>> what is this about? >> it is about converting deists and jewish to christianity. a lot of people know he had an interest in religion and that is sort of the reason why he got interested in science and trying to explain the world around us. another buckley had owned by someone famous. this we found just on the shelf in the small room here. just on its own and it was once owned by a former president. now, we did photocopy this book plate and said it to the curator of the roosevelt collection at harvard and asked them to verify it and he said yes, that is his. of course the book was printed several years before roosevelt was born. the curator there is that it might have belonged to his father who was also named

theodore roosevelt and roman numeral numeral three indicates it might have belonged to his son. he was also named theodore roosevelt. either way it does belong to the family. one of the first things we asked ourselves is does this sound like it look that roosevelt would own? and it is a book about hunting and fishing, and it is called sporting themes and country characters. it is all about outdoor life so yes, he probably did own it at one time. >> the one of the things that i find most interesting is when people who used to own the material names are left notes in the book. you get fascinating stories about the people. we have one book on, is there life after death basically is the topic, and it was owned by a woman who lives here in town. she had written rant take notes

all through the book, desperately hoping, apparently from her knows she had lost a child and she was hoping desperately that she would be able to see her child once again and that her child was existing somewhere. it was just heartbreaking reading her notes. you get a little glimpse of what life was like. we looked her up in the city directory across the hall in the archives and apparently she was a widow so apparently this was all she had of her family and she had lost him. another kind of amusing thing that i found in some of the books from the 1800's, there was a child's drawing of a beautiful lady who had a sweet face and the style of address was from the 1830s. then when he flipped to the back of the book there was a mean looking lady who had an ugly face and dark clothes. you kind of got the idea who was the child's favorite and who was it and he just wonder what the

story was behind that. but to me that is probably the most fascinating thing about working with older material. where has it been and what have they done with them? >> for more information on shreveport weekend on booktv, visit c-span.org/local content. up next on booktv, jean baker recounts this life of margaret sanger who became a proponent of educating women on big concepts of contraception after watching a woman dais self-induced abortion in 1912. this is just over an hour.

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and then this era as we all remember when abortion was illegal and dangerous. now she has septicemia, as staff a cockeyed infection, and in a few hours she was dead. this event was told and retold by margaret sanger was the transforming of that inner life. and the founding moment of what became one of the most successful and indeed after writing this biography i would say the most successful advocacy in american history. that may quote from her autobiography about this epiphany that she had. when i finally arrived home, i looked out my window on the

dimly -- c., technology really does -- [laughter] okay. when i finally arrived home, i looked out my window of the dimly lighted city. it's panes, its grief crowded in on me. women's writing in trivial to bring forth little babies, themselves make it and hungry and wrapped in newspapers to keep them from the cold and their coffins. the sun came up up and through its reflection over the house tops, it was the dawn of a new day in my life also. i was resolved to do something to change the destiny of mothers, whose miseries were as fast as this guide, and i would be heard, i would be heard. i can think of no more

appropriate setting for a discussion of margaret sanger to be heard then this place, this tenement museum so close to where the family actually lived, and where sanger worked. this is a museum that honors those americans who lived on the lower east side and whose advocate margaret sanger, became. so thanks to all of the tenement museum staff and especially amanda, for making this occasion possible, and thanks to all of you for coming. i do believe that there is a group here. say hooray, good. [applause] i used to think that a gopher was too specific an athletic symbol now i'd know about lions,

so i think gophers are better. [laughter] what i propose to do is to speak for 20 minutes about my version of sanger's life and work and then christina page, a fellow goucher graduate and an advocate for reproductive rights, and the author of the very important book, how the pro-choice movement saved america, freedom, politics and the war on sex. and then, we will have a conversation about sanger and then we both look forward to your questions and comments. christina is an expert on the recent history of abortion rights, so i'm going to do for all questions after margaret sanger's death in 1966.

