FOOTSTEPS TO FOLLOW…

Great American Women:

Margaret Sanger.[1]

INTRODUCTION: I read recently of a church board meeting in which the minister gave a gender breakdown of the congregation. He said that out of 111 members, 73 were female. He then commented, “It appears that women outweigh the men in this church.”

Whereupon, the women members of the board corrected him informing him that the more accurate word to describe that disparity was “women outnumber the men, not outweigh them.”

That provides a humorous way it introduce a common issue faced around the world: the weight given to women’s issues, and to women’s rights. Which is why Margaret Sanger is still such an important voice after almost 100 years: As Gloria Steinem writes, “She taught us to look at women as if they mattered.” One of the primary reasons women have made the advances they have, roots back to that fundamental achievement of Margaret Sanger: to say to the world, women matter!

And while we always emphasize the role Ms Sanger had in introducing family planning to America and the world, the broader plank upon which she stood was the liberation of women, namely, as in her most famous quotation, “No woman can call herself free who can not choose whether to become a mother.”

To put things in context, if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s running for president in 2008 was in part a big deal because she was the first woman with a viable chance to win – that was just last year – then can you imagine what it was like 100 years ago for a woman of culture to speak publicly about sexual intercourse and to challenge the male view of the role of women in that relationship.

For her efforts, Ms Sanger was arrested many times, jailed for as long as 30 days, physically assaulted, covered with mud, attacked by preachers from the pulpit, by legislatures, newspapers, public men and private citizens.

Nonetheless, as someone has written, “she carved out a path of enlightenment through the densest jungle of human ignorance and helplessness.” That’s another way of saying that our male species did not give up its ill-gotten position of domination easily.

So who was this revolutionary in a nurse’s uniform?

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA.

Ms Sanger was born in 1879, one of 11 children, to a mother who was a devout Catholic and a father who was a free-thinker and follower of Robert Ingersoll, a well-known atheist of that time.

Ms Sanger’s father led the way in inviting Ingersoll to visit and speak in Corning, N.Y. When he arrived, he was met by tomatoes, apples, and cabbage stumps, and prevented from speaking. And because Ms Sanger’s family had been in the forefront of his supporters, they suffered a similar fate. She and her many brothers and sisters were labeled “children of the devil.” The town turned upon her father’s monument business. Consequently, they lost their home and had to move into a loft over his shop. Eventually, the older children found jobs outside of the home to support the family.

One of the effects of that deprivation and alienation on Ms Sanger was the urge to get out of poverty and to make a difference with her life. One of the few options by which women could do that was medicine. Women could not attend medical school, but thanks to Florence Nightingale, nursing had only recently become more than a specialized domestic maid service. Through the efforts of many nursing pioneers, a credentialing and two or three-year course of study were set forth, beginning first in the State of New York. Sanger applied and was accepted into one such course in White Plains, N.Y.

Near the end of her course of study, she married architect William Sanger, thus changing from her family name of Higgins. They built a showplace home in Hastings, New York. But a new house did not eliminate the strong feelings Ms Sanger had about gender equality. She insisted on her husband helping with household work by doing the evening dishes. He agreed finally, but only after drawing the window shades so that the neighbors would not see him in such a “compromising” situation.

Unfortunately, a fire in their new home, and her husband’s having over-extended himself to build it, resulted in their having to sell the house in 1910 and move to New York City. They found a flat with just enough room for them and their three children. And since Margaret needed to go to work to help make ends meet, they invited his widowed mother to come live with them, so as to take care of the children.

Though going to work was at the time a necessity, it turned out to provide a pivotal turning point in her life. While she was working part-time for the “Lillian Wald’s Visiting Nurses Association” in the immigrant districts of New York’s Lower East Side, she was exposed to the social pathos of women at the time. The ignorance, poverty, constant pregnancies, brutal abortions, child abandonment and child labor, were such as she had never witnessed before.

The triggering event came for her while she was providing nursing services to a young Jewish immigrant mother named Sadie Sachs. Ms Sachs lived in a tenement and was suffering through the complications of a self-induced abortion. In front of Nurse Sanger, the woman pleaded with her physician for reliable contraception. He callously replied, “Tell your husband to sleep on the roof.” Three months later, Ms Sanger returned to find Mrs. Sachs dying of septicemia, or what we used to call “blood poisoning,” from another self-induced abortion. At that point, as Ms Sanger described it later, she resolved to abandon, “the palliative career of nursing, in pursuit of fundamental social change.”

To do that, she first went before the Socialist Party to describe her concerns and to condemn the reproductive health practices of the time. Her lecture was so persuasive that she was invited to write a column on the subject in New York’s Socialist daily newspaper. It was entitled, “What Every Girl Should Know.”

It created a furor. For a woman to write about sex was incredibly provocative for that day, but especially when it included such topics as pregnancy, abortion, masturbation and menstruation.

In 1913, Arthur Comstock, the U.S. Postmaster, ruled that her columns were obscene and he forbade their publication or distribution through the mail. The following week, the newspaper ran an empty box in the place where Sanger’s column normally ran. It had this headline: “What every girl should know – Nothing; by order of the U.S. Post Office.”

Refusing to be intimidated, the following March, 1914, she launched her own publication, The Woman Rebel, from her dining room table. The Post Office confiscated her first issue, notifying her that she would be subject to criminal prosecution if she continued. Not surprisingly, she did just that. In August of that same year, she was arrested and charged on four criminal counts, carrying a maximum sentence of 45 years. She was arraigned that same month and given six weeks to prepare for trial.

