The recent Supreme Court decision allowing exceptions to birth-control coverage mandated by the Affordable Care Act reminds me that birth control in Arkansas has an interesting history.
Efforts aimed at limiting family size go far back in the state, but an effective and relatively inexpensive means--the rubber condom--did not arrive on the scene until after the Civil War. Contraceptive douching materials were available by 1830, with newspaper advertising "female syringes." The better syringes came with a supply of alum or sulphates of zinc to act as spermicides. The most commonly used device for women was the pessary, a sort of early cervical cap that was commonly advertised to treat prolapsed uterus.
Birth control faced the active opposition of not only the Roman Catholic Church but also much of the Protestant religious establishment. However, it was not until 1873 that federal legislation was adopted, the Comstock Law, providing for the "suppression of trade in, and circulation of, obscene literature and articles of immoral use." By this means birth control got lumped in with obscenity.
The modern birth control movement found its leader in 1916 when Margaret Higgins Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in America in New York. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League, which later evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Sanger was the model and inspiration for Hilda Cornish of Little Rock, whom historian Marianne Leung called "the founder of the Arkansas birth control movement." Brunhilde Kahlert, a native of St. Louis, married Little Rock banker Edward Cornish in 1902. They had six children. Widowed in 1928, Mrs. Cornish threw herself into reform activities. In 1930 she visited Margaret Sanger's clinic, and later that year Cornish convened a meeting of local physicians, business and religious leaders, as well as a cadre of civic-minded women, with the result being the creation of the Arkansas Eugenics Association.
Among the AEA leaders were Reform Jewish Rabbi Ira E. Sanders, Hay Watson Smith, the minister at Second Presbyterian Church, Graham Roots Hall, a lawyer, Homer Scott, chief of staff at Arkansas Children's Hospital, and Darmon A. Rhinehart, president of the Arkansas Medical Society.
The AEA opened the Little Rock Birth Control Clinic at Baptist Hospital in early 1931. Its services were available to poor white women only, with black women not being served until 1937.
Historian Melanie K. Welch, who wrote her dissertation on the birth control movement in Arkansas and the entry on the subject in The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture (www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net), has stressed that Cornish and her colleagues were motivated by two factors: the plight of women who wanted no more children, and the need to limit births among the poor. During the Great Depression many Americans viewed the growing ranks of the poor as a threat to American capitalism and democracy.
Whatever their motivation, upper-class Little Rock clubwomen certainly provided the community support needed to keep a birth control clinic open in 1931 Arkansas. While Hilda Cornish might have been the lightning rod, other prominent supporters of the clinic were Louise Boaz Hall, daughter of the Methodist bishop; Raida Cohn Pfeifer, daughter of two Little Rock merchant families; and Hilda Cornish's daughter, Hilda Coates.
These women often volunteered at the clinic, and they heard many stories from mothers fighting to avoid additional pregnancies. One woman wrote the clinic from Mount Olive, Arkansas, in 1941: "We are terribly poor. We have four children . . . I live in terror that I will become pregnant again. I honestly do believe I will die if I give birth again. We do not have enough to eat, never have milk. Life is just a dull, drab ache of fear."
The birth-control movement received a huge boost in 1964 when the state Department of Health began offering family planning services to married women. Unmarried women could only receive help if they already had children. In 1973, before the rise of the religious right, Arkansas adopted the Arkansas Family Planning Act which provided that all people, regardless of age, race, sex, income, or motive, were to receive help in family planning. In the 1980s a mostly unsuccessful attempt was made to extend birth control services to high school clinics in an effort to battle Arkansas' high teenage pregnancy rate.
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 07/06/2014