What Can We Learn from the Historical Fight for Birth Control?
In today’s newsletter, new reporting from Rania Abouzeid on the toll in Lebanon of the Israel-Hezbollah war. But, first, the fresh relevance of the fight for legal birth control. Plus:
Margaret Talbot
Staff writer
It’s remarkable how many of the battles fought by early-twentieth-century birth-control activists are being waged again today. Is any contraception, other than the rhythm method and the like, “unnatural” and therefore suspect? Do states have a stake in promoting fertility, and does that interest allow them to ban or restrict abortion? Can the Comstock statute, a social-purity law from 1873, which plenty of people even then thought was antiquated, be dusted off and used to criminalize the mailing of abortion pills, as Project 2025 proposes? These are all live questions in the post-Dobbs, Trump Round Two era, however successfully the President-elect convinced much of the electorate that he was done messing with reproductive rights. That’s why Stephanie Gorton’s new book, “The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America,” which I review in this week’s issue, is so timely. There’s something to be learned from these earlier struggles and strategies—from the serious mistakes these movement leaders made (Sanger’s embrace of eugenics above all), as well as from their bold commitment to free speech, civil disobedience, and sexual fulfillment. Read the review »
From the News Desk
A man in Sohmor, in the western part of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, inspects his house, which was damaged by an Israeli air strike.Photograph by Maher Abou Taleb / Reuters
The Price Lebanon Is Paying for the Hezbollah-Israel War
Although Israel claims to be targeting Hezbollah fighters, to date more than thirty-five hundred Lebanese have been killed, and some fifteen thousand wounded. More than 1.2 million people, about a fifth of Lebanon’s population, have fled their homes. A nurse working in a hospital southwest of Baalbek tells Rania Abouzeid, who reports from the region, “I am seeing wounded babies who have nothing to do with anything.” Read the story »
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Daily Cartoon
“Ah, fall—time to die!”
Cartoon by Tommy Siegel
More Fun & Games
P.S. Before Jessica Tisch, the scion of one of the country’s richest families, was appointed this week by Eric Adams to be the next N.Y.P.D. commissioner, she was the city’s commissioner of sanitation and the brains behind an endeavor she called the Trash Revolution: “Bags off the sidewalks. Clean highways. Citywide organic-waste pickup. Beefed-up enforcement of sanitary laws.” This past spring, Eric Lach reported on her progress. “Trash service,” she told him, “is the last all-you-can-use service in New York City.” 🗑️
Hannah Jocelyn contributed to this edition.
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