Unexpected philanthropy

In 1935, through Independent Aid, Doris gave $10,000 to Margaret Sanger’s National Committee for Birth Control, and $15,000 to Sanger herself. In 1936, Doris gave $15,000 to the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, and, in a dramatic escalation, $1 million the following year to the Birth Control League. A year later, she gave another $15,000.

Doris was crucial to the cause of birth control, although her role is seldom recognised. Early in her career, Sanger could not have raised these sums for her controversial cause. What in Doris’s privileged life caused her to care about birth control?

Early in her relationship with Jimmy, Doris inevitably had questions about sexuality. She would never have been able to discuss this with her mother, because of prudery and ignorance. Falling pregnant on her honeymoon and probably choosing to have an abortion suggests that Doris lacked knowledge of birth control. As a wealthy woman, she would have had access to abortion, but she may have recognised that this wasn’t the case for most women during the decades when the procedure was illegal. Without access to birth control or a safe abortion, women turned to back-alley abortionists. Doris would not have been forced to that extreme, but she may have felt a touch of panic when she found herself pregnant, hence her support for Sanger’s mission.