reserves question about political leaders and the and lady from gambia. we have an experience with government. i will print out positive and neglects to point out negative. the problem comes from rwanda. the president could be in tanzania. in liberia. always willing to take on irrespective of their political and economic position. you know, we have seen african leaders who are overwhelmed. they come about malaria. it is just the checklist, and by

visiting the conroe, the leaders there, health ministry, can you give him to notice malaria because that is invoking political leaders and expressing his political will their will not succeed. i would assume the same is true of hiv and tb. we spent a lot of time going to the different nations trying to build the energy and the return on investment. we just need you to distribute and come up with a plan. we cannot succeed without local and country leaders, the plan, using the people to distribute the nets.

all we can do is to give some good from a business background. it has to come locally. i think all of us need to keep calling attention. without that i have seen campaigns fall flat on their faces. >> said the debt is a great message to end on. the book is for sale of sight. we will stay here. the wine is still open. first of all, thank you for having written this book, border to west. particular, think you for green home. it has been a terrific evening. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> is there in nonfiction of your book you would like to see featured on book tv? send us an e-mail or tweet us. this weekend book tv looks at the life and legacy of dr. martin luther king jr. today at 6:00 p.m. eastern congressman and civil rights activist john lewis on walking with the wind, memoir of the movement. sunday afternoon growing up king. the many speaking styles of the rev. and the international manhunt for james earl ray. also this weekend on book tv, in her new release new york times correspondent judy cantor looks at the first couple and their attempts to balance a busy personal life with the balance of public life.

tomorrow at 11:00 every weekend. >> up next jim baker recalls the life of birth control advocate margaret sanger. a bill will propose that. this is just over an hour. >> in case you did not know we moved into this space last week. we are playing with the technical difficulty. we're glad you're all year, and i hope you all founded drink and appreciate your patience. my name is amanda. curator of the evening event series. i am delighted to see all of you here.

she's doing to of having a conversation with cristina page. the opening of that family planning and birth control clinic at 4610 voice street. she started exiting after being a nurse you're on the lower east side. she was a cohort of emma goldman, who by the way we will be disgusting -- discussing in just two weeks. it sends night stalker is not just fitting but surprisingly timely, it is fitting because they're is a good chance that she knew one or more of the immigrant woman who lived in now tenement a few doors down. a professor of history. the author of several books on american history, including systems, the lives of american suffragists, and mary todd lincoln, a biography. professor baker has done their art was not telling the story of

her newest subject in a highly compelling biography. best known as an advocate for spearheading the birth control movement, and often polarizing figure who expertly parses this unbiased account underscoring the veracity of the fighter and the necessity of the fight. tonight, as i said, professor becker will be joined by christina page. they can talk for end above 20 minutes he and maria cristina. we will get to as many questions as we have time for. indeed, of course, copies. as always, you are supporting the author as well as all the programs we offer europe the museum. if you choose to become a member of this evening, your copy is complementary.

finally without further ado please silence herself on and turn manilow coming professor gene baker. [applause] >> i want to begin with the story about margaret. her life was full of these dramatic tales, and this seems to be most appropriate tonight. on a summer evening in 1912 a century ago next summer a young nurse, i'm sure you know who that was, received a telephone call. here immediately we see the influence of new technology, which i am aware of tonight.

and urging her to come quickly to the lower east side where it cindy was hemorrhaging from a boxed abortion. so margaret left her family, taking a small black bag, the symbol that nurses had during this time and hurried to the crowds that had to and minerals. once the hemorrhage had been stopped see asks the doctor who was there what she could do to not have any more children. she was 28 years old, and she only had three children. she and her husband did not make enough money to support them. the doctor, in that in different

way of positions during this time and should be aware that most doctors oppose any kind of contraception told jake to sleep on the roof. months later she was called back further the appointment. this time, now pregnant with her fourth child, she had gone again to one of the back alley abortionists in an era that we all remember when abortion was illegal and dangerous. now she has septicemia, an infection in her vagina. in a few hours she was dead. this event as told and retold

was the transforming events and a live and the founding moment of what became one of the most successful, and i would say the most successful advocacy in american history. let me quote from her autobiography about this epiphany that she had. when i finally arrived home i looked out my window. technology. [laughter] okay. when i finally arrived, i looked out my window at the daily lives city. crowded in on me. women writhing, themselves naked

and henry -- country and wrapped in his favor to keep him from the cold. the sun came up, and through its reflection it was the dawn of a new day in my life also. i was resolved to do something to change the destiny of mothers is misery's or as fast as the sky, and i would be heard. i can't think of no more appropriate setting for a discussion than this place, this tenement museum so close to where the family actually lift. this is a museum that honored those americans who live of lower east side and whose advocate margaret singer became.

