Front Our Own Correspondent NEW. YORK.
Mrs Franklin D. Roosevelt's active interest in birth control came into nation-wide prominence as a result of a Press interview for the first time since 1932.
In that year Mrs Roosevelt gave up her sponsorship of a birth control clinic in New York to take up the editorship of a magazine called Just Babies, in what was generally interpreted as a concession to the Catholic vote. Little has been heard of the First Lady's interest in birth control until reporters directly asked the President's wife questions on the subject.
Mrs Roosevelt said that she is not opposed to birth control and the " planning of children," but that she would not urge her ideas upon anyone whose religion opposed such practices. The President's wife revealed that for sonic pears she has contributed to an organisation in New York City which maintained birth control clinics in poorer sections of the city.
It was reported also that Mrs Roosevelt inquired of the Health Department in Washington, D.C., if the department could legally conduct birth control clinics, and was told that it could not.
Birth control was made a burning issue in New York at the time of Mrs Roosevelt's statement by the revelation that the New York State Department of Health was maintaining a birth control clinic with State funds. New York is the second State to do so, and it appears that this State's action is likely to prove an opening wedge in a renewed birth control campaign. Birth control also became an issue in labour circles when file educational director of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, one of the largest and strongest unions in the country, proposed that union educational bureaux should set up birth control instruction classes. The proposal met with instant opposition from Catholics.