these are perilous times for women's reproductive rights. we see the sign posts every day. a constitutional amendment in mississippi on fertilized eggs, yes, fertilized eggs, personhood and constitutional rights. and none of us should think that its defeat last week was a victory. rather, such an amendment testifies to the degree that we have shifted from concerned for pregnant women to a fetus centric society where such an amendment is on the ballot and supported by the state's outgoing governor haley barbour, who almost ran for president. that particular amendment, if it should pass anywhere, and will

be on the ballot in colorado and other states, reminds me of margaret atwood's -- does anybody know? i knew i was in the right city. [laughter] and of course we were all constantly aware with the continuing erosion of abortion rights, longer waiting times, new standards for clinics, insistent on fetal pain, nothing to do with maternal pain is ever remarked down now and now even the efforts of the republican-controlled house of representatives to d. fund planned parenthood. now, margaret sanger is very much a part of this richer grade movement. as the brand-name for birth

control and the founder of family planning clinic's, she is vilified and purposeful propaganda that seeks to discredit providers of essential health services. two weeks ago, i guess i should apologize for even bringing that name up. herman cain declared that sanger's object is was to put birth-control clinics and primarily lack communities to kill black davies. that is a quote and this is also a quote. it is planned genocide. perhaps some of you will have heard about or even seen the billboards outside of atlanta put out by the georgia right to life movement that reads, black babies are an endangered species.

of course they are intended to scare away the lack women. it is a pernicious attempt of the antiabortion movement. now there is a link and this is an connection to margaret sanger on some of the their right to life web sites to margaret sanger, who is portrayed there as a racist and eugenicist, who taught the nazis about sterilization. my book, "margaret sanger" a life of passion, is an effort to re-situated sanger, to place her in the context of her times, especially insofar as 20th century genesis him is concerned. the great story of her life it seems to me is how a young,

uneducated nobody without money or contacts, without training in the persuasive techniques of lecturing and writing, a woman who suffered from tuberculosis for much of her early life, and in her later life heart trouble and gallbladder disease. how did this woman become the leader of an effective campaign to make contraception legal, cheap, effect did, and accessible. it was none of these things. when she began that summer in 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 separate. anyone here think that it wouldn't be separate, and that by the way is one of her contributions to both men and women. and women could enjoy sex without worrying about urgency. in this struggle sanger had airy powerful enemies. a catholic church that named annie usip earth control a sin. a dismissive medical profession that opposed contraception for a variety of reasons and static public opinion that helped birth control as the suffrage leader perry cat once said in a letter to sanger by the way, boger and

obscene. she also faced the legal prohibition of the comstock law of 1873 that defined earth control as an obscene and pornographic matter. and any publication, advertisement, importation of devices and information about earth control punishable as a criminal felony. in acts of civil disobedience, sanger violated this prescription and she fled the united states to avoid prosecution. so, how did she create a movement, in an organization that i the 1920s included prominent americans? in what ways was her commitment to radical causes fostered by

the cultural and political climate of the city before world war i? why did she just not right along with radicals like emma goldman, who you will hear in two weeks, and in the 1950's is an extraordinary choice. why did she choose to support they little bone lab of dr. gregory pincus who was working on progesterone, and why did she encourage her rich friends catherine mccormack, to do so as well? and what of her personal life, two husbands, many many many lovers, a style of mothering that would not earn her i

believe the centerfold and parents magazine. [laughter] it is these questions that i sought to answer in this biography. of course i doubt that sanger, who believed in deal called -- o. cold and to some degree in spiritualism, what approve of what i have written. i believe this is sometimes biographers care more about what their subjects would think about what they have written then 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 that passed because i am making plans for the future. to harness these topics, i needed a theme of the kind of organizing principle that biographers require and that a professor of their undergraduate students. you need some sort of an umbrella. a conceptual framework as it were. i found mine in the several meanings of the word passion that seemed to encapsulate her life.

first, a self-sacrifice. we talked on the passion of christ and we mean his sacrifice, and so the word passion does have that sense of sacrifice. that is what sanger gave up during her long and very very dramatic life. she surrender time with her children. she suffered from loneliness. she gave up the possibility of leisure in some of the best watering spots in the world, with her rich second husband, who complained forever there she was not home enough. but passion also refers, as we know, too sexual feelings and certainly a sense -- central component of sanger's life is her personal enjoyment of sex with many many lovers.