thanks to all of the tenement museum staff, and especially amanda, for making this occasion possible. thank you to all of you for coming. i do believe that there is a voucher group here. good. i used to think that adults was kind of to specific assemble, but now i know about lines, so i think gophers are better. [laughter] what i propose to do is to speak for 20 mets about my version of his life and work. and then christina page, a fellow graduate and advocate for reproductive rights, and the other, a very important book,

how the pro-choice movement saved american freedom, politics to amend the war on sex. and then we will have a conversation. and then we would look forward to your questions and comments. cristina is an expert on the recent history of abortion rights. i am going to defer all questions after her death in 1966. these are perilous times for women's reproductive rights. we see this signposts everyday. a constitutional amendment that would bestow on fertilized eggs, yes, fertilized eggs and constitutional rights. none of us should think that the defeat last week was a victory.

rather, such an amendment testifies to the degree that we have shifted from concerns to a fetus centric society where such an amendment is on the ballot and supported by the outgoing governor, haley barbour to almost ran for president. that particular amendment, if it should pass anywhere it will be on the ballot. does anybody know -- i knew i was in the right city. and, of course, we were all constant. we were all constantly aware

with the continuing erosion of abortion rights, lager waiting times, standards for clinics. nothing to do with maternal pain is ever worked on now, and even the effort of the republican controlled house are reasons dips. now, margaret is a very much a part of this retrograde movement as the brand's name for birth control and a founder of family planning clinics, she is vilified in purposeful propaganda that seeks to discredit providers of essential buffers. two weeks ago -- i guess i should apologize for even brain his name up, herman cain declared it that famous

objective was to put birth control clinics in primarily black communities to kill black babies. that is a quote : this is also ." it is planned genocide. perhaps some of you have heard about or even seen the billboards outside evidence to put up by the georgia right to life movement that reads like babies are an endangered species. ..

>> my book, margaret sanger: a life of passion is an effort to resituate sanger, to place her in the context of her times, especially, insofar, as 20th eunism -- eugensim is concerned. the story of her life how a young, uneducated nobody without money or contact, without being in the pervasive techniques of lecturing and writing, a woman who suffered from tuberculosis for much of her early life and in her later life, heart

trouble. to lead an effective campaign to make contraception legal, cheap, effective and accessible. it was none of these things when she began the summer of 1912. it was all of those things when she died in 1966. when she began, sanger faced a daunting task. she had to reorient sexual values. she had to gain acceptance for the revolutionary notion that sex and reproduction could be separa separate. anyone here wouldn't think it would be separate and that's one of her contributions to both men and women. and that women could enjoy sex

without worrying about pregnancy. in this struggle, sanger had very powerful enemies. a catholic church that made any use of use of birth control a sin. a dismissive medical profession that opposed contraception for any variety of opinion and static public opinions that held birth control as a suffrage as is once said in a letter to sanger, by the way, vulgar and obscene. she also faced the legal prohibition of the comstock law of 1873 that defined birth control as obscene and pornographic matter. and that made any publication, advertisement, mailing,

importation of devices and information about birth control punishable as a criminal felony. in acts of civil disobeadance, sanger avoided the prohibition and she was jailed and she fled the united states to avoid prosecution. so how did she create a movement and an organization that by the 1920s included prominent americans? in one way was her committed by her radical causes fostered by the political climate of this city before world war i. why did she just not ride along with radicals like emma goldman about whom you will hear in two weeks. and in the 1950s in an extraordinary choice, why did

