Margaret Sanger Opens Brownsville's Birth Control Clinic

On October 16, 1916, Margaret Sanger opened a storefront clinic at 46 Amboy Street in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, the first birth control clinic in the United States. She could not find a doctor willing to risk it, so she staffed it with her sister Ethel Byrne, a nurse, and a friend named Fania Mindell, who translated for the Yiddish- and Italian-speaking women who lined up outside. Handbills went up around the neighborhood telling mothers where to find safe information instead of dangerous folk remedies or a back-alley abortion. Nine days later, an undercover policewoman posed as a patient, and Sanger was arrested for violating New York's Comstock-era law against distributing contraceptive information. She kept the clinic running after making bail, was arrested again, and the police finally pushed the landlord to evict her about a month after opening day.