Regulating Desire: From the Virtuous Maiden to the Purity Princess 1438453043, 978-1438453040

Table of contents :
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Introduction......Page 12
Introduction......Page 18
A Nation Awash in Sexual Sin......Page 19
Reclaiming the Fallen Victims of Male Lust......Page 20
Stepping into the Breach: Ruin and Reform......Page 23
Attacking the Sexual Double Standard......Page 27
The Inculcation of Internal Restraint......Page 30
Casting Out the Libertine......Page 32
Turning to the State: The Legislative Campaign to Criminalize the Act of Seduction......Page 34
Conclusion......Page 41
Introduction......Page 44
“One Night with Venus and a Lifetime with Mercury”: The Battle over State-Sanctioned Vice......Page 45
Rescuing the Nation from the Diseased Female Body......Page 46
“What Is Morally Wrong Can Never Be Physiologically Right”......Page 50
Purifying Society......Page 54
You Can Steal Her Virginity but Not Her Doll: The Campaign to Raise the Age of Sexual Consent......Page 55
A Most Womanly Cause......Page 57
“Shame on America:” The Core Themes of the Campaign to Raise the Age of Sexual Consent......Page 59
Providing a Safe Passage to Adulthood......Page 62
Protecting the Largest Diamond in the Crown of Youthful Virtue......Page 66
Conclusion......Page 70
Introduction......Page 72
The Juvenile Court Movement......Page 73
Children within the Adult Criminal Justice System......Page 74
A Court of Their Own......Page 76
Beyond Seduction: Rewriting the Sexual Narrative......Page 78
The “Appreciable Tendency Toward Deterioration In Moral Tone Among A Great Proportion Of Adolescent Girls In Tenement Districts”......Page 81
Renegotiating the Boundaries of their Lives......Page 87
Engendering Juvenile Justice......Page 88
Becoming a Regulatory Subject......Page 89
A More Serious Wrong/ A Less Hopeful Future......Page 91
Replacing the Old Standards with New......Page 94
Conclusion......Page 95
Introduction......Page 98
The Private as Public Policy: The Federal Government Enters the Family Planning Arena......Page 99
The Changing Business of Government......Page 100
Birth Control as a Private Right: The Changing Social and Legal Environment......Page 102
“One Million Teens”: The “Epidemic” of Teen Pregnancies......Page 104
The Emergence of the Pregnant Teen as an Object of Public Concern......Page 105
The Paradox of Timing......Page 106
The “Girl Next Door”......Page 110
A Two-Pronged Strategy......Page 114
Sowing the Seeds of Dissension......Page 119
Conclusion......Page 120
Introduction......Page 122
The Rise of the New Right......Page 123
The Conservative Attack on Title X......Page 126
The Problem Is Not That Young Women Are Getting Pregnant—It Is That They Are Having Sex......Page 127
Parents not the Government Are Responsible for Imparting Moral Values to Children......Page 131
The Liberal/Conservative Divide: The Confluence of Sexual and Family Values......Page 133
A Family-Centered Approach to Purity......Page 136
Sexual Liberalism Reversed......Page 138
Mandating Abstinence until Marriage......Page 139
Engendering the Abstinence Message......Page 141
Beneath the Surface: The Legislative Context......Page 142
Sex Respect: Teaching Students about the “Gift of Gender”......Page 145
“Because We Cherish Our Daughters as Regal Princesses”......Page 152
But What About Boys?......Page 155
Conclusion......Page 156
Notes......Page 162
Bibliography......Page 202
Index......Page 216

Citation preview

REGULATING

DESIRE

REGULATING

DESIRE From the Virtuous Maiden to the Purity Princess

J. S H O S H A N N A EH R LICH

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2014 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Jenn Bennett Marketing by Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ehrlich, J. Shoshanna.   Regulating desire : from the virtuous maiden to the purity princess / J. Shoshanna Ehrlich.    pages cm   Includes bibliographical references and index.   ISBN 978-1-4384-5305-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)   E-ISBN 978-1-4384-5306-4 (ebook)   1. Young women—Sexual behavior—United States—History.  2. Sex crimes— United States—History.  3. Seduction—United States—History.  4. Premarital sex— United States—History.  5. Sexual ethics—United States—History.  I. Title.   HQ29.E355 2014  176'.4—dc23

2013043166 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Alan, Emma, my father, and the memory of my mother

Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Predatory Men and Virtuous Maidens: Saving Young Women from Ruinous Seduction

7

Chapter 2 Protecting Her Most Prized Possession: The Campaign to Raise the Age of Sexual Consent

33

Chapter 3 Responding to the “Girl Problem”: The Emergence of the Female Sexual Delinquent