she choose to support the little lone lab of dr. gregory pinkus who was working on proesttrin and why did she allow catherine mccormick to do so as well. and what about her personal life? two husbands, many, many, many lovers, a style of mothering that would not earn her, i believe, the centerfold in parents magazine. [laughter] >> it is these questions that i sought to answer in this biography. of course, i doubt that sanger, who believed in the occult and to some degree in spiritualism would approve of what i have

written. i believe this is a parentheses, sometimes that biographers care more about what their subjects would think about what they have written than they do their reading audience. i guess i shouldn't say that. [laughter] >> in 1953, sanger wrote, i hate all these biographies that go back and forth over your early years, dragging out this and that and that has nothing to do with your recent life. instead, as a pragmatic visionary, she believed in the future as she once wrote and i think that this is one of the important things that she said about herself, i forget the past as fast as i can because i'm making plans for the future.

to harness these topics, i needed a theme, the kind of organizes principle that biographers require and that professors encourage of their undergraduate students. you need some sort of an umbrella, conceptual framework as it were. i found mine in the several meanings of the word "passion" that seem to encapsulate her life. first, a self-sacrifice we talk of the passing of christ and we mean his sacrifice and so the word "passion" does have that sense of sacrifice. that is what sanger gave up in her long and very, very dramatic life. she surrendered time we are chirp.

she suffered from loneliness. she gave up the possibility of leisure in some of the best spots in the world with her rich second husband who complained forever that she was not home enough. but passion has refers to sexual feelings and certainly a central exponent of sanger life is her personal enjoyment of sex with many, many lovers. i'm sorry to be redundant and use the many, many but it does take her in a different framework in terms of the men that she had sexual relationships with. and so it should. and her advocacy from her own experience of female sexuality at a time when american women

were just awakening from their victorian slumbers. and finally, passion means a commitment. i think this is probably the usage, the most common usage, a zeal and a intensity towards a specific purpose and there was nothing in sanger life, not children, nor husbands, nor friends, nor lovers that was ever as important to her as her commitment to birth control, making it legal, effective, cheap and accessible. i found in the word "passion" the lever for an understanding of this long and important life. i want to read just a brief passage from the end of the introduction. this biography also seeks to go

with the personal and the political. but as authenticity. i hold no expectation that the angry, defilers of sanger will revive their infamy. nor do i believe that sanger deserves sanctification but i hope understand an american on her own terms. accordingly, this giography focuses on sanger's means of assent, from the invisibility of her birth as one of 11 poor higgins children in new york and two by her early 50s, one of the most influential women in the world.

while modern america favors those who per pessimism you'lly reinvent themselves, forgetting their earlier beings like crocodile skins, sanger was different. she kept adding various lives and talent to what became a very effective public temperament. in 1940, the a-writer wrote to his friend margaret sanger, the thing which is recognized and taught would make over the life of thousands is that you won your battle. in spite of the fact is that when you started you were not a strong woman. that you did not have the advantages of a complete or formal education. your training is an organization and you did not have an organization to back you up. but you won because you had constant consecraton and and a

desire to be of service of mankind. that is an inspiring lesson of your life. now, you see all this different paraphernalia, christina and i are going to have a brief -- are we actually going to sit on these chairs? [laughter] >> meanwhile, you're all supposed to be thinking of questions that you can ask. [applause] >> no, no. i wasn't asking for -- only questions, not applause. >> thank you, jean. well, first thank you for writing a fascinating book. i was riveted throughout it. and as somebody who worked in

the reproductive rights movement, this book couldn't come at a more perfect moment in history because, you know, you as a biographer -- you seem to specialize in rescuing misunderstood women like mary todd lincoln and the american suffragist and now margaret sanger and so i'd love for you to talk a bit more about the current efforts to rewrite history as it, you know, to her life in particular the accusations against her with her eugenic beliefs? >> i think there is a continuity in terms of criticism of sanger. not what is said about her so much, but she grew up -- when she began the birth control movement knowing that she really

would be criticized by the world and so she was at the beginning. the criticisms at the beginning when i compare them to what's going on today were similar in that they both suggest ignorance on the part of those who are making the criticisms. in the first case those who oppose sanger on the basis of her movement for birth control, most of most of them worried that birth control we're talking about promiscuity, we're not talking about men here. we're talking about women. that's an especially ignorant and foolish criticism. umbrellas don't bring rain, do they? and so --

