Brownsville Birth Control Clinic

October 16, 1916 - October 26, 1916

The first birth control clinic founded by Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. It operated for 10 days in 1916, providing reproductive education materials to women in Brownsville, a predominately Jewish and immigrant neighborhood during that time. When opening on the first day, the line stretched down the block, and the clinic served over 140 women, each paying 10 cents to receive information on birth control. Women from large immigrant families were eager to receive the information the clinic had to offer, with Sanger recalling that "at seven in the evening, they were still coming. Women from all five boroughs showed up to the clinic during its brief life. Local support was shown with business owners dropping in to offer greetings and food. Within 10 days the clinic was shut down for violating the Comstock Law, which gave the government the power to regulate the spread of "obscene material." However brief, the clinic represented a major turning point in the reproductive rights movement.

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Details

Category
Hospital
Audience
Adults
Founder(s)
Margaret Sanger
Tags
progressiveera, immigration, healthclinic

Location

  • 46 Amboy St, Brooklyn, NY 11212, USA
    ? - ?

References

  1. Horwitz, Rainey. First American Birth Control Clinic (The Brownsville Clinic), 1916. The Embryo Project Encyclopedia, Arizona State University, October 11, 2019. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/first-american-birth-control-clinic-brownsville-clinic-1916
  2. Pritchett, Wendell. "Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
  3. n.d. "Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Brownsville Clinic." Newsletter Number 2, The Margaret Sanger Papers Project, Winter 1991. https://sanger.hosting.nyu.edu/articles/seventieth_anniversary_of_brownsville/