Annie Besant Quotes
It is clearly useless to preach the limitation of the family and to conceal the means whereby such limitation may be effected.
There were few reformers who had such a long, extensive, and activist career in both England and India. She began her career as a minister’s wife but was literally turned out of her house by her husband for whom she was not religiously orthodox enough. This started her religious activism which ended with her as an atheist. She led a match-girl’s strike, founded a Hindu college in India, and was even arrested for pornography in England when she wrote a book advocating birth control. She is on many lists of “Great Indians” along with Gandhi and Nehru. She was Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teacher.
Annie Besant, 1847-1933, English Philosopher, Feminist, Anti-Colonialist, Journalist, Secular Humanist, Labor Organizer, & Reformer, President of The English Theosophical Society, Founder, Central Hindu College at Benaras, India, President, Indian Home Rule League & The Indian National Congress, The Law of Population
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In 1877 Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh attempted to publish The Fruits of Philosophy in Britain. It was a book on Birth Control. The two were immediately arrested and charged with publishing an ‘obscene’ book. Gifford was the Public Prosecutor. The authors were convicted and sentenced to 6 months in prison. However, they appealed and were exonerated in the appeal. The case was good for Gifford who went on to become Lord Chancellor of Britain. The trial was a strong motivator for Annie Besant to have a very activist career thereafter.
History has shown that as girls and women get educated and learn about family planning, their children are healthier and have better chances of survival and despite the lower death rate the population trend slows as a result of family planning.
At the time, condoms and other forms of contraceptives were illegal to buy, sell, possess or own. As late as 1963 a Connecticut druggist was sentenced to jail for filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms and selling them to a married couple even thought the woman might die if she again became pregnant. The Supreme Court (Griswald v. Connecticut) established that a woman had a right to control her own reproductive cycle and the government had no business interfering with a privacy right possessed by a couple. Roe v. Wade established the right to an abortion. The same moral compunctions used with abortion were, and still are used by some to oppose any form of artificial birth control. They argued: preventing a life was as serious a moral failure as taking one. Many Catholics, many evangelical and fundamentalist protestants, and some orthodox Muslims are today morally opposed to birth control and believe that the government should ban birth control as it once was in the United States.
Annie Besant (née Wood; 1 October 1847 – 20 September 1933) was a British socialist, theosophist, freemason, women's rights and Home Rule activist, educationist, and campaigner for Indian nationalism. Regarded as a champion of human freedom, she was an ardent supporter of both Irish and Indian self-rule. She was also a prolific author with over three hundred books and pamphlets to her credit. As an educationist, her contributions included being one of the founders of the Banaras Hindu University. For fifteen years, Besant was a public proponent in England of atheism and scientific materialism. Besant's goal was to provide employment, better living conditions, and proper education for the poor.