[laughter] >> there seems to be some delay it's that protest or whatever. today, sanger is being used again with the kind of ignorant criticism that makes her into a racist. margaret sanger had her birth control in 1930 and this is years after she begin the one -- the one in new york because black leaders asked her to. and it's this kind of information that when you hear from the right, let's say they are the right, that she was a

racist is just -- it's just not true. and so indeed it was not true that birth control would lead to promiscuity. perhaps we should talk about eugenism. >> i think it's so persistent about what i call the prolie movement. >> what did you call it? >> the prolie movement. they often take what are parcels of truth and embellish it with all of these inaccurate statements, whether it's about conflating birth control with birth control with abortion in this instance taking all of the negative parts of eugenics and assigning it to her. put her in her time. draw the backdrop for us as to what eugenics and the eugenic

movement was. >> there was a cousin of darwin and he came up with the word eugenics and the idea was in an age in which biology was becoming more and more important, in which scientists and experts were beginning to control the way that public policy that if you could understand enough about the jeans, you could create better human beings. now, i believe at the very beginning that this was a progressive progressive idea that went wrong and by the time

sanger gets involved in eugenics, she's going to use expertise of these scientists. she's going to put them on the board of her american birth control league. she's going to use them in some ways legitimatize what needs legitimatizing. the eugenics movement had by the 1920s and the 1930s and by the way, after the holocaust, we still have certain remnants of the eugenics movement but by that time eugenics was in the air everywhere most americans believed in eugenics. it was a question of what that exactly meant. now, for sanger, what this meant was a kind of feminist eugenics.

if you had birth control and if all women could use it, it was cheap, it was available we would have better babies. mother could pace their children. by the way, sanger is a great believer in spacing children and not having them too close together. mothers could pay close to their children. that was her version of eugenics at the beginning. perhaps you remember the 1927 supreme court court. raise your hand. i'm too attuned to the classroom, always asking people to raise their hands. it involved a young woman from the virginia feebleminded and

this jace applied to all kinds of different kinds of differences that americans might have. in any case, the case -- virginia bell was involuntarily sterilized and the case got to the supreme court and the supreme court ruled 8-1 that involuntarily sterilization was okay. the grounds were and i think some of you will find this abhorrent as all of us do in 2011 oliver wendell holmes who wrote the majority decision said that it was just like immunization. that if immunization could be

coercive, then it was okay to have a voluntarily sterilization and at the end of this very famous decision of this, oliver wendell holmes the great civil libertarian that he was, he wrote three generations of idiots is enough. so i tell that story to give you the context in which sanger was working. she turned to eugenists she wanted them for legitimatization and also because she herself believed that there was something to be said for this progressive idea that then went badly wrong, of course, in the holocaust. but remember -- even after world war ii, five states continued to

use involuntary sterilization on the mentally ill and on some of the female minded. in the day there were very peculiar statutes in some states that suggest to me that the possibility of involuntarily sterilization which is the farrout point of eugenics and the reason we all think it was a terrible thing. >> so margaret came from a large irish family. her mother was a practicing catholic and her father rebuked the church. >> correct >> her mother delivered 11 children in 22 years and suffered 8 marriages and she died early.

and sanger saw the ravages of uncontrolled fertility on their families and women, can you detail sanger's family life and her early career and how it inspired her? >> >> margaret sanger was a rebel from the beginning. she came to new york at one point. the name of her first little newspaper was the woman rebel. somewhere and some point in corning, she became a rebel. it's always been difficult for me to figure out why some people are activists and spend their lives trying to to make the world better and others don't. sanger had these brothers and sisters and none of them were involved in any kind of

political work. >> one was a coach at penn state. >> don't go there. don't go there. [laughter] >> but i think -- there's work by sociologist frank killaway says that your birth order determines what and how you are. i'm the youngest of seven so i've never liked what he said about the youngest. [laughter] >> but often middle children are the ones who feel comfortable able to challenge mother and father. in jarrening's case, i think it's her relationship with her father which is really an iconoclast. her father -- he's called marble higgins because there's so many

higgins in corning during this period that he fights constantly with the catholic church. he asks robert engersol to come and give a talk in corning, which is a heavily catholic community. he won't let his wife go to church. his children are only baptized years after they are born. and margaret for some reason maybe the middle placement of her birth is greatly attracted so this idea of being her father's daughter. and so she grows up very aware of class differences. how many of you been to corning. so you know the geography. the question is is not who lives on which side of the street, of the tracks.