61

Chapter 4 Our Daughters Are Having Babies: The Fashioning of a Public Response to the Teen Pregnancy “Epidemic”

87

Chapter 5 Our Daughters Are Having Sex: The Conservative Pushback against Teen “Promiscuity”

111

Notes 151 Bibliography 191 Index 205

Acknowledgments To start, I would first like to acknowledge that an earlier section of chapter 3 was published as an article entitled “You Can Steal Her Virginity But Not Her Doll: The Nineteenth Century Campaign to Raise the Age of Legal Consent,” in the Cardozo Journal of Law & Gender 15, no. 2 (2009): 229–46, and an earlier section of chapter 5 was published as an article entitled “From Birth Control to Sex Control: Unruly Young Women and the Origins of the National Abstinence‑Only Mandate,” in the Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 30, no. 1 (2013): 78–99. As I near the completion of this book, it gives me great pleasure to be able to thank the many people and institutions who have assisted and encouraged me along the way. Although, as with most scholarly undertakings, I have certainly had my moments of frustration, this endeavor has been a labor of love that has benefited greatly from the support I have received. During the course of my research for this book, I was fortunate enough to be assisted by the dedicated librarians and archivists at the following institutions: the Boston Athenaeum, the Francis Willard Archives, the New York State Archives, the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, and Simmons College. I also want to extend a special thanks to the outstanding research and interlibrary loan librarians at the University of Massachusetts Boston—my home institution. In particular, I want to acknowledge: Natalie Coady, Janet DiPaolo, George Hart, Tina Mullins, and Janet Stewart who responded to what, at times, must have seemed like endless requests for assistance and obscure material with unflagging patience, persistence, and good humor. I am also deeply appreciative of generous support I received from the following scholars who took time out of their busy schedules to comment on various chapters and/or respond to inquiries that I had along the way. The book has benefited greatly from the collective wisdom of: Alesha E. Doan, April R. Hanes, Carol Hardy‑Fanta, Jean Humez, Jamie Ann Sabino,

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Acknowledgments

Maris A. Vinovskis, and Daniel S. Wright. I would also like to acknowledge all of the support and encouragement I have received over the years from my colleagues in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at UMass Boston. It is an honor to be part of such a committed and caring group of feminist activist‑scholars. I also had the pleasure of working with a number of terrific research assistants from the University of Massachusetts Boston, Northeastern University School of Law, and the University of Vermont. So many thanks to: Sarah Adragna, Roxanna Cheng, Suzanne M. Fuchs, Audrey Grace, Cheyanne Gracia, Jess Guerriero, Dara Heffler, Zoe Lewis, and Emma Stoskopf‑Ehrlich for the hard work and the great energy that you all brought to this project. I would also like to thank Beth Bouloukos and Jenn Bennett of SUNY Press for all of their expert guidance and support in seeing this book through to print. On a more personal note, I want to thank my friends and siblings for their sustained support and encouragement, particularly during the moments when I wondered if I had been foolhardy to attempt a project that spans such a wide swath of time. With gratitude and love to: Chris Bobel, Sue Cohen, Amy Ehrlich, Josh Ehrlich, Esther Ehrlich, Amani El Jack, Marian Klausner, Anita Martin, Ellen Resnick, Deborah Schwartz, and Debbie Wolozin. A warm thanks also to all my swim friends at Simmons College Masters Swimming and on the Boston LANES team, with a special shout out to coach William Yepes. The many hours in the pool with all of you has helped me to stay balanced and focused during the course of writing this book. Finally, I want to acknowledge the sustaining love and support I have received from three very special people in my life. To my father, Fred Ehrlich, your unwavering belief in my ability to complete this book has been a source of inspiration. To my husband Alan Stoskopf and my daughter Emma Stoskopf‑Ehrlich, I am forever grateful for all the joy you bring to my life, and a special thanks for all that you did to help keep me on track over the many years I have spent writing this book. You are the center of my world.

