 Good afternoon, and it's a funny thing. I'm Elizabeth Sackler, and I'd like to welcome you to my home away from home and It's funny. I was driving here, and I was thinking if it's raining Everybody says my god, it's raining. Nobody's gonna show up if the sun is shining Everybody says it's gorgeous day. Nobody's gonna want to be inside if we've had two days or three days of pouring rain And we have been a gorgeous day outside So thank you for coming. Thank you for being here, and I don't blame you because It's wonderful to have Gloria felt here today, and it's wonderful to have her here at the forum In the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art We have been open as most of you know because you've been here for two and a half years We're an exhibition space. We're an education Facility and we are dedicated to feminist art and to feminist thinking and theory and to educating New generations About all of those things and about all the things that many of us have been thinking out about for a long time And that a whole new generation of young women and men are growing up Thinking about I received recently an invitation To a benefit for the for an Eleanor Roosevelt organization and there was a quote on the front of it and it was Her she was talking about people and it was a little bit on the condescending hierarchical order in the reverse order that People talk about ideas people talk about events and people talk about People and what she was sort of saying was that you know people who don't think much talk about people and people who think a Little bit talk about events. It's sort of the implication of it and people who really think talk about ideas Well, I thought this was really kind of wonderful and Thinking about today. I was thinking about well part of what's great about the center is that we do all three of those things in a wonderful way and We begin really with the dinner party and the women at the great women of history whose shoulders we stand upon and If they hadn't had their ideas their ideals and gone into action We wouldn't perhaps be quite where we are today So it offers us the opportunity to revisit the great work of great women in history and of course Margaret Sanger which is why we're here today with Gloria felt is a guest at the dinner party And if you haven't been through it already and Gloria probably has a very nice big thing of it This is the dinner party plate that Judy Chicago designed and made in honor of Margaret Sanger and if you haven't had a chance to go in and see Margaret Sanger you might want to pay her a visit after we've heard From Gloria. I invite you to do so The first paragraph about Margaret Sanger in the dinner party book reads as follows a Visionary feminist Theoretician and a pioneer in the struggle for reproductive freedom Margaret Sanger was convinced that once women were freed of involuntary childbearing society would be transformed and Our guests today The extraordinary and you are Gloria felt has devoted her life to reproductive freedom and Become an expert on Sanger and we are here to honor Margaret Sanger's birthday and Actually, it was many months ago. It was last spring that we Realized that Gloria said well, we you know Margaret Sanger's birthday is it's oh, we said well, this would be great It's perfect and time flies and here we are and it gives me a great deal of pleasure to read Gloria felt's biography to you As I introduce her she's a women's activist best-selling author of send yourself roses co-authored with Kathleen Turner Who you are I'm to have here today, and I'd like to welcome you and to thank you for all your wonderful work It's a pleasure to have you here and also Gloria's written the war on choice Which actually I have it in my person. I meant I wanted to do this So I'm going to do this with it at the end Because it's a it's a fabulous and very important book and sort of the byline is you know the war that's going on right now against Against choice, so thank you for that Gloria for for your continued work She blogs at her website, which is gloria felt calm about heartfelt politics courageous leadership and powered women and what I have here. They all have capital letters So those are big deals She's an expert on women's lives from where the personal meets the political With over 30 years on the front lines of leadership for reproductive right health and justice During arguably the most challenging time since Margaret Sanger's birth Margaret Sanger's uphill battles. She revitalized the national movement Serving as president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America one of my favorite one of my mother's now deceased favorite Organizations local state National international, thank you and it's political arm the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Which she grew into the largest nonpartisan pro-choice action fund and PAC from 1996 to 2005 she's currently writing a book about women's relationships with power to be published by Seal in fall 2010 and welcomes your stories. I'm Allowed to say this, right? This is an invitation of when you knew you had the power to Fill in the blank whatever it is her commentary has appeared in the New York Times So long L glamour the Daily Beast and many others She's a frequent speaker at universities women's groups and professional groups and loves touring with women's girls ladies intergenerational Feminist panel and if you were here For that fabulous panel that we enjoyed having the last wild card if you weren't You can go online and see it It is up online put in EAS CFA It was they sacri-centre feminist art and you'll come to the video and our wonderful videographer David is here with us all the time does it and then we upload it and you know It like the electronic world has has actually enabled the center to reach people Of course all over those of you who are young aren't surprised about it. I am forever amazed and very happy back to glory Vanity Fair named her there 200 top women legends leaders and trailblazers Texas monthly naming her to its Texas 20 she hails originally from Temple, Texas one of the few great things Described her as part den mother part business woman part may west Glory is a fellow of the international leadership forum. She serves on the women's media center board of directors Carol Jenkins her the executive director is here yay women's media center and On the board of the Jewish Women's Archive as she teaches women which is wonderful teaches women power and leadership at Arizona State University and is a social media addict Would like to hear more about that over drinks She and her husband Alex who is here? Have a combined family of six children nine grandchildren, and this is really hard to believe Gloria three great-grandchildren