it's the question who lives at the bottom of this hill. can i call it a mountain? >> yes. >> and the higgins were at the bottom. and margaret became very aware of the better life the families like the houtons, catherine hepburn becomes one of her good friends and allies but in her autobiography margaret writes -- sanger writes over and over again about how walking by the houses and there were only two or three children. and then when she goes to the bottom of the mountain, the hill, there are the higgins family and all 11 of them. clearly, it was not just the ones from the botched abortions that led margaret sanger to be an advocate for birth control,

it was also something in the dynamic of that family. >> one of the fascinating parts of the book was your account of sanger's sex life and she does make the women in "sex and the city" seem pursuedish. [laughter] >> and she was still court by younger men into her 70s. and not only did she enjoy a vibrant sex life but she had an intoxicating effect on the men she was involved with. she was a sexologist and her prowess given this expertise along with her freedom from the sexual repression of her time, do you think this inspired their unusual devotion? >> i can't speak to that.

[laughter] >> i do know reading their letters that totally intoxicated. we're talking about men like h.g. wells and havalock ellis. these are not a bunch of little corning boyfriends that she's seducing. the thing about cesarean physically is that she is small. she's a tiny woman. she's not beautiful. she has the higgins nose, which evidently has a bump. >> doesn't wear a girdle. >> doesn't wear a girdle. doesn't have to sometimes but her friends talk about that necessity. but she has the something. and i guess in the cliche you call it sex appeal.

but she has an ability to be inquisitive, she's sexually practiced to a generation of men who didn't often meet women like margaret sanger. and so this combination -- and this desire of hers -- because she was curious and practice makes perfect, doesn't it, to continue to have sexual affairs is one of the dominating things about her life. and it's one of the things that she truly enjoyed. this is a woman who loved sex. it was her business. so giver from that point of view is a -- the wonderful thing

about sanger's life was that no one ever knew about all of sanger's boyfriends. and when one of the latter ones hopson pitland who also was from pennsylvania state who was an artist and he refused to travel with her people will talk about us and margaret sanger said, i have been doing this for years. nobody talks about my personal life. and this is more, i think, a social comment. we didn't talk or know about jack kennedy's sex life, did we? so only recently have we come as americans to be intensely fascinating with the sex lives of people. >> at the same time, she was very conscious not being a statement, her sex life. that she wanted to keep it

secret. she worried that it would affect, you know, the movement. so in some ways her sexual cravings were not just experimental, furthering her expertise but something that she, you know, kept -- and so that brings me to a question there. i mean, how does -- what relationships do you think heavier sex life has on her professional life? >> oh, i think a lot. it's in a sense validates it. remember, sanger is the -- i can't be -- kinsey, who is it that writes about sex. >> in johnson. >> master -- yeah, she's that for her -- for her generation. >> and she must have had a very form of birth control with all of these escapades, right? and what was her form of birth control which she -- she never

endorsed any one form at the time. >> that's right. >> her, we think, that she used the diaphragm. and there's some students of margaret sanger who argued that she stuck to that too long. that she should have moved away. the problem with the diaphragm all the women in the room know no doubt and men as well in 2011 that someone has to measure you. and it's not something that you can go off to india and china and say use a diaphragm and use this. it's something that needs a physician. now, the criticism of sanger has always been that she medicalized birth control. and so i would now like to turn the tables and ask you,

christina, if you think that the fact that the birth control movement as it emerged from margaret sanger's work and as it included doctors has been a good or bad thing. shouldn't westbound able to the local pharmacy with our prescription and buy the pill? >> and we have that option with emergency contraception. but having read your book i know that she didn't have a choice. >> oh, for sure. >> she did not have a choice. so, you know, you work with the means she had, you know, pregnancy and prevention of pregnancy is a medical -- is a primary care event. i think there's the arguments that if we did make it over-the-counter, well, then it would be less affordable for any

women who don't have health insurance so right now we see the same battles she fought with trying to get federal funding for contraception. i mean, what you were saying before about, you know -- i mean, it's amazing to hear what's happening in the national stage and discussions about family planning and birth control. santorum who channels anthony comstock regularly -- i don't even know -- he's certainly not in the forefront of this presidential campaign -- >> oh, but they change, they go up, they go down. >> one of his platforms is to repeal all federal funding for contraception and he explained it was because contraception is a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. >> back to the pan.

