At Atlas Obscura, Eric Grundhauser writes—The First Planned Parenthood Only Lasted for 10 Days but Started a Revolution. An excerpt:
During her time in Europe, Sanger had seen Norwegian birth control clinics that were able to help women gain access to contraceptives such as diaphragms, and wanted to start something similar in a location that would most benefit from the clinic’s services. Sanger chose the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn for her clinic. [...]
Sanger and her team were able to rent out a storefront at 46 Amboy Street for $50 a month, and the nation’s first birth control clinic was born. Consisting of just two rooms and a spot outside where mothers could leave their carriages, the tiny facility was perfect for their needs. The patients could wait in the outer room while consultations were held in the inner room. Though Sanger was not able to find a doctor willing to work at the clinic, an examination table was put in the back room, just in case they ever could find a willing physician. [...]
Having done everything she could to get the word out both to the women who needed to take advantage of the clinic and the lawmakers that needed to see it in action, Sanger and her associates opened the doors of their clinic on October 16, 1916. In her autobiography, Sanger said she didn’t know if anyone would show up, due to fear or disinterest, but she was relieved to find that when they opened the doors, there was already a line of some 150 people waiting to be treated. America's first birth control clinic was in business. [...]
In an ironic contrast to the perception that modern Planned Parenthood centers are simply “abortion clinics,” despite their inclusion of a wide range of women's health services, Sanger’s original birth control clinic didn’t distribute contraceptives, yet many people came hoping to get an abortion. It was these women, many of whom would threaten suicide when they learned they could not receive an abortion, that Sanger wrote, “haunted [her] at night.” In her book she even described one woman who was so desperate not to give birth to a child that she threatened, “If you don’t help me, I’m going to chop up a glass and swallow it tonight.” If nothing else, Sanger had proved that there was an overwhelming need for her clinic.
The birth control clinic at 46 Amboy Street lasted for all of 10 days. As Sanger anticipated, it wasn’t long before the authorities cracked down on them. After sending in an undercover member of the vice squad (whom Sanger and her associates quickly spotted), the police raided the clinic on October 26, arresting Sanger. She was jailed overnight, but immediately attempted to reopen the clinic, although she was once again taken in by police.
Sanger would attempt to get the center up and running again a couple more times that November, but finally the police forced the landlord to evict her. In the scant 10 days that the clinic was open, it provided counseling services to nearly 500 people, taking case files on all of them.
After the demise of the Brownsville clinic, Sanger turned her efforts towards more formalized approaches to advocating reproductive rights, founding the American Birth Control League [in 1921], and later on helping to found Planned Parenthood.
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Blast from the Past
At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—KBR, Halliburton sued for sickening U.S. troops:
KBR and Halliburton are the targets of a new class-action lawsuit alleging that U.S. troops have been sickened by water, food and fumes produced by the two massive private contractors, according to the Army Times. The details of the charges laid out in the lawsuit are macabre:
The lawsuit also accuses KBR of shipping ice in mortuary trucks that "still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains in them when they were loaded with ice. This ice was served to U.S. forces."
Eller also accuses KBR of failing to maintain a medical incinerator at Joint Base Balad, which has been confirmed by two surgeons in interviews with Military Times about the Balad burn pit. Instead, according to the lawsuit and the physicians, medical waste, such as needles, amputated body parts and bloody bandages were burned in the open-air pit.
"Wild dogs in the area raided the burn pit and carried off human remains," the lawsuit states. "The wild dogs could be seen roaming the base with body parts in their mouths, to the great distress of the U.S. forces."
The troops that the contractors so love to claim to support are not only being exposed to toxic fumes and scenes of wild dogs dragging off body parts. No, they're getting extra treats in their rotten food as well
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, with Greg Dworkin, Joan McCarter & Armando! Trump still rising, press won’t let go of Rubio, but nobody impresses at the RJC. What if Christie got interviewed by someone doing a Christie impression? And another government shutdown looms!
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