More on Margaret Sanger

[In response to Lilith’s article on the early reproductive rights movement, Spring 2009]

Dear Editor,

I am 95 years old and was brought up in an old-fashioned traditional Jewish family. In the twenties and thirties Jewish parents rarely discussed sex with their children. I was married at 18 and had my first child at 20. My mother suggested that I go to a clinic in Manhattan run by Margaret Sanger. (I had never heard of her.)

I gladly went to the clinic. I remember it well. It was a brownstone house, run by doctors and nurses. They asked for a small fee. (If you couldn’t pay, you got the supplies free.)

Margaret Sanger made my marriage free from unwanted pregnancies—as well as having a happier marriage. I was able to plan my pregnancies as well as becoming sexually liberated.