Introduction

In 2006, I published a book entitled Who Decides?: The Abortion Rights of Teens that focuses on the highly contested issue of whether young women should be able to terminate a pregnancy without the knowledge or consent of a parent.1 Of central importance to me in working on this book was to try and make some sense out of the law’s inconsistent treatment of pregnant teens based upon their intended pregnancy outcome. In brief, as discussed in the book, while states typically treat preg‑ nant teens who decide to carry their pregnancy to term as legal adults with full decisional authority over this choice, as well as over all related pregnancy‑related medical decisions, the Supreme Court has given states the constitutional green light to enact laws—which most have since done—that require teens who instead seek to terminate a pregnancy to either involve a parent, or seek authorization for an abortion through an alternative pro‑ cess—typically a court hearing. In reaching the decision that mandating third‑party adult involvement in the abortion decision was constitutionally permissible, the Court expressed concern about the decisional vulnerability of teens. Stating that they frequently lack the ability to “make decisions in an informed, mature manner” that takes account of “both immediate and long range consequences,” the Court thus looked to parents to serve as a useful counterweight to youthful immaturity.2 This legal dualism made little sense to me—How was it that a pregnant teen could be regarded as fully competent to make the decision to become a mother, while being characterized as too immature to make the decision to avoid motherhood without adult involvement? Given that women not uncommonly move between options before settling on a final decision to either abort or have a baby, it became increasingly clear that this schema essentially means that the law regards a young woman’s capabilities as fleeting and transitory, shifting each time she reconsiders her pregnancy options. As detailed in the book, my perplexity was enhanced by my previous

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Regulating Desire

experience as a lawyer representing countless teens in Massachusetts who had sought judicial authorization for an abortion rather than involve their parents, as these young women typically reasoned about their situation in complex and multidimensional ways that were at odds with the Court’s pinched representation of their reality.3 As I sought to make sense of this, I ultimately concluded, based upon a careful textual analysis of leading Supreme Court decisions involving the abortion rights of minors, that the answer to this seeming paradox lay in the emerging pro‑natalist tilt of the Court. In short, rather than reflecting a genuine concern about the decisional vulnerability of pregnant teens, the Court’s underlying justification for adult involvement laws was that they served a newly articulated state interest in “protecting potential life.”4 It thus appears that the true function of these laws is to encourage a young woman to discuss “the consequences of her decision in the context of the values and moral or religious principles of their family.”5 However, given that this appears to be an actualized state interest only when her decision is to abort rather than carry to term, I ultimately concluded that these laws are driven by beliefs about the value of having a teen discuss her understanding of “the origins of the other human life that lie within the embryo .  .  .  within the family, society’s most intimate association,” rather than by the Court’s articulated concern about adolescent decisional incapacity.6 Struck by the way in which the Court relied upon a particular under‑ standing of young women’s reasoning abilities to justify a specific regulatory approach to abortion, which, as argued, largely masked its growing concerns about the potentiality of life, as the book neared completion sometime in 2005, I began to wonder whether other statutory schemes similarly structured the sexual and reproductive lives of young women based upon a construction of their reality that likewise advanced other, perhaps less obvious, agendas. In light of the growing public debates over whether states should continue to accept federal funds for abstinence‑only education in light of a growing body of evidence that teens who have participated in a federally funded abstinence‑only program were no more likely to remain abstinent than other teens, and were nearly identical in profile with respect to “the aver‑ age age of first intercourse and the number of sexual partners,”7 I thought this federal regulatory scheme might be a good place to start my inquiry. As I began to examine the federal statutes that allocate funding to states that were willing to conform their sexual education curriculum to the narrow federal definition of acceptable sexual activity, namely, that it is only appropriate within the boundaries of a heterosexual marriage, it became increasingly clear that conservative proponents of this approach

Introduction

3

were constructing female sexuality in a way that specifically advanced the abstinence agenda, much as the decisional abilities of young women were represented in a way that advanced an antiabortion agenda. Cast as naturally without desire, purity was presented as an inherently female characteristic, thus constituting young women as the gatekeepers of morality. In turn, this familiar accounting led me to wonder what might have come before—had there been other legal reform efforts that were likewise designed to encode the value of female virtue into law based upon a set of assumptions about their sexuality? To my surprise, this inquiry ultimately led me back to 1838, the year in which the American Female Moral Reform Society launched a vigorous campaign to make seduction a crime in order to protect young women from older licentious males. Drawing upon the interrelated motifs of protecting young women from sexual coercion and ensuring the preservation of their virginity, this was the first organized campaign in this country to specifically focus on the sexual needs of young women. Growing out of the evangelical preoccupation with moral sin, concerns about social disintegration were mapped onto young women’s bodies, thus giving rise to the reformers’ demand that the state punish men who tricked them into giving up their virginity. As it turned out, this was but the first of a number of organized cam‑ paigns to revise the law in order to protect, manage, and/or control the sexuality of young women. Taking root in historic periods when changing social conditions seemed to generate particular anxiety about the stability of young women’s lives, each successive effort was rooted in a dominant narrative about female sexuality that often obscured the complexity of their behavior as shaped by the dynamic interplay of considerations of gender, race, and class. These efforts are the focus of this book. Organized in a chrono‑ logical order, each chapter focuses upon a different legal reform movement as situated within the broader historical circumstances that gave rise to it. Chapter 1 explores the evangelically inspired effort that was launched by female moral reformers in 1838 to criminalize seduction. Set against the backdrop of the dislocations of urbanization and industrialization, the reformers relied upon seduction narratives that sadly recounted the ruin of innocent young women to advance their cause. Although, in keeping with the sexual ethos of the time, their efforts were certainly grounded in their firm belief in the central importance of female virginity, they were also laced with a powerful critique of male sexual privilege with its assumed right of access to the youthful female body. Chapter 2 focuses on the late‑nineteenth‑century campaign by social purity reformers to raise the age of sexual consent. This national effort to

