History Book: Margaret Sanger opens a clinic

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, January 2nd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Next up: the WORLD History Book. Today we commemorate the birthday of Louis Braille and his alphabet. Plus, a record breaking hail storm in Australia, but first, 100 years ago today, birth-control crusader Margaret Sanger opens a clinic in New York City. Here’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: We begin today on January 2nd, 1923, the Clinical Research Bureau begins operation. It is the first legal birth control clinic in America—the forerunner of Planned Parenthood.

It is operated by radical Margaret Sanger and the American Birth Control League. This isn’t Sanger’s first clinic—that opened 7 years earlier—in 1916. But due to a series of Comstock laws on the books at the time the earlier clinic was shut down and Sanger was jailed. Comstock laws originated after the Civil War and prohibited the distribution of explicit information—including details about contraceptives and birth control. But public opinion began to shift in the 1920s and some states softened their Comstock law enforcement.

So Sanger’s second birth control clinic remained open. Despite heavy resistance from the Catholic Church, there were more than 500 similar birth control clinics across the country by the close of the 1950’s.

On September 21st, 1957, Mike Wallace interviewed Margaret Sanger for his ABC television program.

MIKE WALLACE: What events…in your life made Margaret Sanger, a crusader for birth control?

MARGARET SANGER: …I think from the very beginning, I came with a large family. My mother died young. 11 children made an impression on me as a child. I was a trained nurse, were among the people. I saw women who asked to have some means whereby they wouldn't have to have another pregnancy too early, after the last child last abortion, which many of them had. So there's a number of things that are one after the other, they really made you feel that you had to do something.

Wallace’s confrontational interview covered a wide range of topics…including whether or not her interest in birth control was motivated by a personal disdain for the Catholic Church. She insisted that wasn’t it at all. He also pressed her about population control, the natural order, promiscuity, and at one point, Wallace even asked her a theological question…

WALLACE: Do you believe in sin?

SANGER: Well, I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children into the world that have disease from their parents that have no chance in the world to be a human being practically. delinquents, prisoners, all sorts of things just mark when they're born. That to me is the greatest sin that people can commit.

Sanger identified herself as a life-long Episcopalian. Her influence casts a long shadow…through the organizations she founded—like Planned Parenthood—and the laws she influenced. The cultural acceptance of abortion as birth control can easily be traced back to her work.

Next, January 1st, 1947—75 years ago this week. Audio here from British Pathe newsreel.

NEWSREEL: From Sydney come these samples of the worst hailstorm in the city's history when a 33 mile an hour blitz of jagged lumps of ice left a million pounds worth of damage and its wake.

The hail storm is the most severe recorded storm since observations began in 1792.

NEWSREEL: Thousands of tiled roofs were shattered by hailstones weighing anything up to four pounds. And as for windows, well take a look at this. All the glass and the roof of Sydney Central Station has just disappeared. A major victim of nature's own bodyline bowling...

Nearly 1,000 people were injured by the storm. The total damages equaled three-quarters of a million pounds—about 10 million pounds today.

And finally, Louis Braille was born in France on January 4th, 1809. He lost his sight due to an accident in father’s harness shop when he was three years old. He later attended the National Institute for Blind Children in Paris.

The school had books with raised letters students could trace with their fingers. But each letter was so large, it was difficult to quickly apprehend which letter it was—making reading slow and laborious.

During his time at the school, Louis Braille met a captain from Napoleon's army who taught the students about a communication code called night writing—or writing that could be read at night. It used a series of 12 raised dots—allowing battlefield communication without sound or light. Braille latched onto the communication technique but simplified it to six dots.

At age 15, Braille created his fingertip reading system that made it possible to read letters and numbers quickly using just a fingertip.

The Paris school for the blind began using Braille’s system immediately. But it took awhile to catch on. Louis Braille died in 1852. Eighty years later, the English-speaking world adopted a standardized braille alphabet—further improving it in 1957.

On the 200th anniversary of Louis Braille’s birth, the World Blind Union declared January 4th as World Braille Day. In 2018 the UN General Assembly followed suit, setting apart the day to commemorate Louis Braille and his lettering system.

More than 35 million people around the world are currently blind. According to a 2017 Anglia Ruskin University study, that number is expected to triple over the next 30 years—meaning braille will remain an important communication tool for those who can not see.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

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