This is about an hour and 20 minutes. Would evening, ladies and gentlemen. I think we will get started. We are expecting lots more people, that we dont know what the traffic or the subway situation is. I am susan jones, i am also the director of the museum of the city of new york. I am so delighted to welcome you all here for this program. Women rebels, Margaret Sanger and the birthcontrol movement at 100, tonight, author and journalist Katha Pollitt will lead a conversation with activists and scholars. A singer viagra for, loretta ross and historian linda gordon. To mark the 100th anniversary of the Movement Possible origin in 1914, table discuss sangers legacy and the birthcontrol movement for activists today. I really do thank cspan for recognizing the importance, and being here to record tonights program. This is part of our ongoing activist new york series. All of which are sponsored by the puffin foundation. Our series is done in conjunction with an exhibition on the second floor called activist new york which looks at new york city history from 1654 right up until 2009. It looks at new york citys history through the lens of social activism. I see that you do not know about this, do we have an open afterwards sarah . Not tonight . Can we do it . Can angel open it . For anybody who has not seen it, you have to see this. This is terrific. We do have courageous women in that gallery. But i also think that i have to tell you we have a courageous woman right here in our curator for social activism, sarah s ideman. We may be the only museum in the country maybe that is too broad to have a curator of social activism on staff full. It is really wonderful. That is by virtue of the puffin foundation. Today, activism is not only historical. We witnessed widespread activism last night, and i am certain that something is going on now. My husband is in foley square, and he says there are thousands of people there. I am delighted. Activism is an essential democratic function. We are so very happy here at the museum to celebrate responsible activism in the history of our state. Tonight, we have a great cosponsor in planned parenthood new york. I thank them. I also want to thank the Margaret Sanger papers project at nyu for their cosponsorship as well. Tonights speakers, Ellen Kessler is right here to my left ellen is a senior fellow at the roosevelt institute, the partner to the Roosevelt Library in hyde park, new york. She is the author of the critically celebrated woman of valor, Margaret Sanger and the birthcontrol movement in america, published in 1992 and we released in 2000 seven as a paperback. She was coeditor of where human rights begin, Health Sexuality and women in the new millennium. She is currently at work on a new book about the history of womens writes as fundamental human rights. Alan and i ellen and i were classmates together at a womans college, no longer a womans college, vassar college. I am thrilled to have ellen on this podium. Linda gordon, a famed professor of history and the University Professor of humanities at nyu her wrist book, womans body womens rights, co a history of Birth Control in america, was published in 1970 six and later revised and republished as the moral property of women, co in 2007. It is a history of birthcontrol politics in the United States. Her more recent books are the great arizona orphan objection, which has won a bancroft prize. Katha pollitt is the author of reclaiming abortion rights, she is a poet, essayist, and columnist. She has won many prizes and awards. Including the National Book critics circle award and to Bank National magazine awards. Loretta ross is a nationally renowned expert on womens issues, racism, and intolerance human rights and violence against women. She has served as the National Coordinator of the sister song women of color reproductive justice collective and director of the women of Color Program for the National Organization for women. She has written extensively on the history of africanamerican women and reproductive justice activism, including as coauthor of undivided rights, women of color organize for reproductive justice. I will now introduce, in one heartbeat, alex sanger Margaret Sangers grandson. Before i do that, i always want to say that i want everybody here to remember this museum, so we can sign you up tonight and if we sign you up tonight we would love to give you, as a free book, reclaiming abortionrights, and i bet katha would autograph the book. If you dont want to join but you want the book, it is available for sale in the museum shop. Next week, we have a Womens Program going on here too. It is a Panel Discussion called todays modern woman. It is about working women in media and public conversation. It is with npr correspondent Ashleigh Milne tight and leslie yazell. It is next week, in conjunction with an exhibition for an illustrator in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. He created an idealized view of the modern american women, so we could all know how to dress ourselves and behave and wear our gloves and hats. Alexander sanger will introduce tonights topic and get us going. In addition to being Margaret Sangers grandson alex is chair of the International Planned parenthood council. He has also served as a goodwill ambassador for the u. N. Population fund as well as the president of planned parenthood of new york city and its international arm, the Margaret