Mary Ware Dennett & the Birth Control Movement

Unsung History

For birth control advocate Mary Ware Dennett, the personal was political. After a difficult labor and delivery with her third child, a physician told Mary Ware Dennett she should not have any more children, but he told her nothing about how to prevent pregnancy. Dennett’s husband began an affair with a client of his architectural firm, destroying their marriage, and Dennett devoted her work to ensuring that other couples could receive information about birth control. A 1930 federal court case against her, United States v. Dennett, opened the door to widespread distribution of birth control information in the US.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Assistant Professor of History at Kennesaw State University and faculty research fellow at the Georgia State University College of Law’s Center for Law, Health & Society. She is writing a book called Battle for Birth Control: Mary Dennett, Margaret Sanger, and the Rivalry That Shaped a Movement, that will be published by Rutgers University Press.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is a photo of Mary Ware Dennett from the New York Journal-American Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University Of Texas.

Sources:

• “The Sex Side of Life: An Explanation for Young People,” by Mary Ware Dennett, 1919. Available via Project Gutenberg.
• “Papers of Mary Ware Dennett,” Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute
• “The Sex Education Pamphlet That Sparked a Landmark Censorship Case,” by Sharon Spaulding, Smithsonian Magazine, September 30, 2021.
• “A Birth-Control Crusader,” by Marjorie Heins, The Atlantic, October 1996.
• “Mary Coffin Ware Dennett,” by Lakshmeeramya Malladi,Embryo Project Encyclopedia, June 22, 2016.
• “Unsentimental Education: Mary Ware Dennett’s quest to make contraception—and knowledge about sex—available to all,” by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, The American Scholar, March 4, 2021.

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