In June 1916 most women were unable to obtain birth control information – much less contraceptive pills, patches, or vaginal rings. Distribution of basic contraceptive guides was illegal in most jurisdictions. Such was the case in Portland, Oregon when Sanger visited the city as part of her first national lecture tour. After her first talk at a local theater, the all-male city council met in secret and prohibited the dissemination of Sanger’s Family Limitation pamphlet. A few days later local authorities arrested and jailed Sanger, local physician Marie Equi, and other supporters for distributing the guide. Portland was the only city on the tour to do so, prompting local attorney C.E.S. Wood to chide, “Portland is the most ridiculous of cites.” 

Today women in Oregon and California can pick up birth control prescriptions and products at their local drugstores without the time and expense of a doctor visit. Women in several other states can use smart phone apps or websites to obtain prescriptions from clinicians after answering personal health questions either online or by video. Products available include birth control pills, morning-after pills, patches and rings. There are variations for delivery or pick-up but a few outfits ship directly to a location women specify. 

The new “digital distribution” systems represent a considerable shift in access to reproductive information and products. So far, these new services have not met the fierce resistance of birth control and abortion foes. Birth control advocates recognize drawbacks with the easy availability via apps and the internet: many of the digital services do not provide insurance coverage for birth control products and many women cannot afford smart phones or internet access. But proponents hope that digital distribution will encourage more women to adopt effective contraception and thus reduce unintended pregnancies and the need for abortions. 

One early-adopter of the birth control apps told the New York Times: “It’s been for years going through these nonstop hoops of fire to get birth control…if I went through my normal physician and the referrals, I would be six months pregnant before I would get my hands on it.” 
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This Saturday, June 11, Portland, Oregon celebrates its annual floral extravaganza with the spectacular Rose Festival Parade. Portlanders and tourists will revel in the 109th observance of the pageant; the first started rolling in 1907 with decorated vehicles rolling along the 2 ½ mile route.   
 
Among the contestants were Dr. Marie Equi and her girlfriend Harriet Speckart. Months earlier the pair’s relationship was splashed on city newspapers over an inheritance dispute between Harriet and her mother. Equi was accused of seducing the younger woman – Harriet was in her 20s – in order to plunder the family’s riches. Newspapers suggested Equi wielded a “mysterious, hypnotic power” over Speckart. The pair weathered the storm of what today would be touted an “outing” of their lesbian relationship.
 
Here’s an excerpt from the new biography Marie Equi: Radical Politics & Outlaw Passions, published by Oregon State University Press:

Denied Tenure at UCLA
Six years after he announced his discovery, Gottlieb was denied tenure at UCLA. His academic association was severed, and he no longer had access to the research facilities and teaching opportunities at his medical school. “The explanation was that my body of work did not merit it (tenure),” he recalled. He suspects more was involved. “I was an activist. I was probably a little too progressive on HIV issues for my medical school, and there were the inevitable academic political issues.”
 
In addition to co-founding AmFAR, Gottlieb also served on the board of directors for the new AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), an organization developed by the gay and lesbian community. He was appointed the California AIDS Advisory Committee to assist the state health department with its AIDS prevention strategies. The work took him away from his laboratory and UCLA.
 
“When I was at committee meetings,” he explained, “I was criticized for not being on campus.” In his own defense, he added, “I had been very productive. I helped the institution establish a foothold in a new area (HIV/AIDS) for which they have received significant funding.”

PART ONE: “Five Years after Report on AIDS, MD Assesses “Health Threat of the Century,” American Medical News, June 20, 1986

“Reporting it to the CDC and to the world – that was an exciting time. We had no sense of the eventual serious side of this epidemic. That’s sobering, but the early months were very exciting.” Michael Gottlieb had reported to the world something new in medicine, a rare opportunity for someone just starting his career. He had just completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University, studying ways to prevent organ graft rejection. His field was the effect of radiation on the immune system. At UCLA Gottlieb intended to collaborate with the bone marrow transplant program. 
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“I was seeing patients two days a week, doing research, and teaching the rest of the time,” he recalled. He saw patients who presented with rare immune deficiencies and auto-immune diseases. “And then I encountered what we would later call AIDS.” 

On this day 100 years ago – June 3, 1916 – Portland, Oregon staged its largest ever parade with 15,000 to 20,000 people organized into one long enthusiastic column that marched through the city’s downtown streets. They massed together in support of War Preparedness in a time when the hostilities in Europe threatened to draw the US into what would become World War I. It was a time of unity with the thrill of shared purpose and resolve. But not for one Portlander.
 
Dr. Marie Equi, a physician and radical activist, was known by many to be a “lesbian” although the term was not in common use. She believed preparedness was a ploy to rack up profits for capitalists and oligarchs, ready to reap rewards from the US entering the war. Other Portlanders objected to the national fervor for war readiness, but none took their protests into the streets.
 
In the early evening Equi steered her automobile into the parade route. She had mounted an American flag at the front of the vehicle but strapped on its sides were banners that warned, “Prepare to Die, Workingman – JP Morgan & Co. Want Preparedness for Profit – Thou Shall Not Kill.”  She rolled into the march behind the local bar association, a group known for its preparedness fervor. The mix was combustible.
 
Quick and fierce, the marchers attacked. The attorneys struck first, yanking the banner from Equi and striking her with it. “I was scratched and bruised, and my hand bled,” she said. “They tore the banner to shreds and stomped on it.” At one point, a mob of fifty angry men surrounded and taunted her, yelling, “That’s what we do to your banner, now here’s ours.” The men thrust the American flag into her hands, daring her to rip it. Equi countered, “Your flag is no protection to me.” She put up a fight until the police intervened and arrested her and two of the men. They were later released.
 
Not for several more months did the US become a war combatant. Americans first re-elected President Woodrow Wilson in November 1916. Many, including Marie Equi, believed Wilson’s promise to keep the nation out of the war. He kept it until April 1917.
 
Sources
“Preparedness Is Cry of Thousands,” Morning Oregonian, June 3, 1916, 1.
Article based on excerpt from Marie Equi, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions by Michael Helquist, published by Oregon State University Press, 2015.

Thirty-three years ago today Mark Feldman of San Francisco died of AIDS complications. He was one of the first in the city to disclose publicly his diagnosis in talks and newspaper interviews and on radio and TV reports. He was the first to coin the term “person with AIDS” and thus rejected the identity foisted on him and many others of being “AIDS victims.” He also refused the less-offensive tag of being an around-the-clock “AIDS patient.” “I am a person, a person with AIDS,” he proclaimed. He would be neither a pariah nor a disease.

​In the six-and-a-half months he had before succumbing to AIDS, Feldman helped lay the foundation for what became an international People with AIDS movement. These PWA’s – the shorthand they used – demanded a voice in AIDS policy, treatment, and politics. Their perspective on the epidemic disease was one that needed to he heard.  Their efforts contributed to the activism that changed national and global health care and services.
 
Today I googled Mark Feldman to see what the internet now carried about him. I found an article from ten years ago by Dan Pine writing for the J Weekly.com, a publication covering the San Francisco and Bay Area Jewish community. Titled, “How AIDS Battered One SF Synagogue: A 25-Year Retrospective,” it begins: