The American Birth Control League (ABCL) was founded by Margaret Sanger in 1921 at the First American Birth Control Conference in New York City. The organization promoted the founding of birth control clinics and encouraged women to control their own fertility. and C. C. Little were among the founding directors. 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 the Canadian province of 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. Following this, the presidents of the ABCL were Eleanor Dwight Robertson Jones (1928–1934), Catherine Clement Bangs (1934–1936) and C. C. Little (1936–1939), and one of its vice presidents was Juliet Barrett Rublee. 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.

Goals and activities

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

<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

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.

See also

  • Birth control movement in the United States

References

General references

  • Buchanan, Paul D. (2009). American Women's Rights Movement: A Chronology of Events and of Opportunities from 1600 to 2008, Branden Books. .
  • Engelman, Peter C. (2011). A History of the Birth Control Movement in America, ABC-CLIO. .
  • McCann, Carole Ruth (1994). Birth control politics in the United States, 1916–1945 , Cornell University Press. .
  • Rosen, Robyn L. (2003), Reproductive health, reproductive rights: reformers and the politics of maternal welfare, 1917-1940, Ohio State University Press, 2003. .
  • 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