Please help me welcome Gloria felt it's an honor to have her here. Oh my goodness momentarily Tell you when Okay, I don't know why but the mysteries of Technology elude me even though I am a social media addict. Hi everybody. Thank you so much for coming and Elizabeth I've got to tell you every time I'm here. I feel like I am on hallowed ground You have no idea what it means and I've heard a lot of people coming in saying thank you for providing this wonderful space But for me it is just it really it really does feel like hallowed ground, and I'm not kidding I just got back from my high school reunion and Elizabeth mentioned that I was born in Temple, Texas, but actually I went to high school in the teeniest town It's so little and so awful now that we don't even have our reunions there We have them in Abilene, which is the nearest sort of larger town. That's that has actually a decent hotel You can stay in What's that? Do I have to tell? 50 50 50 50. Yes, mm-hmm. Okay, and How many of you go back to your high school reunions? I'm just curious about this is an experience Okay, I'm not completely alone. I am so glad that I went I traveled more hours getting there and getting back Then I was there for the actual event, but it was so worth it. It was It has been a long journey. It has been a long journey From I'm sorry, but I get actually a little bit teary-eyed about this I it has been a journey from being a 16 year old teen mom. That's me with my oldest daughter To a women's movement to having the opportunity to be a leader in the women's movement to be able to do what I could to help other women be able to have more intention in their life than I had when I was a 16 year old Is is is beyond Imagining as far as the honor is concerned and to be here with all of you today in this beautiful Sackler Center for feminist art which happens to be I'm not exactly sure how far but it can't be too far away From 46 Amboy Street Which is where Margaret Sanger opened the first clinic here in Brooklyn in 1916 This it so you know what I mean when I say this is hallowed ground and I'm totally amazed that I get to actually be here So so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you I I have to kind of wonder also whether the girl who was born Margaret Higgins in in Corning, New York in 1879 the 6th of 11 living children Could have imagined that she would be immortalized As this flaming red Volva Here in in this in the Brooklyn Museum Maybe she would have maybe she would have she was that sort of person This is sort of her first leadership lesson that I learned from Margaret Sanger was that That all worthwhile accomplishments start with a vision and a big vision not a small vision not an incremental vision But something big bold audacious flaming red and as she often observed it needs to be something bigger than yourself Bigger than yourself to make it worthwhile I've turned for her for inspiration and courage often and also for practical examples of how to keep a movement moving in spite of external challenges and sometimes sort of an internal Desire not to break too many eggs talk about that a little bit later Today, I want to focus on just nine of the many many leadership lessons that I learned from Margaret Sanger over the years By telling you the story of her life and a little bit about her work And then I'd like for us to talk a little bit about the challenges that are yet before us I Friend offered me tickets for Beach tonight by Nick Kristoff and Cheryl who done and I'm sure everybody here has been reading their wonderful Media and you may have even read their their book half the sky And they're saying that women and the women's rights are the great moral challenge of the 21st century Which I agree with and I think it's great that they're doing that But you know what Margaret Sanger said all this a hundred years ago the She was she was a visionary. She was a visionary. She was a practical visionary. She was courageous and she was cranky She was idealistic and she was also very pragmatic She was a redheaded green eyed feminist socialist who died a registered Republican She was a mother a grandmother and a sexual libertine She was a woman of many contradictions, but hey, aren't we all the This is this is Margaret Sanger as a young woman and this gives me a chance also to to give a shout out to the wonderful Margaret Sanger papers here at New York University a great resource of information and For which we are all grateful and and hi Esther Katz is here and she is the leader of this pack and has done a remarkable job of putting together Margaret Sanger's papers the personal and political intertwined for Margaret Sanger as They do in my life and as I'm sure you all have felt that they do in yours as well Margaret's earliest memories were of standing beside her mother's bed crying After her mother had almost died from a very difficult pregnancy Anne Higgins Margaret's mother was a devout traditional Catholic and she in fact did die at age 50 Simply worn out from so many pregnancies and births Margaret's father on the other hand was a free thinker. He was a stonemason a charmer. He loved to tell tales He was a bit of a drinker had a little trouble holding a job so he was never the greatest provider for the family and as a consequence Margaret grew up knowing poverty and She knew these struggles of women in a very personal way And I have to suspect that it was also that her father's free thinking sensibilities caused her to be able to see some different visions about how women might be treated in this world and and and Help to make her sort of the boundary breaker that she became She went to nursing school. She started to nursing school at least she almost finished, but then she Resigned because she couldn't you couldn't go to nursing school then if you were married So when she met this handsome architect William Sanger She and decided to get married. She had to resign from nursing school but She then proceeded to have three children in fairly rapid order and was trying to deal with some of the same issues That women today deal with like how to balance motherhood and her and the profession of nursing that she really liked And she liked being out there in the world and she liked rabble rousing. She already knew that so when the when a fire destroyed the couple's home in Suburbia and they ended up moving back into the city She was really quite pleased about that and then William her husband's Mother who had been widowed by that time moved in with them So she had a babysitter and she went back to nursing she went back to special-duty nursing and Took special-duty assignments so if we can imagine if we can sort of take ourselves back into the year 1912 it was a time of Huge intellectual ferment huge political change of