A New Witch Hunt in Salem: The Rise and Fall of Low-Cost Birth Control Clinics in the Great Depression

This presentation addresses class and racial disparities in reproductive and contraceptive care during the 1920s and 1930s in six communities across Massachusetts. Comstock-era “Chastity, Morality, and Decency” laws in Massachusetts meant that purchasing contraceptives was technically illegal until 1972. In fact, contraceptives had been freely available for purchase in the state since World War I, but only for elite women who could afford to see a private physician. Poor women had no such option. Instead, they turned to pharmacies and grey markets selling douches and chemical creams - products that were at best harmless and at worst fatal. During the Great Depression, a group of socially prominent Boston women set out to upset this status quo, establishing a statewide network of low-cost birth control clinics. These clinics served women of all races, ethnicities, religions, and citizenship status, dramatically disrupting unvoiced ideologies concerning who “deserved” quality contraception and who did not. Although the clinics operated for years to great acclaim, all came crashing down after a dramatic police raid on the Salem clinic in 1937. The case sparked a statewide debate and set the stage for the next four decades of birth control battles.