100 Years Ago

Adverts like this were kicking against the pricks
of American patriarchy, the apparatus of law and custom
where men devised a life for all according to their own
anti-scientific self interest, where women and non-white
people were always several rungs below rich white men
on the social ladder that they called 'American freedom'.

That a century on from those times women have
advanced to becoming presidential candidates,
and still rich white men advocate to dismantle
health care for women, and echo the false science
of eugenics to appeal to voters sense of superiority,
even looking back for advances that reassure us
leaves us with finding warnings.

The above advert is from 1927. Margaret Sanger was the founder of Planned Parenthood and a birth control activist who fought to legalize birth control. This ad is from 10 years before the American Medical Association recognized birth control as an integral part of medical practice and education.