rapid immigration Economic turmoil crowded tenements and it was still eight years before women would get the vote in the United States How many of you have been to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum? Is one of my favorites. I just I just love it Did you oh my goodness wow that's amazing Well in the 1900 census in that particular building on Orchard Street The census says that there were 18 wives living in that building Those 18 wives had given birth to 111 children of whom 67 were alive Now that's a 40% infant and child mortality rate which is shocking to us today But back then it was just the norm Maternal mortality was 99 times what it is now and Of the of the maternal deaths 40% were caused by infection and one half of those in deaths by infection were caused by unsafe abortion Birth controls such as it existed was illegal as well largely because of this guy Anthony Comstock Anthony Comstock was sort of a one-man sex police He started the New York Society for the suppression of vice a noble calling He was a special investigator for the United States Postal Service where he could personally Enforce the 1873 law that was named for him making it illegal to send birth control information or devices or Abortion information or devices through the mail. There were many state laws that followed Comstock bragged that he had seized 60,000 obscene rubber articles and Tons he said of lewd and lascivious material Like today's abstinence only zealots Comstock could not distinguish between healthy responsible sexual expression and prostitution promiscuity and pornography Margaret soon demonstrated her second leadership lesson a Leader is someone who gets something done Doesn't mean you have to be the smartest it doesn't mean you have to have the most resources to bring with you It means you have to actually get something done The Nike swoosh had nothing on Margaret Sanger She said I have noticed that for those people who compromised by the excuse that the time is not right The time never does arrive for decisive courageous action Mr. Comstock was about to meet his match The defining moment came when Margaret Sanger was called to an overcrowded tenement To nurse a 28 year old mother of three named Sadie sacks Now Sadie had been told another pregnancy would probably kill her and She had asked her doctor at the time. Well, how do I prevent these pregnancies then and He very cavalierly said to her well tell Jake to sleep on the roof Bitterly poor and weak from from these multiple pregnancies. She had self-aborted She got a raging infection of course pre-antibiotics and Sadie begged Margaret to tell her how to prevent Future pregnancies Margaret told her what she knew but she said it wasn't really very much a few months later Margaret was called back to the same home The same situation Sadie had become pregnant again. She had self-aborted again. She had gotten an infection This time she died This just crushed Margaret and she spent the rest of the night walking the street by herself and By morning she said she had decided that she would devote the rest of her life to finding out the answers and To making sure that women could have information about birth control about contraception the term birth control hadn't yet been invented She said no matter what it should cost. I would be heard Now we don't know whether there was a real Sadie sacks or whether this was a composite of many women that Margaret Encountered over time. It really doesn't matter because the point is leadership lesson number three There is power in your story There is such power in your personal story and Margaret Sanger was a master at using the personal stories to inform people and To persuade people and she told this story over and over and over again And she told it dramatically and she told it using every possible medium at her disposal But she always connected that personal story with the call for political change So she began to take some other actions She wrote a sex education column called what every girl should know for a socialist newspaper the call Comstocks of course immediately censored it and so the paper Ran an empty space the following week with this headline what every girl should know Nothing by order of the US Postal Service So then Margaret ratcheted it up another notch. She published a periodical called the woman rebel To challenge Comstock directly about this time a friend of hers coined the term birth control and I think you know It's sort of like what the media mavens today call sticky and Margaret recognized that and she she just ran with it and Claimed it as her own and she if you ever have the chance to hear her talking about it Or see her on one of the films that remains of her She said it like birth control Me that the emphasis was on the control Margaret was arrested in August of 1914 and rather than Be rather than stand for trial at that time She thought that she needed to let public opinion get a little more aroused. So she fled to Europe But she had a purpose for being in Europe also because while she was there. She did a good bit of research She researched birth control methods in France and discovered that women had been cooking them up on their stoves for many years And she went to England where she did a little research with the sexologist Havelock Ellis where she began a long-term affair with him actually and they continued their deep intellectual bond And he was a mentor of hers through the rest of his life She also visited a clinic in the Netherlands it was a family planning clinic where they had been providing women with family planning information and diaphragms for I think maybe 30 years and This gave her the model that she would then use when she came back to the United States And it also gave her the vision of having a network of clinics all over the country where women could get birth control So the fourth leadership lesson that I learned from Margaret Sanger is the importance of timing Because the time was ripe when she came back. I mean have you ever seen anybody who looks so pretty and happy at their arraignment? She since the tide was turning in her direction while she had been in Europe Her husband Bill had been arrested for distributing birth control information and had gotten quite a bit of media for that and Her rival leader in the birth control movement Mary where Dennett had started the National Birth Control League And so there was starting to be a sort of on-the-ground Organization and meanwhile readers of the woman rebel were continuing to send the very charismatic Margaret letters of support On January 17th 1916 on the eve of her trial. She gave what she called her maiden speech It was a speech. She would repeat a hundred and nineteen times all over the country Here are some