it seems redundant to use many, many but it does take her into a different framework in terms of the number of men that she had sexual relationships with. and her advocacy or her own experience of female sexuality at a time when american women were just awakening from their victorian humors. and finally, passion means a commitment. i think this is probably the usage, the most common usage, a zeal acl and intensity towards a specific herb is. and there was nothing in sanger's life, not children, a husband 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. and i want to read just a brief passage from the end of the introduction. this biography also seeks to -- the personal with the political, not as happy out of three but its authenticity. i hold no ex-patient to -- expectation that the angry defilers of sanger will revise their information nor do i believe that sanger deserve sanctification, but i do hope that a new generation of americans will consider the life of an important american from her perspective and on her terms. accordingly, this biography

focuses on sanger's means of ascent from the invisibility of her birth as one of 11 poor children in new york too, by hurley fifties, one of the most intellectual women in the world. while modern americans savor those who perpetually reinvent themselves, shedding their earlier beings like crocodile skins, sanger was different. she kept adding various lives and talents to what became a very effective public temperament. in 1940, the writer garth kate, wrote to his friend margaret sanger, the thing which is recognized and taught was made over the life of thousands is what you wonder about.

in spite of the fact you were not a strong woman that you did not have the advantages of a complete or formal education or training as a speaker and that you did not have an organization to back you up, but you want, because you had consecration, devotion, compassion and a ceaseless desire to be of the greatest service to mankind. that is the inspiring lesson of your life. now, you see a all this different kind of paraphernalia. christine and i are going to have a reef -- regarding actually going to sit on these chairs? it doesn't matter. you are all supposed to be thinking of questions that you are going to ask. [applause] no, no.

i wasn't asking -- only questions. not up laws. >> thank you jean. first thank you for writing a fascinating book. i was riveted throughout it and as somebody who works in the reproductive rights movement, this book couldn't come at a more perfect moment in history because usa biographer, you seem to specialize in rescuing misunderstood women like mary todd lincoln and the american suffragist and now margaret sanger, and so i would love for you to talk a bit more about the current effort to rewrite history as you know it relates to her life in particular, the accusations against her, with

her eugenics. >> i think there is a continuity in terms of the criticism of sanger, not what is said about her so much, but she grew up, when she began to birth 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 is going on today, were similar in that they loath suggest -- on the part of those who are made in the criticisms. in the first case, those who oppose sanger on the basis of her movement for birth control, most of them were arguing that birth control would lead to

promiscuity and of course we are not talking about men here. we are talking about women and that is especially ignorant and foolish kind of criticism. umbrellas don't ring rain, today? and so -- [laughter] thanks. it seems to be some delay tonight. ..

>> i think so. i think because it is so persistent it's such a viral campaign and what i call the pro-life movement. >> and i think that they often will with the parcels of truth

and embellish it with all of these inaccurate statements whether it's completing birth control and abortion and in this instance taking the negative parts of you joining and assigning it to her and so, you know, put her in her time, you know, draw the backdrop to us as to what the he eugenicist movement was. >> he was a cousin of darwin in he came up with the word genics, genes, [speaking in native tongue] and, a greek word meaning good. in the aged was becoming more and more important and which scientists and experts were beginning to control the way that the public policies that if

you can understand enough about the jeans, you could create better human beings. i believe that the very beginning that this was a progressive idea that went wrong , and by the time that sanger gets involved with eugenics, she's going to use the expertise of the scientists. she's going to put them on the board of her american birth control week. she's going to use them to in some ways legitimize what means legitimizing. the eugenics movement if by the 1920's and the 1930's eugenics

was in the air everywhere. most people believe in the question of what to that exactly meant. fer singer what this meant was a kind of feminist eugenics. if you have birth control and if all women could use it, it was cheap, it was available we would have better babies. mothers could children, and by the way, a great believer in spacing children and not having them to close. mothers could pay more attention to their children. it was her version of eugenics at the beginning.

