Customer Reviews

Motherhood in Bondage (Women and Health: Cultural and Social Perspectives)

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I am a community sexual health educator and I consider this book as one of my most valuable tools. The book is a compilation of letters from people (women and men) seeking advice about contraception and family planning during a time in history (not so long ago) when this subject was illegal. Legislation known as the Comstock Laws made it impossible for even married couples to gain information and services that would allow them to plan the size and timing of their families.

Each letter in this book conveys desperation and heart ache. Children died or were raised in devistating poverty simply out of ignorance. As my young students read the letters, they get the deepest sense of connection to history at a very personal level and they recognize the important privilage and responsibility that they now have with safe and legal access to family planning services.

This book is inspirational and invaluable. An excellent reminder of "the way things were."

Ms. Sanger founded Planned Parenthood but was also a proponent of eugenics, advocating selective breeding, sterilization and euthanasia. In 1932 Sanger urged "a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring." In her 1938 autobiography, she describes how well she got along with the woman's branch of the KKK at Silver Lake, N.J. in a speech she gave to them, hanging on well into the night talking with the ladies after the speech. She was associated with The Negro Project, whose main idea was to recruit charismatic black ministers to encourage black women to practice birth control, thereby reducing the number of black babies being born. In a December 10, 1939 letter, Sanger wrote to Dr. Gamble, head of The Negro Project: "We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
These are hew own words. The KKK still quotes her and Hitler gave her an award. The harm she caused, even if you agree with abortion is demonstrable and inexcusable.