Instead, she used the time to prepare a pamphlet, Family Limitations, which explained the common forms of birth preventatives available to women. In it she stated, “We must not be set back by the false cry of obscenity. Women must learn to know their own bodies.”

When her trial came up in October, she refused to plead guilty or to negotiate a sentence or fine. She instead requested a postponement. When it was denied, she caught a midnight train for Canada, boarded the R.M.S. Virginian, and headed for England. Once outside U.S. legal jurisdiction, she cabled her printer to release 100,000 copies of her pamphlet, Family Limitations, which were already addressed, bundled and awaiting distribution by groups sympathetic to what she was trying to do.

However, her husband was arrested for giving an undercover agent a copy of Family Limitations. He ultimately received a 30 day jail sentence. Although it would only be five years before women did obtain the right to vote, at his trial the judge said, “If some persons would go around and urge Christian women to bear children, instead of wasting their time on women getting the right to vote, this city and society would be better off.” The more than 100 women in the courtroom broke out in a raucous protest.

Some two weeks later, Postmaster Comstock died, leaving a legacy of pain and ignorance behind. He bragged of imprisoning more than 5,000 persons and confiscating the equivalent of 64 railroad cars of what he labeled obscene material.

Fortunately, the media began to give broad coverage to the issue of “birth control,” or as Harper’s Weekly more decorously put it, “family limitation.” Those kind of developments led Ms Sanger’s attorney to persuade her to leave England and come back to America to stand trial.

Eventually, given an overwhelming change in public opinion, the prosecutor, after two delays, dropped her case. She became a national celebrity.

And in March 1916, with only a $50 contribution, she opened her first clinic in Brooklyn, the beginning of the American Birth Control League, which in 1942 became Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

So how does, what happened then, affect us, today?

APPLICATION

The first thing is this:

1.     Sexual intercourse no longer has to carry the risk of pregnancy.

That means fewer children, better health for mother and children, less financial demands, and increased emotional well-being of all involved. I personally think the over emphasis upon abortion rights has caused us to lose sight of the fundamental importance of sex education for every girl and boy in America, as well as supporting family planning around the world. Fortunately, President Obama has reversed the travesty of America’s insisting that no UN funds for family planning go to organizations provided abortions anywhere in the world.

2.     Sanger also taught that the body is not sinful.

Traditional theology pictures a huge conflict between the sinful body and the spiritual self. For centuries, the church has taught to abstain from sex is somehow a spiritual achievement. Sexuality has only in the last century – post Sanger – been recognized as a normal, healthy expression of human existence. That is true whether one is a woman or a man, and whether one is oriented to those of the opposite sex or to the same sex. Sexual expression is an essential part of what it means to be human. It is innate to every species.

As Hegel once wrote, if Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden eating the forbidden fruit are the basis for believing that human beings are fallen, then for certain, they fell forward.

So is there some spiritual component to all of this? I think so, and with this I close:

CONCLUSION.

Our task as people committed to enlightenment is to know that our spiritual selves are not separate and apart from our bodies. Rather, religious faith seeks to unify our awareness of who we are. We can do that because we are the only species capable of viewing the past, contemplating the future, and changing the present.

When that happens, we realize that who we are now is the result of what we were yesterday. And who we are tomorrow is the result of who we are now.

Let me repeat that: Who we are now is the result of what we were yesterday. And who we will be tomorrow is the result of who we are today. Crucial to all of our tomorrows is taking care of the present moment.

That you are in this religious service this morning is an indication that you take seriously your past, your present and the future. So affirm yourself for that.

But then add to it a crucial equation: How do we make every today a yesterday, that we will look back upon tomorrow, as one in which we lived today fully human and fully caring. We start or continue by those things that connect our outer selves with our inner.

That’s why in a moment, we enter into meditation. And what we’re going to do in that moment is to pause, to take a breath, to breathe, to soften our spirit. And instead of focusing on beliefs or sacred writings or mantras, we’re going to focus on one of the most valuable gifts we’ve been given: our breath. There’s that wonderful verse in Genesis that says, “And God breathed into woman and man, the breath of life, and they became living souls.” Our breath is divine in its origin.

So we’re going to let our breath remove all the old resentments, the old angers, the tired feelings. Like a cleansing ointment, our breath will move through the temple of our mind, and gently cleanse it of hate and fear, and calm our spirits so that we can let go of every distraction to the moment…so that we can be present to now.

Our breathing is something we’re all sharing together at this very moment. Some of the carbon dioxide that you discharged earlier in the service, I’ve now inhaled. We’re all inhaling and exhaling from each other, that wonderful part of existence called breath and breathing.

So if you would, please get seated comfortably, shoes on the floor, maybe hands on your lap, close your eyes, and focus on the gift of your breathing…breathing in…breathing out…breathe in…breathe out. The air we’re sharing together is going into your nostrils and down to your lungs, and enriching your blood cells and energizing your body.

That breath is you. A little earlier it was the person sitting next to you. It’s we being together this moment. Breathing in…breathing out…continuing to breathe in and breathe out.

<Pause for silence.>

In the name of Margaret Sanger, we pray this morning. For what she taught us about mothers and fathers and children…what she enabled us to learn about our bodies…our sexuality…what she did to make this world a better place. For her memory, we give thanks. And in giving thanks for her, we give thanks for ourselves and all the others who join with us here in this service this morning.

Shalom. Salaam Aleikum.

 Amen. And blessed be.

Margaret Sanger