excerpts They tell me that the woman rebel was badly written that it was crude that it was emotional and hysterical That it was defiant and too radical Well to all these indictments I plead guilty Women from time immemorial have tried to avoid unwanted motherhood On the one hand, I found wise men Sages scientists discussing birth control among themselves But their ideas were sterile They did not influence the tremendous facts of life among the working classes or the disinherited I Might have taken up a policy of safety and sanity, but what I have got a hearing I Put myself in the position of one who has discovered that a house is on fire And it was up to me to shout the warning and shout the warning. She did Leadership lessons five six and seven use what you got and what you need is probably there if you are just smart enough to see it and Controversy is your friend. It gets people's attention Outmaneuvered the prosecution dropped charges against Margaret in February So on October 16 1916 She opened that first birth control clinic her sister Ethel Byrne was the nurse They couldn't get a doctor to help them for quite a while yet And they passed out these handbills through the neighborhoods I'm gonna just pass this over here so you can see the handbill that they passed out throughout The neighborhood in Brooklyn and on the Lower East Side and it was printed in English Yiddish and Italian The police closed the clinic down 10 days and 484 patients later But Sanger had started something much larger than a clinic. She had ignited a great movement a Great movement for women's reproductive freedom Ultimately Margaret would be arrested nine times for civil disobedience and each time she used what she had Not money certainly not the law and few influential supporters who would step forward at that time But she had the power of an idea that touched the most fundamental human need And she knew it This is my absolutely all-time favorite example of Margaret Sanger's brilliant use of the media to get her message out In 1929 she was banned in Boston She actually arrived she was supposed to speak in Boston and she arrived to find a newspaper headline that said that her speech had been canceled But that did not stop her She recruited the esteemed historian and Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger Sr Professor Schlesinger read her speech while Margaret stood beside him with this gag over her mouth Needless to say it made all the major newspapers across the country and you can just imagine if she had had Twitter and Facebook Then what would have happened? Well, the dear mrs. Sanger letters really started flowing in there dear miss then dear mrs. Sanger married 20 at 20 to a laboring man in 11 years. I have five living children one stillborn and five miscarriages I am desperate dear mrs. Sanger. I am writing to you as the last hope of help I am the mother of eight children and I have nothing. I never expect to have but just children She compiled these stories and many others into a book motherhood in bondage Which inspired my own first book behind every choice is a story Because honestly in the 21st century there remain many many heart-rending stories that women tell and and these stories still need to be heard During this part of the of the era this era in the late 20s. I think in 1929. There was the first really successful Court case the u.s. Versus one package that more or less began to convince doctors that they could safely provide contraception to their patients in their private offices and So more doctors started providing contraception more people started thinking whether they would start opening these family planning clinics and Margaret began to crisscross the country then helping people open clinics all around this I love this picture. This is a picture of Margaret Sanger in Tucson with patients and their Children of patients it appears also at the mother's health clinic in 1936 she helped them get started in 1934 and in the late 1930s She and her second husband Noah Slee retired in Tucson She never really retired, but he retired he wanted to retire He was considerably older than she and she also One of her sons had asthma and so they would she wanted to to move to a drier climate So she was traipsing around helping people start clinics And by this time where she wherever she would go It was not unusual for the most prominent women in the city to help her out So she was beginning to really mobilize support all over in my case I ran the Arizona the Affiliate in the Phoenix area for some years and Peggy Goldwater helped her help Margaret Sanger to start that Affiliate which always comes as a surprise to people that the Goldwaters were intimately involved with Planned Parenthood even back then So her second husband Noah Slee as I said was considerably older than Margaret and he was just totally besotted with her so much so he was a millionaire the founder of the three-in-one oil company and He would do things like at her behest smuggle diaphragms into the country illegally He staked the Holland Rantos pharmaceutical company so that they could increase the supply of diaphragms in Jolly in the United States And he ultimately contributed just loads of his own money and time to her her efforts While at the same time providing her with separate living quarters, which she demanded as As her condition for marrying him because she wanted to be able to continue living as she so pleased And she did Well by 1942 there were over 80 local clinics around the country And that was the year that the Planned Parenthood Federation of America was formed Now Margaret Sanger hated the name Planned Parenthood She thought it was weak that it was a euphemism for what she was all about which was after all birth control Well, she was obviously wrong about that Because Planned Parenthood has turned out to be one of the strongest brand names ever But I will have to say that that conflict over style and strategy continues to rage within the movement to this day and Though Margaret continued as the honorary chair of Planned Parenthood She also as the organization became more mainstream. She also looked for other challenges that she could take on elsewhere so in 1952 she founded the International Planned Parenthood Federation and She also began raising money for research to fund the development of a birth control pill she was convinced that an effective oral contraception would be would be ultimately the transformational thing That there would be a method that would be woman controlled and that that would be the the contraceptive method that would transform women and Free them at last from motherhood in bondage The birth control pill saved my life When I was By the time I was 20 you saw me at 16 by the time I was 20. I'd had my