The Birth Control Clinic in a Marketplace World

240 Pages·2012·6.051 MB·English

by  Rose Holz

The Birth Control Clinic in a Marketplace World is Holz
the first book to chart the origins and evolution
of the charity birth control clinic movement
in the United States from the 1910s through
the 1970s, a period that witnessed dramatic T
transformation in the goods and services h
such clinics provided. Rose Holz uncovers the e

virtually unexamined relationship between B
Planned Parenthood and the commercial i
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marketplace sphere. t
h
Challenging more than thirty years of

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historiography on birth control, Holz sheds
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new light on battles over reproductive rights
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through her analysis of the Planned Parenthood
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Federation of America within the context of the r
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commercial birth control world. Revealing that
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it would be Planned Parenthood’s engagement C
to charity—the argument the organization once l
i
n
used to discredit the presumed profit-driven
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exploitation of the marketplace—that would c

put precisely those women it hoped to assist i
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in dangerous situations, she asks such probing questions as: What were the meanings

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attached to the provision of birth control and its commercial distribution? How in turn
Rose Holz
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were these meanings used as sources of power? The project draws on rich primary
sources to answer these questions and to examine the historical role of the local birth a
The Birth C ontrol Clinic
control clinic in modern America. r
k
e
“A fascinating and original look at Planned Parenthood’s struggles to understand t in a Marketplace World
p
and fulfill its charitable mission in the context of a much larger for-profit, consumer-
l
oriented birth control industry. With nuance and care, Holz illuminates the ethical a
ambiguities clinics encountered as they strove to negotiate this shifting economic and c
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cultural terrain. Complex, rewarding, and highly readable.”

—Gail Bederman, associate professor of history, University of Notre Dame W
o
Rose Holz earned her PhD in history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-
r
Champaign. She is associate director of and associate professor of practice in the
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Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA
P.O. Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.urpress.com

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The Birth Control Clinic in a Marketplace World

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Rochester Studies in Medical History
Senior Editor: Theodore M. Brown
Professor of History and Preventive Medicine
University of Rochester
ISSN 1526-2715
The Mechanization of the Heart: The Politics of Vaccination:
Harvey and Descartes Practice and Policy in England, Wales, Ireland,
Thomas Fuchs and Scotland, 1800–1874
Translated from the German by Deborah Brunton
Marjorie Grene
Shifting Boundaries of Public Health:
The Workers’ Health Fund in Eretz Israel Europe in the Twentieth Century
Kupat Holim, 1911–1937 Edited by Susan Gross Solomon, Lion
Shifra Shvarts Murard, and Patrick Zylberman
Public Health and the Risk Factor: Health and Zionism:
A History of an Uneven Medical Revolution The Israeli Health Care System, 1948–1960
William G. Rothstein Shifra Shvarts
Venereal Disease, Hospitals and the Urban Poor: Death, Modernity, and the Body: Sweden 1870–1940
London’s “Foul Wards,” 1600–1800 Eva Åhrén
Kevin P. Siena
International Relations in Psychiatry:
Rockefeller Money, the Laboratory and Britain, Germany, and the
Medicine in Edinburgh 1919–1930: United States to World War II
New Science in an Old Country Edited by Volker Roelcke,
Christopher Lawrence Paul J. Weindling, and Louise Westwood
Health and Wealth: Studies in History and Policy Ludwik Hirszfeld: The Story of One Life
Simon Szreter Edited by Marta A. Balińska and
William H. Schneider
Charles Nicolle, Pasteur’s Imperial Missionary:
Translated by Marta A. Balińska
Typhus and Tunisia
Kim Pelis John W. Thompson:
Psychiatrist in the Shadow of the Holocaust
Marriage of Convenience:
Paul J. Weindling
Rockefeller International Health and
Revolutionary Mexico The Origins of Organ Transplantation:
Anne-Emanuelle Birn Surgery and Laboratory Science, 1880-1930
Thomas Schlich
The Value of Health:
A History of the Pan American Communities and Health Care:
Health Organization The Rochester, New York, Experiment
Marcos Cueto Sarah F. Liebschutz
Medicine’s Moving Pictures: The Neurological Patient in History
Medicine, Health, and Bodies in Edited by L. Stephen Jacyna and
American Film and Television Stephen T. Casper
Edited by Leslie J. Reagan, Nancy Tomes,
The Birth Control Clinic in a Marketplace World
and Paula A. Treichler
Rose Holz

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The Birth Control Clinic
in a Marketplace World
Rose Holz

