Word: births
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When I finally spoke to Betsy Sable, a recently married Smith graduate whose official title was Family Planning Counselor, she seemed relieved to talk about abortion objectively. We talked about the history of the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. The organization started in 1930 as the Massachusetts Birth Control Clinic, operating clinics for married women whose health required contraception. Complaints were lodged in 1937, and in 1939 the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that the clinics would have to close, as birth control had been declared illegal in an 1879 statute...
...bills legalizing birth control for married women were defeated in the Massachusetts legislature. The organization subsequently abandoned attempts to change the law but decided to use the right of free speech to educate people about the importance of family planning. In 1945 it changed its name to the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts...
...major services of the organization now is counseling, discussing with clients proper birth control methods, including sterilization, and the possibility of therapeutic abortion for those "unhappily pregnant." Because of the 1966 bill legalizing contraceptive care and prescriptions for married persons, the organization can now refer clients to doctors who will give them prescriptions for the pill...
...asked her if she thought better birth control practices would mean less abortions. "Of course birth control is the logical way to avoid abortion. However, recent articles on the pill, reporting that it causes blood clotting and breast cancer, have scared many girls away. They're afraid of the pill, but they aren't informed about the other methods. So they use the rhythm method and get into trouble...
...remembered some of the "sex education" films I'd seen in high school. It struck me that none of them had contained any information on birth control. One movie on unwanted pregnancy, a melodrama called "Phoebe," carried with it the moral that the way to avoid pregnancy was to avoid sex until marriage. In the plight of poor pregnant Phoebe, afraid to tell her boyfriend or her parents, missing out on all the fun the gang was having, there was no mention of foams, diaphragms or the pill...