third child and I they my children have been the center of my life, but that was enough and So when the FDA approved the birth control pill in 1960 I will actually was 1962 by the time it got to West Texas It truly saved my life. It allowed me to have a life It allowed me to think about a life beyond the constraints of motherhood and wifedom Then birth control was finally legalized throughout the United States in the Griswold versus Connecticut United States Supreme Court decision in 1965 Roe versus Wade followed in 1973. Both of these cases were based on the right to privacy Also about this time there was funding for thanks for coming Kathleen I didn't mention I should mention also that Kathleen is also the chair of the Planned Parenthood National Board of Advocates So thank you. Thank you, darling So so that there was funding for family planning for low-income uninsured women for the first time Today more than 95 percent of Americans have used birth control and When the Mayflower moving company surveyed its clients a few years back and they asked them What are the items that they would take by them if they're moving? What are the items that they would carry with them on their own persons? Because they valued them so much Birth control pills were among the top four Now that is a culture shift Don't get me wrong. Margaret was far from perfect. She was egotistical She rarely credited others contributions to the efforts and though she was unwavering in her mission She changed her argument based on whatever was selling at the time Her strategy was go to where the power is To help accomplish what she wanted to accomplish and what she wanted to accomplish was to get birth control available to all women That's how she came to align with eugenicists during the 1930s when that sentiment was at its height She saw through eugenicism sooner than most and broke away from it publicly But still this has remained a stain on her personal narrative and the one that is most difficult to remove Because we have to remember that those who are opposed to women's equality in any form will always use it against her And we'll use it against the movement Even though she more than redeemed herself later on and actually ended up being among the first visible leaders in the U.S. To denounce Hitler's racism Sanger just continued to morph her arguments as she needed to women's health poverty Elidiation population control every child wanted child whatever you were buying. That's what she was selling All of these are valid benefits of birth control But I still really and truly believe that the feminist crusade for women's biological and sexual liberation was where Margaret Sanger started and The core principle to which she continued to return over and over and over in her life. I Had a wonderful dear friend now deceased Alice Bogart who entertained Margaret Sanger in Chicago several times when she was there to speak during the 1930s and 40s and Margaret told me what I mean. Excuse me Alice told me what she I think thought was a little secret. She you know Like whispered in my ear. I Think she quite liked the gentleman Indeed she did and the gentleman liked her too She slept with most of the most interesting men in the 20th century including Including HD Wells who would call her later the heroine of the 20th century and you know I mean all of these guys remained her friends and her dearest supporters through through the rest of her life or their lives Margaret loved parties. She especially loved international themed costume parties and she threw them off Her friend Grace Sternberg in Tucson told me that Margaret was also a notoriously bad driver That when she was on the road people knew just get out of the way She fancied herself an artist I had one of her watercolors in my office in Arizona and I will tell you it's a good thing She had another calling in life However in less than a century the movement that Margaret Sanger launched Won so many victories that it is really hard these days to get anybody to think that those those rights could ever be Reversed I mean that is really one of the biggest challenges. I think that the movement faces now It is it is such an amazing change that people simply cannot believe that these advances could be reversed That was certainly the mood when I went to my first Planned Parenthood job in West Texas as the CEO of that affiliate in 1974 everybody just thought done done we can just go about providing our services and everything will be fine But the backlash against such a sweeping change in the gender power balance was bound to to to be immense I mean it was just I don't think there has been such a Huge sea change in a power balance that affects everybody in our entire culture ever in in human history And and we should have known that there would be this huge sweeping Backlash, and that is why the war on choice rages on today And that is why I want to tell you about the eighth leadership lesson that I learned from Margaret Sanger Which is a movement has to move it has to move Power and energy come from moving into new places not from standing still and doing what you've always done That's why as Planned Parenthood president I tried to focus on building the grassroots and and we started advocating a much more proactive agenda and Trying to raise the profile as both a service provider and a political force And I think that our great challenge now is to shift the moral and legal framework From privacy, which we are all accustomed to to a human rights framework I Can't say how strongly I believe that this is important that women's human right to make their own childbearing decisions has to be Has to be the framework that we go forward in and to connect those reproductive Justice issues with economic justice issues and to say clearly and unequivocally That it is time for women to have an equal place at life's table And in the immediate future, of course, this means we need to take this on in the health reform debate For as Margaret Sanger said so many times in so many ways no woman can call herself free Until she can own and control her own body That was her core conviction but nobody knew better that convictions alone are not enough and So the final leadership lesson is the one that I hold most dear And I think it's a good summation of Margaret Sanger's life Life has taught me she said we must put our convictions into action So I want to just give you one last little story and then take questions Not long before she died in a Tucson nursing home in 1966 a few days shy of her 88th birthday although the New York Times Obit said she was 82 which would have pleased her immensely Her granddaughter and namesake Margaret Sanger Lampy asked her how she'd like to be remembered She said she hoped she'd be remembered