1930s - First Decade of Service
The stock market crash of 1929 brought a rash of unemployment and poverty that would linger throughout the first half of the 1930s. During the Great Depression, Association funds dwindled and the Maternal Health Association's caseload grew. The purchase of a 25-cent lampshade for the clinic waiting room required great deliberation. And when nurses requested a towel rack, they were told, "It will be necessary to get along with a string for the next month at least." With careful budgeting and successful fundraising, however, the Maternal Health Association grew throughout the decade, offering more services and reaching more women.
In 1931, female medical students at the Western Reserve University School of Medicine requested the opportunity to observe birth control clinics, and the Maternal Health Association became a training center for medical students, physicians and family planning advocates from across the country and around the world. Also in 1931, MHA became the first family planning organization to recognize the need for sexuality education before marriage. Its clinics began to offer premarital counseling to build stronger marriages.
In 1934, Maternal Health Association President Adele Chisholm Eells, along with Margaret Allen Ireland and Helen Chisholm Halle, organized the association's first public benefit, an ice carnival featuring Toronto Skating Club members. The women sold just enough tickets to ensure MHA's survival. But rave reviews made the show a sellout in succeeding years, and its success sparked the founding of the Cleveland Skating Club in 1936.That same year, the association opened its first West Side Branch.
Meanwhile, important changes were taking place throughout the nation that would generate support for the birth control movement at home. In the fall of 1936, a federal appellate court judge, Augustus Hand, ruled that birth control could no longer be classified as obscene. This meant that physicians in the court's jurisdiction could import contraceptive devices from abroad. In 1937, six years after the Maternal Health Association began training medical students; the American Medical Association recognized birth control as a legitimate medical service and recommended it for medical school curricula.
Continue to Providing New Services - 1940s
|
