Margaret Sanger Clinic (former)

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The first birth control clinic in the United States

Place Details

Place Matters Profile

The building that would house the Brownsville Clinic was constructed in 1903. The architects were S. Millman & Son, a local firm with offices a few blocks away. The three-story tenement building housed three families, until 1915, when Millman & Son applied for permission to carry out alterations. The first floor was outfitted as the storefront which would later house Sanger's clinic: the front wall removed, and the entry stairs relocated. A Jewish landlord, Mr. Rabinovitz, rented her the storefront at 46 Amboy at a discounted rate, in support of what she was doing, and even helped fix up the place, "adding touches here and there to make the two shiny and spotless rooms even more snow-white."

The clinic she began there was staffed by three people--herself, her sister, Ethel Byrne, who was a fully registered nurse (Sanger was just a visiting nurse), and one translator, Fania Mindell. They passed out over five thousand flyers in English, Italian and Yiddish to

The building that would house the Brownsville Clinic was constructed in 1903. The architects were S. Millman & Son, a local firm with offices a few blocks away. The three-story tenement building housed three families, until 1915, when Millman & Son applied for permission to carry out alterations. The first floor was outfitted as the storefront which would later house Sanger's clinic: the front wall removed, and the entry stairs relocated. A Jewish landlord, Mr. Rabinovitz, rented her the storefront at 46 Amboy at a discounted rate, in support of what she was doing, and even helped fix up the place, "adding touches here and there to make the two shiny and spotless rooms even more snow-white."

The clinic she began there was staffed by three people--herself, her sister, Ethel Byrne, who was a fully registered nurse (Sanger was just a visiting nurse), and one translator, Fania Mindell. They passed out over five thousand flyers in English, Italian and Yiddish to serve the surrounding, predominantly Jewish and Italian Brownsville communities. Women lined up outside the clinic before it opened in the morning, and the line remained all day long. Sanger and her staff regularly had to tell people to try again the next day. During the nine days that the clinic was in operation, it served nearly 500 clients. Some men came in place of their wives. (The first day saw a hundred women and eighty men.) Women arrived from as far as Massachusetts and Connecticut in search of the clinic's assistance. According to Sanger's autobiography, clinic staff could only "give the principles of contraception, show a cervical pessary to the women, explain that if they had had two children they should have one size and if more a larger one." As non-physicians, they could not dispense contraception. Still, the dispersal of birth control knowledge was against the law, and this is what they were fighting against.

Knowing that the clinic was illegal, the staff used the clinic to draw attention to their cause. Sanger intentionally sent a letter to Brooklyn's District Attorney saying that she intended to distribute information from the Brownsville address. Police raids and arrests of the founders began immediately, and after nine days in operation the clinic closed for good. What followed was a dramatic sequence of events including trials and newspaper coverage which gave the Brownsville Clinic center stage. Sanger was tried and convicted, and when she refused to promise not to repeat the offense, sentenced to thirty days in jail in Queens County. There she lectured on contraception to her fellow inmates. Byrne, too, was sentenced to thirty days in Blackwell's Island prison. She immediately went on a hunger strike, which attracted more newspaper coverage, until the Governor issued a pardon at the behest of Sanger and other supporters. The translator Mindell was convicted and fined. The high-profile arrests at Brownsville created the first public discussion of birth control.

Though Sanger's appeal of her conviction failed, her case made history with a landmark ruling that exempted physicians from the law prohibiting dissemination of contraceptive information if done for medical reasons. This became the basis for the opening of a series of clinics, making doctor-administered birth control clinics legally permissible for the first time in the US.

In 1923, Sanger opened up the first clinic under this law in Manhattan, calling it the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRC). Eventually, it moved to its own brownstone that Sanger's husband purchased for the project at 17 West 16th Street, where the main clinic remained for 43 years (1930-73). This brownstone was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993. Sanger also attempted to establish branch clinics in less privileged areas to reach out to poor women in Brooklyn (1926) and Harlem (1930-36). Neither lasted long because of financial constraints and a lack of staff and patients.