for helping women And helping women in the end is all about what Margaret Sanger did. Thank you Thank you. So since tomorrow is her 130th birthday, how about a big happy birthday Margaret? Happy birthday Margaret So I'd be happy to take any questions that anybody has or comments Yes Ah Thank you. Do you have a question? Okay, well first of all Couple of places I'll give you a couple of places specifically is related to Margaret Sanger Specifically as related to Margaret Sanger. Okay. Yes a couple of places first of all I can't overly highly recommend in why you and Esther and Kathy if you want to raise your hands Back there. We have the experts here in the room. You might want to talk to them before you leave and they can direct you specifically also the Planned Parenthood Federation of America website has a Several articles about Margaret Sanger and really goes into detail about the eugenics Allegations and what's right? What's wrong? A lot of it is just plain made up that that is out there And a lot of I mean and in some of it is simply that in the culture of that day The language that she used was the same language that Teddy Roosevelt used the same language that you know That leaders in the country were using because they were all of this persuasion So you have to sort of pick pick the pieces apart. Thank you. Yes I think you know, I think it's the more information that's accurate information that's out there the better And I think we have to be realistic We have to tell the tell the speak the truth and and that's where there are issues that we would have if we were hearing Margaret Sanger speak today There's no question about it just as you know, let me give you another example. I don't know if any of you have read I Don't think you have read Michelle Goldberg's book the means of reproduction and you know She she gives the history of the population control guys in the 1950s and 60s the Rockefellers And you know if the reason we have such widespread family planning services around the world is because these guys They were all into population control. Well, we don't particularly like that approach either We we think the approach should be women's reproductive self-determination and women's rights so you have to just you know, you have to sort of take it all and take it in the context of the day and And ultimately honestly when you read Margaret Sanger's words and you read look at her whole life There is no question that that one statement that I made no woman can call herself free Until she can own and control her own body if there was a thesis for her life That was it. I mean if there was a guiding principle for her life That was it and I think we need to just keep reiterating that and I wanted to give you one more resource That I if you haven't read Ellen Chessler's excellent biography of Margaret Sanger it also I found it particularly helpful for putting the Cultural context and the political context of the different decades in which Margaret lived into perspective. Yes Good question. The suffragists wouldn't take on birth control. I Think that kind of ticked her off actually But they wouldn't they wouldn't take it on they by that time the suffragists had become a fairly narrow movement They were determined only to focus on on getting women the right to vote and in Yeah, right, they really by that time had pretty much sort of gone The even the previous to that the suffragists the women's movement in general had had a much bigger agenda Social agenda, but by the time 1920 came around and they actually got the right to vote that had they had just focused Solely on getting the right to vote and did I say something wrong yesterday? I want you to I want you to I want you to pipe up if I I want you to keep me honest here Yeah, they thought birth control would make them promiscuous that that the earth that this the suffragists had come out of the the 19th century Yeah, voluntary yes Great Great in terms of why there were splits in the in the movements I you know part of it was just sheer ego part of it was just sure Lee that there were these these women who were They were each in their own way Leaders and boundary breakers and they each just knew that they had the right path and and and also they were egotistical enough to Want to be the the figureheads and I have to tell you it's still that way in the movement You should see that you know you get bruised hips at the microphone when you have a coalition press conference so that that hasn't really changed too much and Probably never will in terms of what needs to be done today No, let me say one more thing about that though I think I think that's I don't want to make too much light of that because there always is in advancing social movements Once you begin to start winning something then you have something to lose And as soon as you have something to lose and you've seen this in the civil rights movement You've seen this in many other movements if you just sort of look at all of them once you have something to lose Then there are always people within the movement who say oh, let's not try too hard. Let's not try to break too many You know Doors down. Let's not let's be quiet because otherwise we'll lose whatever it is that we have already obtained So I think that that that is also something that just happens in every social movement and it is To meet the biggest challenge that I ever had always was trying to get past that and trying to get people to continue to You know to keep their courage on and to keep Realizing that there were more injustices to be dealt with and that we needed to keep pressing forward and and so that's just That's just a fact of human nature As to what we need to do now. I I think yeah I I've been quite disappointed that there hasn't been a real outcry and not just about abortion But the way Obama just let family planning disappear from the first stimulus package with oh well It's it's controversy. Okay. Oh, we will take it out He needs and I and when when you if you talk to people in the White House What they will say to you and what they have said to Planned Parenthood and what they have said to the women's organizations is Well, you need to come to us and show us That you have enough people who care about this in other words, they're not going to go fight that fight for us and so so it's going to take that's what it's going to take and I I Don't know we'd have to sit down and strategize what would be the proper civil disobedience But I'm kind of up for it myself because I see I don't have anything to lose anymore I know I don't it doesn't matter to me anymore. I can I can do whatever. Yes. Did you have a question? Oh, yes Right, right Yes, well one thing has already been done and I think that maybe this is part of the answer to