perhaps you remember the beginning of the 1927 supreme court case. i'm always attuned to the classroom asking people to raise their hand. it involves a young woman from the virginia evil minded -- people minded and that is a word this generation used often and applied to all kinds of different kinds of differences that americans might have. in any case, the case -- virginia belle was involuntarily sterilized, and the case got to the supreme court and the supreme court ruled 8-1 that

involuntary 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 decisions said that was just like immunization. that immunization could be coerced then there was okay to have a voluntary sterilization and at the end of this very famous decision of his. he wrote degenerations of idiots is enough. so i tell you the story to give you the context in which singer was working. she turned to eugenicists because she wanted them for the

were genetics and also she herself believed that there was something to be said for this progressive idea that went badly wrong of course of 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 feeble mind it and today there are very peculiar statutes in some states that suggests to me the possibility of involuntary sterilization which is the far out point is eugenics and the reason that we all think this was a terrible thing.

>> her mother was a practicing catholic, her father would be in the church. her mother delivered 11 children in 22 years and suffered eight miscarriages and died at age 46 when and her father died when he was into his 80s. ephemeris witness firsthand the ravages of the uncontrolled fertility on the lives of women and their families can you discuss in more detail her 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 at 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 make the world a better and others don't. the singer had brothers and sisters and one of them are involved in a any kind of political work as a coach in penn state. >> but i think there is work by a sociologist that suggests that your birth order determines what call in who you are so i liked what you said about the youngest. but often little children are

the ones who feel comfortable and able to challenge mother and father. now, in sanger's caisse i think it's her relationship with her father who is really an iconoclast. her father is called morrill higgins because there are so many in corning new york during this period he cites constantly with the catholic church and asks robert to come and give a talk and corning which is the heavily catholic community. she won't let his wife go to church. his children are only baptized years after they are born, and margaret for some reason may be the middle placement of her

birth is greatly attracted to this idea of being her father's daughter as she grows up very aware of the class differences. how many of you have been to corning? then you know the geology. the geology and corning isn't a question of who lives on which side of the street it's who lives at the bottom of the hill. can i call the amount him? and the higgins were at the bottom and margaret became very aware of the better life that families like the with hoaten -- leader kathryn heparin becomes one of her friends but in an autobiography, margaret rights over and over again about how walking by the house's there were two or three children and

then goes to the bottom of the mountain at the hill there are the higgins family and all 11 of them clearly it was not just the deaths of a botched abortion that led margaret sanger to be an advocate for birth control. it was also something in the danjac of that family. >> one of the us senate and prez is your accounting of the text life. and early she does make the women of sex and the city seem prudish. islamic i lost track of how many she had and she was still quarter by younger men into her seventies. love only did she not enjoy the sex life but she had an

intoxicating effect on the men she was involved with. what i wondered is her sexual know-how. she was a sexologist and her polis given this expertise along with her freedom from the sexual repression of her time to think this inspired their unusual devotion? [laughter] >> i can't speak for that. i do know reading their letters that they were totally intoxicated, and we are talking about man like ag wells. these are not a bunch of little corning boyfriends that she is seducing. the thing about singer is that she is small. she is a tiny woman. she's not beautiful.

she has the higgins knows which evidently she doesn't wear a girdle, she doesn't have to although perhaps she and her friends leader joke about that necessity, but she has something and i guess in the clich you call what sex appeal, but she has an ability to interest men, she's inquisitive, she's curious, she's sexually practiced to a generation of men who didn't often meet women who like margaret sanger and so 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, margaret sanger from that point of view is so wonderful thing about sanger's life was no one ever knew about all loved sanger's boyte friends, and when one of the latter ones who also is from pennsylvania state and was an artist, she refused to travel with her because he said people will talk about us and margaret sanger says 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, so only recently have we come as americans to be intensely fascinated with the sex lives -- >> at the time she has been very conscious of it not being in a statement, her sex life, but she wanted to keep it secret. she was worried that it would affect the movement. so in some ways her sexual cravings or not just experimental but furthering her expertise, something that she kept. and that brings me to the question there. i mean, how does -- what relationship do you think her sex life had on her professional life? >> i think a lot. in a sense it validates it. and remember, sanger is the --