>> we're trying to get coverage and so for me i think it has to be viewed as primary care and as a result, you know, make it as affordable as possible. >> i think we're probably running out of our time. but i have -- i'm going to get to the last question to you. [laughter] >> i want to know why it is that sanger was the lone star. she became the brand name of the birth control movement. i don't see anyone after her that we can refer to. it's interesting because some important reforms don't have one. the gay rights roosevelt has never had a single person or a group of people. >> right.

>> but in terms of civil rights movement of the '60s and the '70s we have names and perhaps a lesser known of americans but sanger stands for birth control in a remarkable way. why is it that we don't have anyone? >> i think it's a good thing. i don't think the days of political icons exist anymore. i think, you know, the way in which communications happens and activistism happens and it's much more diffused. one of the wonderful things, i think, having her was that she was able to absorb the personal attacks. that it was about her and, you know, and she could push forward in this really heroic way; whereas, organizations aren't as aggil and they're risk-averse at the end of your book you talk

about your frustration with the bureaucracy. how she's demoted into this position of no authority within the organizations that she created and now she -- i mean, she's amazing in her survival skills as a leader because she just -- when she sees a barrier domestically she moves her movement internationally and she owns the international family planning movement. and so, you know, i think it is true the gloria steinems and the martin luther kings -- the '60s might have been the last generation as we're seeing with occupy wall street that there's not one leader who has emerged and that it's a populist movement. i think that's the times. >> uh-huh. i think we should now turn to our long-suffering audience. i have one joke to tell before you get your questions. i did a book on the stevenson

family. there's a lot of witticism of adlai stevenson who was a really funny guy and when it's night and you're talking to a group and you come to the end of what you're going to see, say, finally, to give them some hope. [laughter] >> so get your hands up. i saw some hands, yes. [laughter] >> >> two points, first of all, i'm so grateful for you writing this book 'cause i was at a screening of a documentary of margaret sanger in the past six months. i'm not sure if you're aware of it. >> huh-uh. >> but to use the word situater today was a very important thing and it was a film that emphasized the eugenics in a very negative light and i was

very upset about it. my question to you is, her relationship to ethel. i would really like to know if you could correct this, if i'm wrong from the research that i've done. but when it came to choosing who was going to really stand up in this movement and ethel was involved in a discussion with this and she did take the position of going to blackburn island. she was sent there after she went on a hunger strike. >> that's correct >> can you tell me what happened as a result of that in their relationship? >> let me go back that the relationship between the two sisters was somewhat barbed. ethel had always been a supporter. was at the clinic and was arrested. ethel complained that margaret was paying too much attention to

the rich people and trying to raise money. margaret's answer was pragmatic. how am i going to have a movement? how am i going to be able to afford the birth control review, the magazine, from the magazine if i don't get deep pockets. the two sisters are somewhat estranged. and ethel is tried first and that makes all the difference. at the time there were already hunger strikes that were going on used by alice paul in washington. so these women knew about hunger strikes and ethel did undergo -- i don't know how many days it was. nearly died. years later and this is the bad part of the story, sometimes our heroes lead messy lives.

years later someone is going to make a film and so margaret goes to ethel and says, i want you to give me the right to be the hunger striker. and ethel by this time really didn't care. she said you can do this but she decides she will not be margaret sanger and so the movie never done. it's a very duplicitous move by sanger and there are other things like that, that she certainly did during her lifetim lifetime. >> i just wanted to clarify a question -- a clarification about eugenics. did she support involuntarily sterilization?

