"Portland Moral or Ridiculous?" Morning Oregonian, June 21, 1916

Media

Part of “Portland Moral or Ridiculous? Colonel Wood Makes Arrests Pamphlet Sellers Basis of Inquiry”

Title: "Portland Moral or Ridiculous?" Morning Oregonian, June 21, 1916
Creator: C.E.S Wood
Description: On June 19, 1916 Margaret Sanger – an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse – gave a lecture titled “Birth Control” to educate on sexual health and pregnancy prevention, a stop she made as part of a seventeen-city speaking tour. In preparation for the talk, Sanger was approached by a union worker, Carl Rave, who asked whether he and two others—E.L. Jenkins and Ralph Chervin—could sell one of her pamphlets, which presented excerpts of information from one of Sanger’s monographs titled Family Limitations (1914).

According to the Oregon Encyclopedia, a project of the Oregon Historical Society, the contents of the pamphlet in question described birth control methods—including pessaries, condoms, sponges, laxatives, vaginal tablets, and douches—and highlighted the pleasures of sex. The sale of these pamphlets ultimately led to Sanger’s arrest, making Portland the only city during her speaking tour to put her in jail.

This article aptly captures the varying reactions and forms of engagement with a public lecture on sex, birth control, and family planning given by a woman. Moreover, the article captures the rhetoric that began to escalate around the public discussion of sexual health and birth control in the 1920s that began in New York city before spreading across the country.
Publisher: Oregonian (published as Morning Oregonian)
Date: June 21, 1916
Type: Text corpora; Press releases
Subject: Sexual health; Hygiene; Sex instruction
Source: Oregon Encyclopedia. A project of the Oregon Historical Society featured in an article titled "Margaret Sanger's Arrest in Portland, 1916" written by Pamela Pierce.; Link to Article