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Copyright © 2012 by Rose Holz
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no
part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2012
University of Rochester Press
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.urpress.com
and Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-399-7
ISSN: 1526-2715
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Holz, Rosemarie Petra, 1968-
The birth control clinic in a marketplace world / Rose Holz.
p. cm. — (Rochester studies in medical history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58046-399-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Birth control clinics—United States. 2. Birth control—United States. 3. Family
planning services—United States. 4. Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
I. Title.
HQ766.5.U5H65 2012
363.9'60973—dc23 2011049620
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
Parts of chapter 2 appeared in Rose Holz, “Nurse Gordon on Trial: Those Early Days of
the Birth Control Clinic Movement Reconsidered,” in Journal of Social History 39 (Fall
2005): 112–40, and are reprinted here with permission.
Front cover photo: Cover of pamphlet, “In the Beginning . . . ,” published by the
Margaret Sanger Research Bureau, circa 1940s. (Planned Parenthood Federation of
America Records (PPFA I)) Photographer/creator: Planned Parenthood Federation of
America, Inc. (Margaret Sanger Research Bureau). Copyright: PPFA has retained copy-
right, although the Sophia Smith Collection has been authorized to grant permission
to researchers to publish. Back cover photo: Entrance to Planned Parenthood clinic
at 841 East 63rd Street, Chicago, 1960. (Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Records (PPFA II)) Photographer/creator: Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Copyright: PPFA has retained copyright, although the Sophia Smith Collection has been
authorized to grant permission to researchers to publish.

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to shylette miss violet
and her beloved miss louise
for theirs is a love for the high fl ying trapeze
to gingersnap their pony
for bravely does he carry them
across the lone prairie
but most especially
to my beloved husband eric
for together we sail
the great blue sea

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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 The Birth of the Clinic 20
2 Rising Above 46
3 Old Habits Are Hard to Break 69
4 New Habits Are Formed 96
Conclusion 146
Notes 159
Bibliography 201
Index 215

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Acknowledgments
I’d be lying if I didn’t say there were times when I thought this book would
never be fi nished. I’d also be lying if I didn’t say that I lived in fear that I
would be crushed under the historical weight of the entire Planned Parent-
hood organization (it’s pretty heavy). And I’d be lying again if I didn’t say
how often it felt as if this were a project I bore alone. Fortunately, I was
wrong on all three counts—the book exists, I narrowly escaped, and more
than a few people lent a hand, each according to her or his inimitable fash-
ion. For these reasons, many grateful thanks go to the following people,
organizations, and occasional inanimate thing for their help along the way:
The archives listed in the bibliography, whose collections I used (and the
great people who worked inside), Bill Baird (my favorite birth control radi-
cal), the Bake Shop (everybody who worked there too), Gail Bederman (who
had faith in my fi rst article), Lisa Bell, Busby Berkeley (oh, the repetition),
Owen Brown, Masha Bucur, the Buhs Family (Ervin, Susan, Laura, Edith,
Ismael Guerrero, and Peter Thomson), the Cackle Sisters, Johnny Cash (my
fi rst love), Henry Darger (fellow xeroxer), Dr. Diamant, the Dictionary (my
favorite book to read), Barbara DiBernard (she gets my Christmas cards),
Kirk Douglas (because “when I say ‘hup,’ you better hup”), Frederick Doug-
lass (who whispered in my ear), Bob Dylan, some new friends (Lee Heerten,
Sean James, Michaela Kocanda, Lisa Lux, Garrett McConnell, Charlie Rog-
ers, Michelle Tiedje, and Azure Wall), e-mail, Energy Lake Industries, Dawn
Flood, Les and Wynn Goodchild, Nurse Adele Gordon, Merle Haggard,
Cathy Moran Hajo (more on Cathy in the introduction), Kathryn Harvey,
the history departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(UIUC) and University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL), Roscoe Holcomb, the
Imaginary Institute for Plain Art, the interlibrary loan, the Internet, Mar-
garet Jacobs (great boss and fellow bicycle rider), John G. (for in horror
lies hope), Gayle Johnson (who turned in drawings along with her papers),
Sandra Johnson (fellow cook and gardener), the Kinks, Dr. Lauer, the librar-
ies at the University of Illinois and the University of Nebraska, Jeff Machota,
Sandy Marshall (who did the job I couldn’t face: index), the Marx Broth-
ers (especially Harpo), Miss Mayo, Mickey Moran, Nature’s Table (the site
of my fi rst real education), Willie Nelson, my nephews and nieces, Kathy
Oberdeck, Roy Orbison, the outlaws (Karyn Holz, Annette Ellingwood-Holz,
Mary Holz, Dave Mosiman, and Dave Drajeske), the Paulukonis family (Rob,
Susan, Annie, and Joe), Pony Express Enterprises (Guenther, Trixie, and all

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