If a Woman Has Children Too Fast Should She Be Sterilized or Given Birth Control Information? Dec. 2, 1921

Doings of Mad Men

Mrs. Clyde Cassedente, a very poor and very ignorant woman of Denver, Col., suddenly leaped intonational prominence the other day. She was hailed before the judge of the Juvenile Court of Denver to show cause why her five children should not be taken away from her, the complaint alleging that the family home was filthy, and that the children had been neglected and undernourished. The Associated Press tells the rest of the story as follows:

“Dr. Ray Sunderland, testifying in the case, said he believed conditions at the Cassidente home with the result of the mother bearing children too fast.

‘What would you suggest as a remedy?’ asked Judge Graham.

‘That Mrs. Cassidente submit to a sterilization operation,’ replied Dr. Sunderland.

‘I will continue this case until January 10,’ the judge announced. ‘In the meantime, I want the doctor’s suggestion carried out.’”

While this was going on in Denver, Col., the police of New York, inspired by a Roman Catholic archdeacon, were prosecuting Mrs. Margaret Sanger and Miss Mary Winsor for staging a birth control conference in New York City.

The world groan with the birth agonies of millions of poor and ignorant women like Mrs. Cassedente of Denver, who are compelled, thru ignorance, to bear children faster than they can provide for them. Millions of children of the poor are neglected, poorly clothed, undernourished and dragged about in filth and poverty because their poor parents can not provide the necessities of life for them, say nothing of giving them the sympathetic and intelligent care which should be the birthright of every human child.

Finally Society and the State, thru their miserable failure to provide economic independence for their people, yank a Mrs. Cassedente into court and order a surgeon to put her on an operating table, smother her with an ether cone, dilate her with a speculum and, with a knife, destroy the fertility of the organs of her holiest function.

In meantime, if any consecrated soul desirous of giving overworked motherhood a new lease of life, attempts to hold a public meeting in which it is argued that every woman should be given the knowledge to enable her to determine when she should have children and when she should not, that consecrated individual, bent on rendering the greatest possible service to humanity, is hounded by the Church and the State and branded as a despicable criminal.

This is a beautiful world we live in, if one only looks at the trees, the skies and the stars in the heavens; but when one gets right down to earth it more often resembles a madhouse; one might say it resembles a football of ignorance and fury more than the footstool of a righteous God.

From the editorial page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Dec. 2, 1921, W.O. Saunders, editor. The editorial sometimes spelled the last name Cassidente and sometimes Cassedente. I don’t know which is correct.