The Southeastern Pennsylvania Birth Control League, the Pennsylvania Birth Control Federation Conference and Evening Meeting…1929. [broadside and related brochure]

“It is time that there should be open discussion of what is a serious and live problem with all thinking people.—Adolph Myer, M.D., Johns Hopkins Hospital”

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1929 broadside announcement for a birth control conference held in Philadelphia, sponsored by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Birth Control League and the Pennsylvania Birth Control Federation.

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966), birth control activist, clinical nurse, and later founder of Planned Parenthood, gave the concluding address at the evening meeting: “Why Do We Want Birth Control?” That same year, Sanger founded the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control to lobby Congress to remove restrictions on contraception.

Other speakers at the conference included sociologist Hornell Hart, labor activist Israel Mufson, and Philadelphia politician Samuel Emlen. Emlen spoke about a Pennsylvania birth control: “A Bill to permit physicians to give contraceptive advice to married persons was before the Legislature in 1927. The Pennsylvania Birth Control Federation will present the same Bill to the Legislature in 1929.”

The broadside is accompanied by a four-page membership brochure for the Pennsylvania Birth Control Federation describing the federation’s three aims including “[w]hen possible to do so, to establish contraceptive clinics in the principal centers of population in Pennsylvania.” A perforated portion of the brochure (still attached) lists Samuel Emlen as Treasurer. The final page lists all the officers of the federation and its large advisory council.

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