satisfied as to the purity and utility of its motives.” rights’ activists. “It is only a benefit to children, to •Carlile was repeatedly prosecuted be produced, when they can be and spent a total of nine years and made healthy and happy.” four months (!!!) in jail, for having – in accordance with his convictions – At the time, there were three contraceptive defied the idiotic interdicts imposed methods to achieve planned parenthood : by bourgeois moral codes. v sponges (soaked with tepid water – not vinegar !), •Imprisonment never stopped him v withdrawal, and from writing and publicising his v the ‘skin’. causes. USA’s Constitution, First amendment This is what Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the it may have right of the people peaceably to assemble, been like and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. 2 The real obscenity: the nasty trampling of the constitutionally entrenched right to freedom of expression • In 1832, in the US, Charles Knowlton published The Fruits of Philosophy, or the Private Companion of Young Married People. For the first tim e since Soranus of Ephesus (2nd c. AD), contraceptive Charles methods were comprehensively discussed. Knowlton • For having attempted to spread information on (1800-1850) birth control, Knowlton spent three months in jail and was heavily fined. 1847 1933 A n n Charles Bradlaugh, MP, i 1833-1891 e B There is a court to e which I shall s appeal : the court a of public opinion. n t « Il est interdit d’interdire » Two years of hard labour for a (scribbled on a wall in Paris, May 1968) pamphlet on contraception In 1834 James Watson had brought out the first English edition of Charles Knowlton’s Knowlton’s pamphlet caught the public Fruits of Philosophy (1832). For more than 40 eye in 1876 when the authorities, incited by years it had been distributed in London the local Society for the Suppression of Vice, without interference, selling steadily if not charged Henry Cook, bookseller in Bristol, spectacularly. In 1875 the plates were for selling that ‘obscene’ booklet. bought by Charles Watts, co-founder with Bradlaugh of the National Secular Society. The unfortunate man was sentenced to two Watts became the new publisher. years' hard labour. 3 Bradlaugh-Besant trial’s background Be strong and of good courage; Following the Bristol case, and probably under be not afraid (Joshua 1:9) pressure of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, Charles Watts was indicted in London. To avoid prison, he pleaded guilty to selling obscene texts “I hold [the Fruits of Philosophy] to be and agreed to the destruction of the printer's defensible, and I deny anyone the right to plates and his stock. Watts, therefore, was let off interfere with the free discussion of social with a suspended sentence and court costs. questions affecting the happiness of the nation.” Bradlaugh responded with an angry editorial in his newspaper, the National Reformer. He and Bradlaugh emphatically reaffirmed that he Besant then founded their own Freethought would pursue the struggle for a free press. Publishing Company. Testing the law • After some updating of the text, and adding medical footnotes by Dr George Drysdale, Bradlaugh and Besant republished Knowlton’s pamphlet. From the outset they were The Bradlaugh determined to test the law. and Besant • Everything in the booklet was known to the edition of medical profession and had been published Knowlton's before. The real problem consisted in its being 'Fruits of sold at a price (sixpence) that made it accessible Philosophy'. to ordinary working people. Britain may rule the waves, but NOT the minds The trial of MP Besant and Bradlaugh informed the police that Charles Bradlaugh they themselves would be selling the pamphlet and Annie Besant at the Guildhall. Some five hundred copies began in June 1877. were sold in the first 20 minutes, after which It was a turning they were arrested. In the three-month interval point in the between their arrest and trial they sold no dissemination of fewer than 125,000 copies. information on contraceptives. 4 Freedom of expression in 1877 Freedom of expression in 1877 Bradlaugh and Besant conducted their own Each was sentenced to six months’ in jail, fined defence – this was unusual in any event, but 200 £, and each had to post 500 £ as bond that extraordinary for a woman – and they did so he/she would not again publish the book for at very intelligently. Still, the jury decided that the least the next two years. book “was calculated to deprave public morals.” But Bradlaugh succeeded in having the judgm ent At their sentencing a week later, Bradlaugh and nullified on a technicality : the wording of the Besant refused to surrender the book and stated original indictment was improper. they would go on selling it. A free and trustworthy press is a must The impact of access to information The trial of 1877 was outstandingly The publication of Charles Knowlton's Fruits of important because of the publicity it was Philosophy, w hich led to B&B’s arrest and trial, was consistent with their espousal of social given. The trial was dealt with very fully, causes. Publicity for the trial caused sales of not only by the national press but by the Fruits of Philosophy to increase from about 1,000 local newspapers as well. Never before had copies per year before the trial to over 200,000 in the arguments for limiting the size of the the 3½ years thereafter. It is generally accepted that the trial and consequent general increase in family been presented to so large a public. knowledge of contraception contributed to a decline in the British birth rate. Banks JA, Banks O. Population Studies 1954; 8/1:22-34. Chandrasekhar S, 1981. https://www.popline.org/node/385919 Henry Auschwitz-Birkenau Morgentaler (1923-2013) Jewish Polish-born Canadian physician and pro- choice militant who fought numerous legal As a youth during World War II, battles aimed at Morgentaler was held captive in the expanding Łódź Ghetto and later at Auschwitz abortion rights in Canada. and Dachau concentration camps. 5 After the war, … His father was killed by the Gestapo in Łódź. • In 1947 Henry made his way to Brussels. Because they were not in Belgium legally, he His sister at Treblinka extermination camp. and his fiancée, Chava Rosenfarb, were ordered to leave the country. Chava's sister, Henia, in her Memoir, described the harsh economic His mother at Auschwitz. conditions while the family, and Henry, lived in Brussels. One picture show s Henia, Chava, When finally liberated by the U.S. Army on and their mother wearing coats made from April 29, 1945, being then 22 years old, blankets donated by UNRRA. Henry weighed barely 32 kg (70 lbs). • In 1949 Henry and Chava were married. In February, 1950, they left Europe for Canada. In Canada, Morgentaler… Civil disobedience •… entered medical practice, becoming one to have the law changed of the first doctors in the country to When this was no longer possible, in spite of perform vasectomies, to insert the risks of being barred from medical intrauterine devices, and to provide birth practice and of imprisonment possibly for control pills to unmarried women. life, he started doing abortions, thus challenging an evil law restricting women’s self-determination right. •In 1967 Morgentaler stated publicly that women should have the right to a safe In 1969 he opened an abortion clinic in abortion. He received calls from women, Montreal. He wanted to show that abortions whom he first referred to two colleagues. could be safely done outside hospitals. A rebel with a cause A rebel with a cause In 1970, Montreal city police raided his In a move without precedent, the jury's clinic and charged him for having done acquittal was overturned by five judges on illegal abortions. When the first case came the Quebec Court of Appeal in 1974, who to trial in 1973, Morgentaler had done 5,000 substituted a conviction. Morgentaler abortions without major complications. appealed his conviction to the Supreme Between 1973 and 1975, Morgentaler was Court of Canada but the court upheld his tried three times for defying the abortion conviction in a 6–3 decision, stating that the law; each time, he raised the defence of danger to women was not immediate.
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