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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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simpler, although there are some women who have side effects from it and can't use it, but there are still one or two million women in the United States using it today, according to Searle. And other manufacturers are making similar contraceptive pills and I think we're in a new era in the whole history of mankind, because for the first time you've got a physiological way of preventing conception, and it is one hundred percent reliable if the pills are taken 20 days a month.

Q:

How does this circumvent the current attitude of the Roman Catholic Church, or does it?

Lasker:

It doesn't completely, but the pills are also good for other female problems; that is, they're said to be good for other female problems which don't relate to contraception. And from this the subject gets blurred. And then once women hear that there are pills and men hear that there are pills, the whole thing gets out of hand, as far as the Church is concerned. The Church, I think, is fighting a losing battle.

In 1937 I sent a small contribution to what was then called the Birth Control Federation of America. Shortly after this I was asked to be a Board Member and went on the Board sometime in '37 or '38. Mrs. Diego Suarez and Mrs. William Potter, the wife of the banker, had made an heroic effort to combine fund raising for the national office and for the New York City planned parenthood committees. There were many other enthusiastic women who campaigned for the Federation; however, very few





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