>> yes, yes, she did, not for groups. and this is a distortion that's going on today. never, never for groups. never for classes. but for individuals who were insane but she had a caveat, and she never believed in surgical castration because -- and this fits right into her philosophy, it would destroy the sexual feelings of the person. so with those kinds of caveats, she did briefly support involuntary sterilization. >> but it was brief? >> brief, yes. >> i don't know if she ever retracted it. it just disappears. sanger is the kind of person who has trouble specifically

admitting that she's wrong on positions. the point, though, simply disappear from the rhetoric and the writing and that's what happened with involuntary sterilization. she hated, of course, the holocaust. she raged against hitler in what he was doing and so we hear almost nothing about sterilization from sanger after world war ii. >> my second question, i read somewhere that sanger had recommended for poor women to use rancid butter for spermacide is that true. >> i don't want to be crude, but the things women were putting up in their vaginas to prevent pregnancy are truly shocking. i would criticize sanger not so much for what is this rancid butter but for lisole which

is -- but that was the spermacide of the day. these people are working in a paradigm of spermacide and diaphragms until sanger figures out because she is in touch with study that she's gotten credit for this support of gregory pinkus who is a defrocked pervert biologist who had moved his lab out to worcester. is there a hand in there? >> i just wonder what your

comment was on a article i read in the "new york times" section in which they are now blaming the pill for prostate cancer. >> i think you can talk more about -- the pill has been blamed and correctly at the beginning for the possibility of blood clots. at the beginning there was too much estrogen in the pill so that that diminished. then after hearings in washington there's talk that the pill does this, it does that. and one of the issues is i don't think -- i don't think there's enough randomized studies to be able to prove some of the points that are made about the pill. the pill does good things -- i

mean, besides prevent pregnancy and it does bad things and i can't speak -- >> do you think it's prostate cancer? >> the men shouldn't be taking the pill. [laughter] >> as if there are offspring? >> they had a survey with prostate cancer and that -- [inaudible] >> there's a study that says that the pill has been -- they've been taking a -- >> there are some correlations with breast cancer. and the recent studies just came out that a whopping 42% of women are taking the pill for noncontraceptive reasons, to control heavy periods there's a lot of other beneficial effects. but the pill and while margaret

sanger really is responsible almost singularly for the revelation that took place in really short period of time after the introduction of the pill that we, you know, now a laundry list of rights that we would never give up. but the pill is a flawed method. and margaret sanger always believed if she would create a perfect method that she find, you know -- there would nobody need for abortion. you know, she didn't live at a time where abortion was league hell she never really inserted herself with the discussion that began at the end of her life. but, yeah, it's a difficult -- it's a difficult method. there are more effective methods. and i think as advocates we don't do -- we need to do a better job of promoting, you know, and educate being how different the efficacy is for

various methods. [inaudible] >> i couldn't hear. >> i think it was a recommendation on a site to find out more information about eugenics. >> i think it's time for one more question. >> let me just -- more about eugenics. it is absolutely true that the germans took the playbook from the americans and hitler was using some of the more extreme statements by eugenists in the united states with when he began to exterminate populations in germany. so the united states practically was one of the leaders in the

eugenics movement. >> yes. >> new york city is about institutes of sex education in middle schools and high schools and the same arguments against sex education, all the ones you're talking about for against birth control, namely to promote promiscuity, was she involved in the sex education movement? >> oh, absolutely, yeah. several of her books -- i'm glad you asked that question. we forget sanger the writer. she publishes two books in the early 20s and they sell together 500,000 copies.

after that she publishes two manuals, happiness in marriage. [laughter] >> "ladies home journal." [laughter] >> and a really interesting book of letters that women have written her motherhood in bondage. that's the 20s but earlier she had written what every girl should know. this is a woman before the sex educators who really was trying to promote the idea of sex education. it's part of her entire package. if women know about sexuality and they have sex education, they're going to have better families. and then the last -- yeah.

