Today in Herstory: Contraception Advocate Margaret Sanger is Now in Prison (5 feb 1917)
(make no mistake, this is what the woman-hating reichwingers want to see again)
Today in Herstory: Contraception Advocate Margaret Sanger is Now in Prison
February 5, 1917: Margaret Sanger is in Brooklyn’s Raymond Street Jail tonight, beginning a 30-day sentence for the “crime” of giving out birth control information. She shared her knowledge with women who desperately wished to have it, and could get it nowhere else but at what – until it was raided and shut down – was the nation’s first and only birth control clinic.
Three days ago Sanger was found guilty of violating Section 1142 of the New York State Penal Code by opening her clinic in Brooklyn on October 16th and operating it until it was raided and closed on the 26th. Sentencing came today, and she was first given the option of paying a $5,000 fine instead of serving jail time. After refusing to pay the fine, she was given another opportunity to avoid prison, but only if she would agree to stop sharing information about birth control as long as Section 1142 remains on the books.
Justice Freschi, who presided over the three-judge panel, seemed quite sympathetic, but still determined to do his duty to uphold all of New York’s laws, including its anti-birth-control statute. He said:
Mrs. Sanger, if you promise to obey the law faithfully in the future, this court will exercise extreme clemency.
She replied:
This is a test case, and pending appeal only will I promise to refrain from my activities.
Agreeing to obey the law only during the appeals process proved insufficient, so Justice Freschi then addressed her lawyer, Jonah Goldstein, hoping that he could convince his client to agree to a deal in which she would apparently receive a suspended sentence in return for promising to stop counseling women on birth control until the law changes:
Mr. Goldstein, what is the use of beating around the bush? We are not prosecutors looking for blood. We are simply here to judge conservatively, with an eye for the whole people. In view of the physical condition of the prisoner and of appeals pending and other attending circumstances, we are inclined toward leniency … All we are concerned about is this statute, and as long as it remains the law, will this woman promise here and now unqualifiedly to respect and obey it?
. . . .
http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2015/02/05/today-in-herstory-contraception-advocate-margaret-sanger-is-now-in-prison/
