Feminists For Choice

“No one has ever given me a good reason why we should obey unjust laws.” Helen Keller, 1914.

The same year that Helen Keller made the above statement, Margaret Sanger was publishing articles advocating birth control in her journal The Woman Rebel, and knowingly breaking anti-obscenity laws by doing so.

Margaret Sanger and Helen Keller shared more than a love of justice. The two women had remarkable lives that were intertwined in many ways.

The women’s names were first associated in 1915 when Keller publicly commented on the Bollinger baby case. In a manner similar to the Terri Schiavo controversy, the Bollinger’s story acted as a line in the sand for individuals to publicly proclaim their position on birth control and eugenics. And just like the Schiavo case, everyone in America seemed to have an opinion, making it one of the year’s biggest news stories.

Newspaper clipping from 1915 Bollinger baby case

Keller sympathized with the Bollinger’s and cited the Sanger’s efforts to help poor families control the number of children they had through birth control. Keller applauded the Sanger’s efforts and even blamed capitalists for trying to keep poor families in poverty with many children in order to supply cheap labor to their factories.

Keller concluded that “Only by taking the responsibility of birth control into their own hands can they roll back the awful tide of misery that is sweeping over them and their children.”

Some of the other ways the lives of these two remarkable women were connected included:

• Both joined the Socialist Party and Industrial Workers of the World within a year of each other.
• Both were outspoken pacifists and wrote for New York Call (a leading Socialist paper).
• FBI kept files on both women.
• Hitler burned both of their books in the mid-1930s.
• Both saw birth control as a way to liberate women.
• Both named in Time Magazine’s “Most Important People of the Century.”
• Both women had offices on the same block, just a door away from each other. Despite this, the women did not meet until 1944 when a mutual friend introduced them in upstate New York.

I find it odd and almost disturbing that these two politically influential women would not have made a stronger effort to meet. I find it hard to understand how and why they did not meet while working a mere door away from each other. After all, Helen Keller was one of the most respected Americans during the time when Sanger faced the most backlash for her birth control activism. Surely Keller would have made a formidable ally for Sanger. Both women were highly connected in liberal New York circles, leaving one to wonder about the reason for the delay in their introduction.

After they finally met in 1944 the two remained close friends, socializing often and constantly making public tributes to each other. The women died two years apart, Sanger in 1966 and Keller in 1968.

Non-web references:

Margaret Sanger Paper’s Project Newsletter Number 53: Winter 2009/10, as “Battling the Powers of Darkness–Helen Keller, Margaret Sanger and Birth Control.”