American Birth Control League

The League was founded by Margaret Sanger in 1921, and incorporated under the laws of New York State on April 5, 1922. Birth Control Leagues had already been formed in a number of larger American cities between 1916 and 1919 due to Sanger's lecture tours and the publication of the Birth Control Review. By 1924, the American Birth Control League had 27,500 members, with ten branches maintained in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Colorado, and British Columbia.

In June 1928, Margaret Sanger resigned as president of the American Birth Control League, founding the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control and splitting the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau from the League. In 1939 the two were reconciled and merged to form the Birth Control Federation of America. In 1942 the name was changed to Planned Parenthood Federation of America.[1]

Its headquarters were located at 104 Fifth Avenue, New York City from 1921–30 and at various offices on Madison Avenue from 1931–39. It was not associated with the National Birth Control League, founded in 1915 by Mary Coffin Ware Dennett, or the later Voluntary Parenthood League.[2]

The American Birth Control League was also instrumental in regards to African Americans and birth control.

The ABCL was founded on the following principles, here excerpted from Margaret Sanger's The Pivot of Civilization:

We hold that children should be

1. Conceived in love;
2. Born of the mother's conscious desire;
3. And only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of health.

Therefore we hold that every woman must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception except when these conditions can be satisfied.[3]

At its founding, the ABCL announced the following purposes:

• To enlighten and educate all sections of the American public in the various aspects of the dangers of uncontrolled procreation and the imperative necessity of a world programme of birth control.
• To correlate the findings of scientists, statisticians, investigators, and social agencies in all fields.
• To organize and conduct clinics where the medical profession may give to mothers and potential mothers harmless, reliable methods of birth control.
• To enlist the support and cooperation of legal advisors, statesmen, and legislators in effecting the removal of State and Federal statutes which encourage dysgenic breeding.

Margaret Sanger listed the following aims of the organization in the appendix of her book The Pivot of Civilization:[3]

• Research: To collect the findings of scientists, concerning the relation of reckless breeding to the evils of delinquency, defect and dependence;
• Investigation: To derive from these scientifically ascertained facts and figures, conclusions which may aid all public health and social agencies in the study of problems of maternal and infant mortality, child-labor, mental and physical defects and delinquence in relation to the practice of reckless parentage.
• Hygienic and Physiological: instruction by the Medical profession to mothers and potential mothers in harmless and reliable methods of Birth Control in answer to their requests for such knowledge.
• Sterilization: of the insane and feebleminded and the encouragement of this operation upon those afflicted with inherited or transmissible diseases, with the understanding that sterilization does not deprive the individual of his or her sex expression, but merely renders him incapable of producing children.
• Education: The program of education includes: The enlightenment of the public at large, mainly through the education of leaders of thought and opinion--teachers, ministers, editors and writers to the moral and scientific soundness of the principles of Birth Control and the imperative necessity of its adoption as the basis of national and racial progress.
• Political and Legislative: To enlist the support and cooperation of legal advisers, statesmen and legislators in effecting the removal of state and federal statutes which encourage dysgenic breeding, increase the sum total of disease, misery and poverty and prevent the establishment of a policy of national health and strength.
• Organization: To send into the various States of the Union field workers to enlist the support and arouse the interest of the masses, to the importance of Birth Control so that laws may be changed and the establishment of clinics made possible in every State.
• International: This department aims to cooperate with similar organizations in other countries to study Birth Control in its relations to the world population problem, food supplies, national and racial conflicts, and to urge all international bodies organized to promote world peace, the consideration of these aspects of international amity.[3]

In 1921, the ABCL organized the First American Birth Control Conference at New York City, November 11–18, 1921. Subsequent conferences were held over the next two years in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Albany, and Chicago. The ABCL arranged the holding of the Sixth International Birth Control Congress in the United States in 1925. The ABCL published leaflets, pamphlets, books, and a monthly missal named Birth Control Review. Margaret Sanger served as the first president of the organization. Frances B. Ackerman served as the first Treasurer. Anne Kennedy was the Executive Treasurer. Lothrop Stoddard and C. C. Little were among the founding directors.

Other presidents of the ABCL were Eleanor Dwight Jones (1928–34), Catherine Clement Bangs (1934–36) and C. C. Little (1936–39). One of its vice presidents was Juliet Barrett Rublee.[4]

• Birth control movement in the United States

• Esther Katz; Cathy Moran Hajo; Peter C. Engelman, eds. (2003). The selected papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900-1928. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02737-X.
• Esther Katz Peter C. Engelman; Cathy Moran Hajo; Amy Flanders, eds. (2006). The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 2: Birth Control Comes of Age, 1928-1939. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-03137-7.
• Linda Gordon (2003). The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-07459-9.
• Buchanan, Paul D. (2009). American Women's Rights Movement: A Chronology of Events and of Opportunities from 1600 to 2008, Branden Books. ISBN 978-0-8283-2160-0.
• Chesler, Ellen (1992). Woman of valor: Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement in America. New York: Simon Schuster. ISBN 0-671-60088-5.
• Engelman, Peter C. (2011). A History of the Birth Control Movement in America, ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-36509-6.
• Gordon, Linda (1976). Woman's Body, Woman's Right:A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers. ISBN 978-0-670-77817-1.
• Kennedy, David (1970). Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-01495-2.
• McCann, Carole Ruth (1994). Birth control politics in the United States, 1916–1945 , Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-8612-8.
• Rosen, Robyn L. (2003), Reproductive health, reproductive rights: reformers and the politics of maternal welfare, 1917-1940, Ohio State University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-8142-0920-2.

• Margaret Sanger Papers Project Organization History
• Margaret Sanger Papers Project, "The Town Hall Raid" article about the founding conference of the ABCL. (free registration required)
• Guide to American Birth Control League records at Houghton Library, Harvard University