Sanger center international. He is the author of beyond choice, reproductive freedom in the 21st century. Please welcome alex and all of our panelists. Thank you. [applause] good evening and welcome. The issues of social justice racial justice, humanitarian justice, i know, are on our minds this evening. The movements to correct the worlds many inequities and injustices take many forms. There are so many root causes to be addressed. The symptoms of the inequity that my grandmother saw 100 years ago on the Lower East Side when she was nursing were an epidemic of Maternal Death unsafe abortions infant deaths and rampant disease. Maternal and infant mortality statistics of the United States 100 years ago are the equivalent of the least developed countries in the world today. To her, and to us at planned parenthood, these deaths are and front to settle civilization and decency, and they are preventable. Her solution, Birth Control, which allowed women to control the number of births contributed to a massive improvement in Public Health that we have seen in the last 100 years. But still worldwide over 290,000 women die every year from pregnancyrelated causes. That is 800 women a day. Including 43,000 women dying annually from unsafe abortions. 5. 6 million babies die at birth or are stillborn. 1. 5 million men and women die annually from aids. 35 of women worldwide have been the victims of intimate partner violence. This carnage is an affront to decency and civilization. Note prize, there are those today, as there were 100 years ago, who oppose our efforts to prevent this carnage and save these lives. 100 years ago, anthony comstock, whose live laws criminalize contra be contraception said, sexual pleasure within marriage is be still and race bestial and base. The judge who sentenced my grandmother to jail for opening a Birth Control clinic said, a woman has no right to copulate without fear of pregnancy. Some men continue this dubious tradition. In the last week, listen to this litany. The male president of turkey said women would never be equal to men and they should stay at home and have three, preferably five, children. The male minister of education in russia declared Sex Education would never be taught in russia. Isis band Birth Control banned Birth Control. Gambia enacted a drug coney and antigay law. And the id another leader said Birth Control was equal to is reproductive freedom a male versus female thing . Do women win and men lose . No, it is not. Our women universally in favor of reproductive rights and men universally opposed . In this country, not even close. In the United States women favor reproductive freedom only slightly more than men. So, do not leave men out of the solution. Not all men are hopeless. 100 years ago, my grandmother was in exile in europe for publishing the woman rubble, there was a trial going downtown of an unsuspecting individual who was entrapped into handing to an Undercover Police officer a copy of one of my grandmothers pamphlets. Family limitation, 16 pages of Birth Control advice. The accused, on the witness stand, declared that comstock was a religious and pornographic fanatic. And, a victim of incurable sex phobia. Heath further declared i deny the right of the state to exercise dominion over the souls and bodies of our women by compelling them to go into unwilling motherhood. The defendant was found guilty. The presiding judge said, in sentencing, your crime is not only a violation of the laws of man, it is a violation of the laws of god. To circulate pamphlets like these is a menace to society. Many believe it is a crime to have children. If some of the women advocating suffered would advocate having children, they would do a service. The defendant was my grandfather, william sanger. The first person to go to jail for advocating Birth Control in my grandmothers crusade was not my grandmother, it was my grandfather. Thank you. [applause] i am Katha Pollitt, i want to welcome you to this panel. Thank you, susan, alex for these wonderful remarks. So fascinating one hundred years later, Margaret Sanger still stirs my blood. The way we will work this is, every panelist speak for five minutes and five minutes only. Some area of this that interests them. We will have a general discussion and questions afterward. After a half an hour, it will be your turn to ask questions. We will go in alphabetical order. Ellen, kick us off. It is a pleasure to be here especially because susan runs this wonderful institution in new york, she is a halfcentury friend of mine. Also because i have been talking about Margaret Sanger for a halfcentury and i never tire of the subject. I thought i would say five things that defined Margaret Sanger and to find the movement, and frame the debate with our which are ongoing today, i will essentially put some things she said. Margaret sanger was a nurse. She had an unquestioning and from our perspective, and almost naive concept of alleviating suffering, which fueled her interest in Birth Control. As a tool not only for women, it also of social better betterment. Margaret sanger was a sec a secularist. She was the daughter of a protestant mother and a secular catholic father. One encourage the other to defy one died at the age of 50 after multiple pregnancies, and a bout of tuberculosis. The other lived to a ripe old age, squandering his artistic and intellectual talent on too much talk and drink. It was a