kinsey, who is it that writes about sex? and johnson. >> she is that for her generation. >> and she must have had a good former birth control because with all these escapades' what was her form of birth control which she never endorsed any one of format the time. >> her -- we think that she used the diaphragm, and there's some students of margaret sanger who argue that she stuck to that too long, that she should have moved away. the problem with the diaphragm is all of the women and the men as well in 2011 is that someone has to measure you and you can't

go off to india or china and say here is the diaphragm, use this. it's something that needs a physician. the criticism sanger has always been that she medicalize birth control. and so i would now like to turn the table and ask you, cristina, if you think that the fact that the birth control movement as it emerged from margaret sanger's work and as it included the doctors has been a good or bad thing shouldn't we be able to go to the local pharmacy to buy the phill? >> we had that option of emergency contraception. but having read your book i know that she didn't have a choice.

she didn't have a choice and so, you know, she worked with in what meanings' she had. you know, pregnancy and prevention of pregnancy is medical, his primary care. i think that there's also the argument that if we did make it over-the-counter then it would be less affordable for many ways. islamic those who don't have health insurance, and, you know, so right now we see the same battles that she fought with trying to get federal funding for contraception. what you were saying before about -- it's amazing to hear what's happening in the national stage and the discussions about family planning and birth control. rick santorum who channels regularly said that he pledges i don't even know, he's certainly not in the forefront of the

presidential campaign. one of his platforms is to repeal all federal funding for contraception and he explained that it was because contraception is a license. did you think in a sexual realm of the discounter to how things are supposed to be? so right now we are trying to get the coverage, and so for me i think that it has to be viewed as primary-care, and as a result make it as affordable as possible. >> i think we are probably running out of time, but i am going to get to the last question. [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 could refer to. it's interesting because some important reforms don't have one. the gay rights movement has never had a single person or group of people, but in terms of civil rights movement in the 60's and 70's we have a few lesser known americans, but sanger stands for birth control in the remarkable way. why is it that we don't have any women? >> i don't think the days of the political icons access to any more. i think it's the way in which communications happen and activism have vince.

but you know, one of the wonderful things about having her is that she was able to absorb the personal attacks that it was about her and she could push forward in this really heroic way whereas organizations are not as agile and they are risk adverse. estimate in the end of your book you talk about her frustration with the bureaucracy, house she's demoted into this position of no authority within the organizations that she created and how she -- she is amazing in her survival skills as a leader because she just -- when she sees a barrier domestically when she moves internationally and moves the family-planning movement. and so, you know, i think it is true. i think that the gloria steinem and martin luther king in the

60's might have been the last generation as we are seeing with occupy wall street but there isn't one leader that those e terrorist de medish as a populist movement. >> i think we should now turn to our long-suffering audience. >> i have one joke to tell before we get to the question. i did a book on the stevenson's family and there is a lot of room adamle stevenson in the second movement. he always said when it's night and you are talking to a group and you come to the end of what you are going to say, say finally to give them some hope. [laughter] so here, get your hands up, i saw some hands.

>> first all i am so grateful for you writing this book because i was at a screening of a documentary of margaret sanger in the past six months. i'm not sure if you are aware of it, but she used the word situated as a very important thing and it was a film that really emphasized the eugenics and a negative light and i was upset about this and people kind of -- my question to you as you mentioned that her relationship. i would really like to know if you could correct this if i'm wrong from the research i've done. but when it came to choosing who was going to really stand up for this movement and ethel was involved in a decision about this and she did take the position of going to blabber island, she was sent there after she went on a hunger strike. can you tell me what happened as a result of that in there and

relationship? >> let me go back a little bit and say the relationship between the two was somewhat bored ethel had always been a supporter. ethel complained margaret was paying too much attention 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 in the magazine if i don't get money from the pockets? so, the two sisters are somewhat estranged, and ethel is hiding first and that makes all the difference. at the time, there were already under strikes go lay-bon used by

alice paul in washington, so these women knew about hunger strikes and she did undergo this how many days it was coming nearly died. years later and this is the bad part of the story, sometimes our hero's lead messy lives and usually they are someone is going to make a film and as margaret sanger. margaret goes to ethel and says i want to give me the right to be the homer stryker. ethel by this time really didn't care so she said yes, you can do this. when some of the movie is a very

to positive move by singer and there are other things like that that she certainly did during her lifetime. i love to get a clarification about eugenics. did she support involuntary sterilization? >> yes, she did. not for groups. and this is the distortion that's going on today. never for groups, never for glasses with the -- class is but for the individuals that are in same that she had a caveat and never believed in the surgical castration because -- and this fits right into her philosophy. it would destroy the sexual feelings of the person.

