Page 94 - Encyclopedia Of World History

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population conference was organized in India in 1936; wrote letters to Indian princes in 1927 asking them to
Sanger was among those invited. support her clinical work in London, while the Indian
The early advocates also published journals that advocate Aliyappin Padmanabha Pillay requested finan-
became important intellectual sites for international cial help from the London Eugenic Society to continue
exchange and discussion on the subject of contraception the publication of his journal Marriage Hygiene. Sanger
and birth control. Some of the important journals pub- wrote to C. P. Blacker, of the London Eugenic Society, to
lished from London, New York, Madras, and Bombay request funds for her India visit in 1935. Sanger’s visit to
(now Mumbai) in the 1920s and 1930s were Birth Con- Japan in 1922 was financed by the Japanese magazine
trol News (United States) Birth Control Review (United Reconstruction. For her part, Kato Shidzue, a Japanese
States), Madras Birth Control Bulletin (India), and Mar- birth control advocate, went to the United States in
riage Hygiene (India).Again, this is not a comprehensive 1937 to raise money for her work in Japan. She toured
list, but one that makes clear the rich international vari- in the United States speaking about birth control.
ety of publication on the subject.Advocates solicited arti- Besides financial networks that crossed national
cles for these journals internationally, and many of these boundaries, reproductive technologies were also trans-
journals carried specific information on birth control ported globally. Stopes supplied contraceptives to South
work and clinics around the world. Africans in the 1930s. Stopes’s Society for Constructive
Birth control advocates also published a large number Birth Control and Racial Progress (SCBC) offered to train
of monographs and books on the subject, which circu- birth control activists from India and South Africa. Many
lated globally. Books by Sanger and Marie Stopes (a advocates also visited Sanger in the United States hoping
British activist) were read by birth control advocates in to gain technical training on the subject. Elsa Woodrow,
India, South Africa, Japan, Britain, and United States. from the Cape Town Mother’s Clinic Committee in South
Besides being read by a large body of birth control advo- Africa, contacted Stopes in 1931, seeking advice on how
cates, these books were also read by lay people seeking to set up a clinic and the costs associated with it. Her
to control their own fertility. Many private individuals in organization associated itself with the SCBC and ordered
India and South Africa who read books by Sanger and contraceptive supplies from Stopes.The Mother’s Welfare
Stopes wrote to them asking for further clarification on Society of South Africa got financial support from Stopes
the methods discussed in their books. Stopes’s Married in 1938–1939. On her various visits to India, Sanger
Love and Wise Parenthood: The Treatise on Birth Control and her assistant Edith How-Martyn carried contracep-
for Married People, both published in 1918, circulated tive technology with them, which they distributed to the
widely in South Africa and other parts of the British em- various clinics in India. They also presented advocates
pire. Sanger’s books Motherhood in Bondage and The with gynecological plaques, which were used by doctors
New Motherhood were popular around the world. Inter- and advocate to demonstrate the use of different contra-
national birth control activists also endorsed one an- ceptive methods.
other’s books; Sanger, for instance, wrote a forward for
Narayan Sitaram Phadke’s 1927 Sex Problem in India Discursive Parameters
which gave this book greater credibility in the eyes of Early advocates of birth control drew upon a range of
domestic readers in colonial India. intellectual ideas to make a strong case for the dissemi-
nation of contraceptive information. Many advocates
Financial and found it beneficial to deploy a numerical argument, rely-
Technological Support ing heavily upon census figures that were increasingly
Birth control activists sought financial support for their becoming available in most countries during the early
work from donors across the globe. Stopes, for instance, twentieth century. For instance, the colonial census of