Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Lithuanian-born anarcho-communist known for her anarchist writings and speeches. Adopted by Second-wave feminists, she has been lionized as an iconic "rebel woman" feminist. However, Goldman played a pivotal role in the development of anarchism in the US and Europe throughout the first half of the twentieth century. She immigrated to the United States at seventeen and was later deported to Russia, where she witnessed the results of the Russian Revolution. She spent a number of years in the South of France where she wrote her autobiography, Living my Life, and other works, before taking part in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 as the English language representative in London of the CNT-FAI.

Birth control

On February 11, 1916, she was arrested and imprisoned again for her distribution of birth control literature. She, like many other early feminists, saw abortion as a tragic consequence of social conditions. In 1911, Goldman wrote in Mother Earth:

Related Topics:
February 11 - 1916 - Arrest - Birth control - Literature - Abortion - Mother Earth

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:"The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief...So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies."

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