>> i'm from a irish catholic culture and i went to parochial schools and i can remember back 40 years ago when a friend came to visit, a friend who had already had three children came to visit me when i had my first child and she said i hope the church changes their mind about birth control and i can remember saying to her, eleanor, don't wait. and to this day i think they haven't. i have since -- the people who are against abortion or against any kind of birth control who talk about the babies and the life movement, but i have a sense it's really more about not letting women get so under control is my opinion. >> oh, yeah. >> right. >> i'd be interested to hear what you say. >> you know, certainly all of

the campaigns that are going on now to roll back reproductive rights by the antiabortion movement -- i think it's wrongly named because, you know, all of their campaigns include efforts to roll back access to family planning. and what we know is that it really is the modern prochoice movement that's done more to realize all of the what the public understands to be pro-life goals. we live in a country where, you know -- the countries on the earth with the lowest abortion rates are the ones who adopted pro-choice policies and that includes comprehensive -- that includes contraception and the ones with the highest abortion rates in the world are the ones that have accepted our pro-life movement platform, no sex ed, no contraception, no abortion. and the catholic church, you know -- i mean, right now the bishops have really -- are really gearing up aggressively to try to remove contraceptive

coverage from the health care reform. what i see we have a pro-life public that is very supportive of contraception yet we don't have one pro-life organization in the united states that supports contraception. that's scandalous and we need to do a better job of educating the public about what works and, you know -- [inaudibl >> i looked at the children's defense fund the premier child advocacy organization in the united states and i took their rankings of the best and worst legislators for children and who are consistently voting against children's rights and health

insurance benefits for children and their parents unemployment benefits, the very things -- the kitchen table with an unplanned pregnancy matter and what i found was comparing it to the voting record that of the 116 worse legislators for children, 100% were pro-life. conversely, 95% of the best legislators for children were pro-choice. and so when the rubber hits the road on these things, you know, this is a very ironic conversation we're having, you know, political ly. >> thank you. mra[applause] >> this event was hosted by the tentment association for more

visit tenniment.org. >> there was a memorandum saying we need a trillion euros for the energy internet now for the next five years, why? countries put in feed-in tariffs. you raise the electricity bill for consumers so slight you don't notice it on the bill but the funds you collect are then used so early adopters who want to put wind or photovoltaic or geothermal heat in can do that and then get premium for sending their energy back to the grid. they get more money than the normal electricity. so we put in these feed-in tariffs across europe. and in germany especially created hundreds of thousands of jobs overnight. but what's happening now is everyone is trying to feed in their green electricity to the grid. the grid can't accept the electricity easily because the grid is 60 years old, thermomechanical, unit directional.

it's leaking 20% of the electricity just across the transmission line, it's disgrace. but then we realize we have another problem with feed-in tariffs, some of our regions have become so successful that they're 20, 30, 40% green electricity. at least some that are 70% electricity. so what's happening is that because there's no hydrogen storage in, we're losing 3 out of 4 kilowatts. in other words, the wind is blowing at night. we need it during the day. we lose the electricity. so now we realize we have to ratchet up pillar 3. then we realize we weren't incentivizing pillar 2 for the little guys, are the buildings. the big infrastructure, the big companies they were getting their -- their facilities transformed into power plants but what about a homeowner or a small business? how do they afford 25,000 euros to put a photovoltaic power plant on their roof? well, now we've gotten to that.

the banks have come together in germany and italy and listen to this. if you ever spent time in italy you know it's pretty bureaucratic, right? the banks had come together and fewer a homeowner you sign a little loan paper and you get a green low with a low discount rate, 60 days later, you have a 25,000 europhotovoltaic roots they can check your electricity bill and they can tell how much electricity you will save over the period of time of the loan and they know you're going to pay back so it's called pay as you save. why can't we do this? and then we realize that the other four pillars are not put in place in this infrastructure the plug-in transport will die on the vine, looks like vehicles and fuel cell vehicles because they won't be able to plug in and create green electricity for the future. this five pillars is a mega technology. it's an infrastructure, a

nervous system for a new era. the reason we can do this now is something called grid i.t. you know, for 30 years, government leaders are saying, mr. rifkin, come on, you're trying to tell us we're going to run the world on solar roofs and garbage mills, get serious. they're nice. the kids like them. they're benign but they're soft energy. you can't run a robust global economy like we have on windmills and soda and garbage. we can't couldn't answer this question and now we can. we brought it to silicon valley when a couple of researchers were trying to figure out how to monitor radio waves in the universe. they wanted to see if there's any intelligent-caring life out there which is kind of strange spending all that time when we're killing off the intelligent-caring life here. [laughter] >> and what they realized even centralized super computers couldn't monitor the entire universe so they came up with the idea of creating software to connect thousands