your question about how do we start moving forward in another direction and That is that there was some legislation called the Freedom of Choice Act That was written about 20 years ago But it basically just tracked Roe v. Wade and it was it just reinforced and codified a right to privacy a few years ago We rewrote the Freedom of Choice Act It's still called the Freedom of Choice Act and it still starts with some of the same preamble about Privacy and Visuality and so forth, but then when you get down to what the actual law is it is a civil rights law It is a the government cannot discriminate against you if you choose to have a child The government cannot discriminate against you if you choose not to have a child And that's the beginning of it because a human right has to be then translated into a civil right that can be codified And so that legislation is based on what we thought was the best state law Which was Washington State that has had this law for many years And it has never been successfully challenged in court and we felt like that was the best model So that piece of legislation has been written. It has been introduced has not been introduced in this session I would like to see a very strong Mobilization around the Freedom of Choice Act. I also am crazy enough to think that these Egg as person state initiatives state ballot initiatives that are popping up all over the country are a good thing Because those finally will force the pro-choice movement to grapple with what it hasn't wanted to grapple with which is straight out What's the value of a woman's life? You know, it's not enough to argue that it would be confusing It's not enough to argue that you know that there would be all these legal complications It's it's we have to begin to start with the woman Start with the woman's basic right to her own life to her own existence to the physical Body that she has and to making decisions about her own body and her own life and frankly I think there's been a lot of shying away from that and so Using Margaret Sanger's controversy theory I think that that needs to happen and then to translate that I think we're probably not going to get it in this health care Around it's not going to happen But I think we have to start building again from the ground up and get rid of the Hyde amendment and get rid of the Helms amendment And that means winning another election or two. Yes That's a great question, you know her grandchildren thought she was fabulous, but you know grandchildren and grandparents always Think each other are fabulous her her children her children her her sons her daughters very sadly died in childhood and that was a Sadness from which Margaret really never recovered. She she talked about this child For the entire rest of her life the two sons were both very successful people had Good family great family lives themselves So there had to be something good there, but they complained a lot about her absences And there are stories of you know of a son saying would you please write me into your calendar mom for Thanksgiving? You know, so I suspect that she she was an absentee mom quite a bit At the same time They seem to be be rather proud of her One of them had lots and lots of children. How many children did six? Yeah, and she was quite embarrassed by that Otherwise Otherwise it was okay. Yes Unfortunately Unfortunately a lot of the story is where we can see it On these back pieces to Chicago says that because they were written on this But you know just keep in mind that these 39 women including these two despite their fault of their backs Yes, very flaming yes Oh Kathleen's went to see the exhibit before she came in here and she her comment to me about Margaret's plate was whoo, she was angry Right, I haven't I mean every time I look at it. I see something do you I said a question back here. Yes Learning about This is a real concern What I see is good work by the environmental groups who are raising awareness of it How Very very interesting question and I'm going to just do one little disclaimer Which is that since I have not been the president of Planned Parenthood for four years now? I Don't know exactly what's going on right now in that particular conversation I do know that that over the years we had formed increasingly close Coalition relationships for many many different reasons and so I'm hopeful that there is a dialogue going on You know the thing about Planned Parenthood and the thing about the reproductive rights movement is that we actually We want to get at whatever the facts are and so it's Unfortunately those facts may get caught up in a you know in a political ringer and that is as you I mean as you pointed out That is always the challenge But it's none and none of it can be avoided I mean we have to keep going forward and we have to keep Looking to what the very best is and of course as time has gone on There are also new and different methods of birth control that come into play the birth control pills that are being used now have like just a miniscule amount of of Hormones compared to the in avid e pills that I was popping back in 1962 so it's a different you know lots of things are different and It's just important to keep the facts out there and to keep keep marching forward. Are you it has our time? I forgot to ask you. Are we okay? Okay. All right. Yes For women's health But that is not something that our society has ever been willing to to deal with and so there you go There's another little controversy you can go stir up if you want to yes This is like So no, she wasn't instrumental in developing the diaphragm. This is this is my after Margaret Sanger This is my next most fun thing to talk about so another time I'll do a whole thing on on the history of contraception Because birth control has been around since before people knew what caused pregnancy I mean women have been coming up with different things that would help them to not have children when they had sex And there have always been many reasons for wanting to do that and There have been things like I mean in the ancient the ancient Egyptians mixed crocodile dung with with honey Sounds really good doesn't it and used it as a pessary. They put it in the vagina to block the sperm Casanova Casanova was supposedly used to squeeze lemon half He had his partners used to put a squeezed lemon half over their cervix and and you know what? It was a really good contraceptive method because it was not only a barrier But the lemon juice was actually acidic and it killed the sperm so there have been you know And then there have been there have been like condoms Which were called sheaths made out of animal guts for many many centuries So by the time Margaret Sanger was around actually in the in the late 1800s the newspapers all