Three Lessons to Learn from Aletta Jacobs: A Pioneer of Birth Control Access

With suffragette celebrations in vogue, much attention is currently being paid to attempts to get women to vote. This was, of course, only a small part of the battle, even for first wave feminists. Issues of women’s right to control or own their bodies, whether the specific concern is birth control, family planning, abortion, or sex workers, have been on the agenda for more than 100 years, and probably in various places throughout history for millennia.

Achieving equality, where it has been achieved, has been a struggle for particular individuals, for women’s groups and eventually for movements. Unfortunately, women’s rights are a matter of one step forward, two steps back. Therefore, we can never assume that any profit that has been achieved will be retained. So looking at history and the lives of women in particular is a way of strengthening ourselves for the battles we must be a part of.

Aletta Jacobs, the first female doctor in the Netherlands, was an activist in the peace movement, as well as in the women’s movement and in her daily life. Her death on August 10, 1929 provides an excuse to write about her. She pioneered healthcare reform and access to birth control. But even before this point, she Aletta had won a victory. She took the personal support of the Prime Minister for her to have access to sex-segregated higher education.

After earning his degree, Jacobs immediately opened free clinics for the working class, which he ran 2 mornings a week. In 1882, he went one step further and founded the world’s first birth control clinic. Her focus on prostitutes made her a double target, just as her insistence that salesgirls’ working conditions required reform infuriated entrenched capitalism. She was clearly only interested in perpetuating immorality.

In l903, Aletta Jacobs left her medical practice to focus on broader issues for women. She has worked with international women’s suffrage organizations, toured the world (covering South Africa, the Middle East, India, Ceylon, the Dutch East Indies, Burma, the Philippines, China and Japan) with former IWSA President Carrie Chapman Catt, studying the women’s conditions and reporting to the Dutch newspaper From Telegraph. Suffrage for Dutch women was achieved in 1919.

Jacob’s energies were not solely focused on women. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, she used her international network of women to fight for peace, even traveling to the United States in an attempt to persuade President Woodrow Wilson to mediate the conflict. She remained an activist until her death in 1929.

So what can we learn from this?

1. Education matters. There is currently an international movement that brings together a 16-year-old Afghan, Malala Yousafzai, to provide access to education for all children in the world. Malala is a survivor of a terrorist attack aimed at silencing her insistence that women and girls, as well as boys and men, have the right to education.

A second aspect of this is that formal education provides the tools, one would hope, for critical analysis. If you’ve never thought of birth control as a matter of a woman’s control over her own body, it’s time to rethink the matter. We in the West regard autonomy as an essential right, indeed a precursor to rights. But autonomy assumes that our bodies are ours. If we want to be reckless, we can. If we want to exercise we can. If we want to have a child, we can. If we do not want to have a child, we also have the right to that decision. But without access to birth control and abortion, saying we have a right is meaningless.

2. A commitment to social justice issues. Not just seeing the conditions of others, but being prepared to work to alleviate these conditions. I suppose this requires courage, at least the courage to act on one’s own convictions. I’m a coward, but activism isn’t just about big battles or being on the front lines. While signing a petition may seem like a small thing, for example, every name counts.

Another aspect of this is the interrelationship of rights. Aletta showed that compassion has many faces and that caring for women leads to caring for men and for all of humanity and the world we inhabit.

3. Networking is key. We can’t do anything on our own. Women are said to be good at networking and maintaining relationships. Aletta Jacobs didn’t accomplish what she did on her own. She from the beginning she worked with others. This does two things. She makes us realize that we are not alone, that there are others who value social justice and human rights. Second, numbers bring power. Share the load and multiply the effect.

My aim is not to lecture, but rather to suggest that we not create a pantheon of great women, different from us in every way. Rather, that we take small steps to demand equality for ourselves and our daughters, but that we also see that we can take guidance in this from those who have come before us.

If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, you’ll know that Mad-Eye Moody has a tip that’s relevant here. He tells the young heroes that they must be “ever vigilant.” Unfortunately, there is wisdom here, not paranoia. It’s not just that in every generation we have to fight the same battles again. It is that we always have to be attentive to the impositions of our equality, because whenever we think that there are gains there is slippage.