powerful, potent combination to inspire rebellion. Sang sanger lifted the religious shroud that had encased reproduction in mystery, and replaced houses of worship with clinics, houses of worship run by mail clerics, with clinics run by women and doctors and social scientists. She made us arbiters of our own behaviors and values, and from this conflict, a century of turbulence has ensued. And perhaps, another century will ensue as not only the judeochristian culture reforms itself in this regard, but many millions of muslims go through the same sorts of transitions. She was progressive. This is important, it defines or politics. She emerged on the american scene in the house e. On days the halcyon days at the turnofthecentury, a time when america seemed wide open with possibility before the Russian Revolution and the overtaking of the labor movement. Her faith and revolution gave way to an agenda for reform and a confidence that a wellrun state could tame capitalism and provide a floor of wellbeing for the most vulnerable among us. This is critical to understanding sanger and the movement. She embraced the ideals she was a friend of eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt. She wanted government that would guarantee reproductive autonomy for improvements in social welfare and Public Health. She called for a robust social safety net. Increased Public Expenditure on Family Planning as a matter of civil justice. Why would a country that was taking care of its people not give them the voluntary tools to limit a number of births . One has to understand that the new deal, the foundation of the new deal, were Northern Irish catholics and southern protestants that became a Political Base that is now holding captive the Republican Party. She never forget that. She gave up on america. It is a fundamental point that she always voted socialist. She was so angry about Franklin Roosevelt. She was fourth a feminist, her fun her fundamental heresy, was claiming a womans right to experience their sexuality free of consequence, just as men have always done. The hardest challenge in writing about her today, and over the last 20 years, talking about her as well as writing about her, is to explain how absolutely destabilizing she was in her own time. Even given in warmest backlash against womens rights today and in the years since my book was published, it is hard to inhabit in era in our own history when sex was seen more as an obligation rather than pleasure for women, mother motherhood is a primary goal. Women were denied identities of their own as citizens, and they had compromise compromise rights, no protection from violence. This unyielding principle of mail cover to her male cove ture was key to understanding why her arguments were so profound. Examining all this in the context of the recent expansions of International Human rights discourse, which i have been involved in as an activist for many years since i wrote this book with george soros, there is an International HumanRights Movement now which is incorporated socioeconomic and cultural rights as what we define as fundamental human rights. The being involved in that underscores the originality of feminist thinkers who demanded Civil Protection of the body, not just the states promise to respect our privacy, but also demanded of the state a positive obligation to provide services on a voluntary basis for contraception. This is something that is enshrined in International Human rights law. It is also now enshrined in the Affordable Care act. If you want to know why the controversy over these issues has intensified, it is because of that. America now obligates its government to make certain that women not only have contraception, but the best contraception, even if it is the most expensive an iud longlasting contraception. Finally, and i went to see this quickly, Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist, a follower of what in its state was a popular movement. It addressed the manner in which biology and her entity as well as environment affects human intelligence and opportunity. She took away from darwin and Supreme Court justices like brandeis, and others, Oliver Wendell holmes. But also w. E. B. Dubois follower founder of the naacp. And many aggressives embraced these ideas. They took an optimistic lesson that our descending from the Animal Kingdom makes us capable of improvement if we apply the right tools. She believed alas, that merit should replace birthright as social stat as social status. Iq tests are the legacy, the positive legacy, of eugenics. She supported sterilization on the grounds of mental incompetence. We have to come to terms with that fact. I am out of time, but i think we should spend some time recognizing that the historically specific circumstances and the complexity of all these are hard to untangle. As a result of them, though, margaret has become in recent years a victim of the abortion wars and political extremism. Her reputation savaged by zealots who distort what has been a heated but a spectral academic discourse on the subject. Accusations about Family Planning globally and planned parenthood. We have much to learn from her she can perhaps inspire us it offers some fear. I offer it to linda to say the rest. I will put these papers down and stand appear. A little tight here. I want to say a word about anniversaries, then talk about more recent history. Anniversaries are desig