so, with those kind of caveat she did briefly support involuntary sterilization. i don't know that she ever retracted it. singer is the kind of person who has trouble specifically at a meeting that they are wrong on positions. the point to simply disappear from the rhetoric and the writing and that's what happened with involuntary sterilization. she hated the holocaust and waged against hitler and what he was doing, so we hear almost nothing about sterilization after world war ii. >> i read somewhere singer recommended for women to use

butter as a spermicide. is that true? >> i don't want to be crude but the things that women were putting up their vagina to prevent pregnancy are truly shocking. i would criticize singer not so much for what is this, butter? but fourth lysol. that was the spermicide of the day. these people are working in a of spermicide, douches, diaphragms for years until singer figures out because she is in touch with the entomologists that hormonal contraception is a possibility and she has more credit than she's gotten for this support

through is a harvard biologist who had moved his lab out. is that a hand in the air? >> i'm wondering what your comment was on an article on "the new york times" section in which they are now blaming the pill for prostate cancer? >> - you can talk more about to this. the pill has been blamed and correctly at the beginning for the possibility of a bird pox. the beginning there was too much estrogen in the pill, and so that diminished.

then after hearings in washington there's talk that the poll does this, it does that, and one of the issues is i don't think that they -- i don't think that there is enough randomized studies to be able to prove some of the planes that are made about hill. the bill does good things besides prevent pregnancy and it does bad things, and i can't speak to this particular. >> prostate cancer? estimate is this their offspring? >> [inaudible]

they had taken a survey -- estimate there are correlations with breast cancer and other recent studies came out that a whopping 42% of women are taking the pill for them on contraceptive reasons for in dmitri enosis to, you know, control heavy periods. there is a lot of other beneficial effect. but the pill while margaret sanger is responsible almost singularly for the revolution that took place in a short period of time after the introduction of the pill that a laundry list we would never give up. but the pill is a flawed method, and margaret sanger always believed that if she were to create a perfect method that she would come and you know, there would be no need for abortion. she didn't live in the time where abortion was legal, she

never answered to yourself into the discussions that began at the end of her life. but yes, it is a difficult method. there are more effective methods, and i think as advocates we don't -- we need to do a better job of promoting and educating a lot of different the efficacy is for the various methods. >> [inaudible] d'aspin it's a recommendation on a site to find out more information about eugenics. >> we have time for one more question. >> more about eugenics. it's absolutely true the germans

took the playbook from the americans and hitler was using some of the more extreme statements by eugenicists in the united states when he began his efforts on the populations in germany. so the united states was one of the leaders in the eugenics movement. >> yes? >> new york city is about to institute sex education in middle school and high school and the same arguments about sex education are the ones you are talking about for against birth control, namely to promote promiscuity. was she involved in the sex

education movement? >> absolutely, yes. several of her books. i'm glad you asked that question. we forget she is a writer. she publishes to books and civilization women and the new race in the early twenties, and they sell together 500,000 copies. after that, she publishes the manuals, happiness in marriage, sort of a ladies' home journal, and then a really interesting book of letters that women had written motherhood in homage. but earlier she had written what every girl should know, what every little boy should know. this is a woman before the sex educators who were trying to

promote the idea of sex education as part of her entire package. if women who know about sexuality to get sex education and they have contraceptives, they are going to have better families >> i from the irish catholic culture and went to catholic parochial schools and i can remember back 40 years ago when a friend came to josette from a friend who already had three children came to visit when i had my first child and she said i told the church changes their mind about birth control and i can remember saying to her don't wait and for this day they

