Goldman, Emma (1869-1940) (birth control)

Emma Goldman was the pioneer woman advocate of birth control in the United States. Known as “Red Emma,” she was an anarchist, rebel, lecturer, publicist, agitator for free speech, and feminist, as well as an advocate of birth control. She greatly influenced Margaret Sanger, who in her later life tried to ignore this, downplaying Goldman’s role in her life, perhaps in part because Goldman was one of the most notorious women in America in the early part of the twentieth century and did not fit in with Sanger’s concept of how the birth control movement should develop. Goldman was jailed in 1893 for nine months on charges of inciting a riot after she told a New York City crowd of unemployed workers to steal bread if they had no money to buy it.

It was while she was in jail that Goldman trained as a nurse, and after being discharged from prison she went to Vienna, where she picked up a certificate as a nurse and midwife. Returning to New York, she began delivering babies and became increasingly convinced of the importance of contraception. She founded Mother Earth, an anarchist feminist journal in 1906, and in it she emphasized the importance of women’s sexuality and women’s right to sexual pleasure. The first issue of Margaret Sanger’s monthly, the Woman Rebel, in 1914, included an extract from Emma Goldman’s essay, “Marriage and Love,” urging the right of women not to have children if they did not want to, because they were not machines.

Goldman herself, who had often given lectures on birth control in 1915, began to include specific instructions on the use of contraceptives, including distributing her pamphlet, “Why and How the Poor Should Not Have Many Children.” She was first arrested in Portland, Oregon, for doing so, but a circuit judge set aside her conviction. She was later arrested in New York City for a similar speech and distribution of her pamphlet, and despite her impassioned courtroom speech in her defense, she was convicted and fined one hundred dollars or fifteen days in jail. She chose the jail term.

Emma Goldman, anarchist feminist activist, was one of the earliest American advocates of birth control, but was later looked down upon by the birth control "establishment"as too radical.

Emma Goldman, anarchist feminist activist, was one of the earliest American advocates of birth control, but was later looked down upon by the birth control “establishment”as too radical.

Birth control, however, was just one of her many causes. In 1917 she was arrested for opposing military conscription and sentenced to prison for two years. When she completed the sentence, she was stripped of her citizenship and she; her lover, Alexander Berkman; and 147 other “subversives” were deported to the new Soviet Union. Goldman quickly became disillusioned with the Soviet state and after a two-year residence there fled to England, where she continued her activities on behalf of women, contraception, and social causes.

In 1923 she published My Disillusionment in Russia, a libertarian critique of the communist regime, and in 1931 she completed, with the help of Berkman, her two-volume autobiography, Living My Life. She was allowed a brief visit to the United States in the 1930s, after which she returned to England. She died in Canada, where she had been working on behalf of the Spanish anarchists then fighting Spain’s dictator, Francisco Franco.

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