Sanger's increasing connection over time to the population control movements of her era, and the intersection of these movements with eugenics (broad-based, early twentieth century doctrines that sought to improve the human race by eliminating "undesirables" and multiplying "desirables") lost her some supporters. In 1919, Sanger would write, "More children from the fit, less from the unfit--that is the issue of birth control." Some argued that Sanger's move toward eugenics reflected her effort to appeal to a more politically moderate audience. Though Sanger's positions within the spectrum of eugenicist beliefs focused on mental and physical defects rather than class, ethnicity, or race, she retained ties to the movement--not relinquishing them until after World War II--and her support would have reinforced eugenicist arguments.

Today, the building at 46 Amboy that housed the Brownsville Clinic no longer stands, but its institutional legacy spans the globe. In 1942, the BCCRB changed its name to the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau. In 1966, Planned Parenthood centers, off-shoot Sanger clinics in four boroughs (Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan, and Queens), merged to become Planned Parenthood New York City (PPNYC). In 1973, the Margaret Sanger Research Bureau merged with PPNYC to become the Margaret Sanger Center of Planned Parenthood of New York City. Also in 1973, Planned Parenthood launched the Margaret Sanger Center International (MSCI) to partner with overseas family planning organizations. Today the MSCI program has expanded to South Asia, Mongolia, Central America, the Caribbean, and Africa, the site of their only overseas office.

Planned Parenthood NYC--a direct descendent of the original Brownsville Clinic--now stands on Bleecker and Margaret Sanger Square, and continues to be prominent in the Sanger tradition of fighting against unjust legislation and for the reproductive freedom, sexual health, and betterment of women's lives. In 1993, through the efforts of Dr. Ellen Chesler and Sanger's grandson, Alexander Sanger (a former CEO of PPNYC), the square was dedicated to Sanger's memory. The only honors Sanger received during her lifetime were a medal from Eleanor Roosevelt and an award given her in Japan. According to Chesler, Margaret Sanger is the women of the twentieth century with the longest and most far reaching impact: an institutional legacy of more than eight decades. "She built an international movement; she was the founder of Planned Parenthood International; she lived to see the 1966 ruling federalizing protection for contraception--permitting married couples to use birth control...." With the Brownsville Clinic, Sanger started a movement.

Sources

Chesler, Ellen. Interview by J. Scott for Place Matters, 31 Nov., 2002.

Chesler, Ellen. "Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement." Against the Tide: Women Reformers in American Society. Westport: Praeger, 1997.

Hajo, Cathy Moran. Interview by J. Scott for Place Matters, 15 Oct., 2002.

Ledbetter, Rosanna. A History of the Malthusian League: 1877-1927. Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 1976.

"Margaret Sanger: Biographical Sketch." Margaret Sanger Papers Project. New York University: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/

"Sanger Clinic, Building Records." Chart. NYC: Brooklyn Dept. of Buildings.

Sanger, Margaret. Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography. NY: Dover Publications. 1971.

Sanger, Margaret. Woman and the New Race. NY: Dodo Pub., 1920.

Willrich, Michael. City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era. Chicago. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003 (on eugenics)

[Posted, Dec. 2007]

Nominations

This was the site of the first birth control clinic in the United States, which was raided by the police after 10 days, closed down, and Margaret Sanger and the other staff arrested, tried, and jailed for violating the Comstock Act. This clinic was the beginning of the practical, clinic-based birth control movement in the U.S. It represented Sanger's efforts to get around the Comstock Act by giving advice in person.

This was the nation's first birth control clinic. It was opened by birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger in October 1916. With women lined up for hours from the time it opened to its raid by police and closing 11 days later, the clinic served some 400 women. Margaret Sanger had proven that women needed and wanted information on birth control. Her arrest and conviction led to a state Supreme Court ruling permitting physicians to dispense birth control for the control and prevention of disease. Under this loophole, the first LEGAL clinic in the nation opened in New York in 1923. For more information, log onto: www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger (January 2007)