haven't. the people who are against abortion or any kind of birth control will talk about the babies and the life movement but i have a sense that's more about not letting women get so under control. >> certainly all of the campaigns that are going on now to roll back reproductive rights by the anti-abortion movement i think it is wrongly named because all of their campaigns include efforts to roll back access to family planning and what we know is it is the modern pro-choice movement that has done more to realize what the public understands to be pro-life. we live in a country where the countries on earth with the lowest abortion rates are the ones that have adopted the pro-choice policies and that

includes contraception and the ones with the highest abortion rates are the ones that have accepted the pro-life movement platform, no sex ed, no contraception, no abortion. and right now the bishops are gearing up aggressively to try to remove contraceptive coverage from health care reform. and yes, we haven't done a -- what i see is we have a pro-life public that's 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 --

>> speed i looked at the children's defense fund, the premier child of the tuzee organization in the united states and i took their ranking of the best and worst legislators for children and these are people who are the worst were consistently voting against children's rights, against education and health insurance benefits for children and parents unemployment benefits. the very things of the kitchen table with an unplanned parents to matter and when i found as comparing it to the voting record is that of the 116 worst legislators for children, 100% for pro-life. conversely, 95% of the best legislators for children were pro-choice. when the rubber hits the road on these things, this is a very

ironic conversation we are having politically. >> thank you. [applause] joining us on booktv is daniel whose most recent book is blue-collar intellectuals. what does that title mean? >> blue-collar intellectual is a thinker that comes from the working-class or immigrant background and when they become an authority in their field, rather than just simply address other eggheads they make an attempt to reach out to every class which they came and i think nowadays when you look at intellectuals a lot of them speak in the jargon that far few people understand. they write books nobody reads.

what a blue-collar intellectuals is about our intellectuals in the time an american intellectuals try to open a big conversation with all comers and when every man tries to reach for something higher rather than drag his arms lower. >> gives us an example. >> sure. a good example the prototypical would be a guy like eric pauper known as the longshoremen philosopher so by day he was unloading cargo off the ships in san francisco, and by night he was writing a book that became one of the best books of the 20th century to understanding the 20th century coming and we may have never heard of ear copper, had it not been for an american general stationed in france in 1951 who came back to the united states in 52, got elected president and because everyone wants to read what the president is reading everyone wanted to read the true believer. yet so it is one of these only in america stories where a guy

who is sprung from an minetti working on the docks in san francisco as a blue-collar worker all of a sudden he becomes the intellectual but everyone wants to know what he's thinking. >> where did you get the idea for this book? >> when i travel in promoting my books i notice people's behavior has changed and this is when i'm in airport lounges their rtc blaring everywhere. you can't be alone with your own thoughts. people used to be on trains and newspapers. now they pay with gadgets. they are testing each other, playing with video games, and so i wanted to capture a time in america where there was a yearning among people for something high year that our time wasn't such a waste of time, and on pope said in a book on a inspired people to maybe get away from the screens and to

start opening its book, that's what people do, right, they watch book tv to open a book once in awhile. >> do you write for a living or is this a second job? >> unfortunately i do write for a living so i made a decision about seven or eight years ago i was just going to do this full time and i make a lot less money. so it is a lot more rewarding and hopefully i can keep it going. secure other books include intellectual morons in the history of the american left to the and what are your politics? >> i am a conservative. this book isn't a conservative book per say. it's about a half a dozen blue-collar intellectuals and they range from people who are lifetime socialists to a guy like milton friedman who is a hard-core libertarian who feels comfortable in a place like the conservative faction conference and the common denominator is that they all come from a blue-collar background and all

at least part of the intellectual work to try to address that background think of a guy like milton friedman who when he was growing up lived above his family's ice-cream parlor, came down and scooped ice cream, and got a state scholarship to rutgers and when he was there he was waiting tables not for a wage cut for a free meal during the height of the depression and it's true to his entrepreneurial philosophy he was going from door to door selling these silly ties and white socks the distance in those days had to wear. my point is that it helps coming your economics will work if you've worked in the past and i would compare a guy like friedman his dad was a professor, his mom was a professional do-gooder come he