Out of this cry came the birth control movement.
Economic conditions have naturally made this elemental need more
plain; sometimes they have lent a more desperate voice to woman's cry
for freedom. Men and women have arisen since Knowlton and Robert Dale
Owen, to advocate the use of contraceptives, but aside from these two
none has come forward to separate it from other issues of _sex_
freedom. But the birth control movement as a movement for woman's
_basic_ freedom was born of that unceasing cry of the socially
repressed, spiritually stifled woman who is constantly demanding:
"What can I do to avoid more children?"
When it came time to arouse new public interest in birth control and
organize a movement, it was found expedient to employ direct and
drastic methods to awaken a slumbering public. The Woman Rebel, a
monthly magazine, was established to proclaim the gospel of revolt.
When its mission was accomplished and the words "birth control" were
on their way to be a symbol of woman's freedom in all civilized
tongues, it went out of existence.
The deceptive "obscenity law," invoked oftener to repress womanhood
and smother scientific knowledge than to restrain the distribution of
verbal and pictorial pornography, was deliberately challenged.
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