Sanger Opens First Birth Control Clinic in America
Margaret Sanger opened America's first birth control clinic at 46 Amboy Street in Brownsville, Brooklyn, on October 16, 1916. Women lined up around the block. She and her staff distributed pamphlets on contraception in English, Yiddish, and Italian to the neighborhood's largely immigrant population. Police shut the clinic down nine days later under the Comstock Act, which classified contraceptive information as obscenity. Sanger was arrested, tried, and sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse. She appealed and won a partial victory: the court ruled physicians could prescribe contraception for medical reasons. Sanger opened the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in 1923, which became the model for a national network of clinics. In 1942, that organization was renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
October 16, 1916
110 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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