over the country carried advertisements for things that would help ladies relieve their symptoms and So there were like all these nostrums some of them work some of them didn't work most of them didn't work But yes people knew withdrawal people of course knew abstinence people knew the condom people knew And of course with the then with the advent of latex All you know the condom became a much more prevalent method But the diaphragm was I presume invented in in the Netherlands That's where Margaret first encountered encountered the The diaphragm as we know it today and contraceptive jelly But women from time immemorial have cooked up like the French women that Margaret encountered did they've cooked up their own remedies and Found ways Women have their ways. Yes Yeah, suppositories. Yes Yes Absolutely Absolutely I think that's yeah Well, it starts it starts with as you say from birth it starts at birth it starts with with girls It starts with how girls are educated how they're socialized how girls are are given Ideas of themselves as capable powerful human beings who can have a life with Intention and know what they want to do in this world and that they have a right to all of those things So yeah, it's it's it's absolutely. It's a bigger framework But you know, I think that strategically the reason it's a much better framework in addition to the fact that it's the right thing to do is That when you have been on a when you've been in a in a fight or you've been in a battlefield where where It's just intractable which the the the debate has become intractable in many ways What you have to do is you have to create a different Field you have to create a different framework in which you're actually fighting the the fight and I think looking at a woman holistically is I think it'll even work better these days because because women now are More than 50% of college students women are now About 50 50 in the medical profession and you know the in law school and even in some religious seminaries Women are half or more of the of the students and so we're gonna have a generation of women now who I Hope will take this mantle on and take this torch on and just take it places that we would never have even imagined Am I overly optimistic? I think so Any more questions Well, let me let me just close with them with one more little story about Margaret I live these little anecdotes Sorry, I they're they're not always Right to the point of the social movement, but but I love this one too her grandson Alex Sanger Told me this story that her that Alex and his father Margaret's son grants and Alex's all of the siblings went to visit Margaret in the nursing home in Tucson not long before she died. It was New Year's Day and And she was she was kind of in a semi-coma. She didn't recognize the grandchildren and It was kind of sad But then Grant popped the cork on a bottle of champagne whereupon Margaret bolted up Out of her near coma and said give me a drink She loved champagne The nurse came by and said no, you know, you can't you can't have champagne So Margaret began to scream bloody murder the doctor came in soon and Very shortly Margaret was sipping her champagne through a straw And so we can say happily that we know Margaret Sanger was was living her life with intention She was the woman who believed women must not accept women must challenge was challenging until her very last breath Thank you all so much Mentioned about the dinner party and how to see the back of the runners Yeah, please Before everybody Yes, right if you go on one of the four computers that are around and Navigate in it we would when when the dinner before the dinner party opened We had these marvelous cameras come in with a very long dolly and You can actually with your finger move into the center of the dinner party on these computers and Move around and go in and see the back of the banners close up So and that's something I don't know that you can do that at home But you can certainly I don't know whether or not that's possible at home But you can certainly you can't do it at home as well But you can certainly do them on these four so I wanted to tell you that This was really one wonderful I was thinking Gloria when you were talking about really reframing how to reframe this from privacy to human rights is That there must be a PR agency on Madison Avenue in this city who knows precisely how to reframe and To begin a dialogue with some people who are in that area to move it not just from a legal Legal point of view, which I think is vitally important But also in terms of public relations And I would think we kid it considering the ad campaigns that go on and how people can be moved around By their noses. There's probably somebody in this city who would really be able to strategize about reframing I also wanted to say that when when you were chatting No, who who's the young woman who was talking about we live now told we're a hundred and something years old Yeah No No, but there's there's really I mean a wonderful thing is happening I'm 61 and I think many women will tell you after they've gone through menopause There is a new life and it's the freedom that you have with your body with your choices and it is that that Kind of life that one wants to create for women who are of childbearing age How great sex becomes when you're after 60? That's a whole other discussion. We'll do that another time My granddaughter Madeline came up to me The other day and she likes she's discovered how to get a rise out of her grandmother and well not me the other grandmother and she sort of Pulled pinched my arm. She said oh you're getting soft and she loved that She looked at me with this really mischievous glare and the second time she did it. I said yes Isn't it wonderful? I'm so wise And she said what do you mean? I said well when I get soft I get wiser She said you do I said yes absolutely the softer you get the wiser you get So you really have something to look forward to so I just passed that little Possibility of turning life around in the back. We have a sign in sheets if you'd like to be on our Email mailing list we have what's happening so you can see all of the wonderful things that are going on in the center and in the museum and On October 18th from two to four here in the forum Artist Linda Stein is coming and she's doing an artist's talk and she's discussing her Upcoming exhibition women of Valor Which is going to be in Chelsea and her book the power to protect sexism in the art world and gender Gender issues from a global Perspective so I hope you'll join us Gloria. Thank you so much. Thank you for all of the good work And thank you for all coming and all of the work You're all doing and the action that we're all going to take to move us forward. Thank you