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Regulating Desire

reform the law in order to protect young women under the age of eighteen or twenty‑one from the predatory older male grew out of the reformers’ initial campaign to defeat a proposal by doctors that prostitutes be subjected to state‑mandated inspections in order to stem the spread of venereal disease. Advancing an increasingly sophisticated critique of the inherent male bias of the law, female purity reformers sought to persuade lawmakers across the country that the bodies of girls were deserving of at least the same degree of legal protection as the law already extended to their personal property. Although again grounded in and reinforcing of dominant beliefs regarding the importance of virginity, their campaign also anticipated the kinds of concerns that would be raised by second‑wave feminists in the latter part of the twentieth century with respect to the failure of the law to take full account of the seriousness, prevalence, and scope of sexually coercive behavior. From here, chapter 3 focuses on the Progressive Era response to the “girl problem.” As reformers grew increasingly concerned about the sexually nonconforming behavior of young working women in poor urban neighbor‑ hoods, who were often from immigrant families, they argued that it was the transgressive female body, rather than the unruly desires of the licentious man that required the intervention of the state in order to redirect disruptive impulses into normative channels. Although reflecting a genuine concern for their vulnerability to sexual coercion and exploitation, these reformers arguably failed to recognize that many young women were engaged in an effort to rewrite the Victorian sexual script in favor of a more autonomous and pleasure‑seeking self. Chapter 4 picks up in the era following World War II, when mount‑ ing anxiety about the population explosion eventually led policymakers to focus on the problem of “children having children,” despite the fact that the teen pregnancy rate had actually declined significantly over the course of the previous two decades. Fueled in large part by demographic shifts, as well as by a growing awareness that young women from middle‑class families were now engaging in patterns of sexual and reproductive behaviors that had long been identified with a racialized other, Congress stepped in to support national initiatives aimed at helping teens to better manage their fertility. Instrumental in nature, the resulting legislation that supported care services for already pregnant and parenting teens and expanded access to confidential family planning services were directed at managing the consequences of teenage sexual activity. Presented as morally neutral and much‑needed reform measures, there was little discussion of the underlying sexual activity; however, as taken up in the final chapter, concerns about

Introduction

5

governmental encouragement of teen promiscuity proved to be a ticking time bomb. As discussed in chapter 5, following the election of Ronald Reagan as president, conservative politicians associated with the New Right charged Congress with promoting teen promiscuity by providing them with access to confidential family planning services. Launching a powerful counterattack in which they sought to redefine the problem from one of young women having children to one of young women having sex, conservatives prom‑ ised to advance a new governmental approach that would instead promote self‑discipline in a family‑centered context. Giving birth to a series of federal laws designed to promote abstinence‑only education, as implemented in the classroom, this approach to sex education seeks to reinscribe the value of female purity into law. A few comments about the topical focus of these chapters are in order here. First, my goal in writing this book was to critically examine organized efforts to reshape the laws relating to young women’s sexuality that grew out of and responded to distinct historical moments of expressed social concern about their sexual encounters. In short, it does not in any way presume to offer a comprehensive analysis of the wide range of laws that impact teen sexuality, such as, for example, those relating to marriage and divorce, prostitution, rape, and sexual harassment, just to name a few. Moreover, although abortion is mentioned in various places throughout the book, it is discussed in relationship to other laws, and is not taken up as a distinct subject.8 Secondly, although gender is the primary analytical lens through which these laws are examined, gender clearly does not exist as a singular or stable category, but is mediated and shaped by intersecting considerations of race, class, and ethnicity among other salient factors. Accordingly, it is important to bear in mind that as realities were constructed in ways that advanced particular understandings of normative female behavior, these constructs were not unitary but were shaped and reshaped by interconnected assump‑ tions about the appropriate boundaries of the raced and classed female body. The book certainly focuses on these considerations, but it does privilege gender as the lens through which the laws that are discussed are refracted.

1

Predatory Men and Virtuous Maidens Saving Young Women from Ruinous Seduction

Introduction In the spring of 1848, shortly before the nation’s first woman’s rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, the American Female Moral Reform Society (AFMRS) succeeded in persuading the New York legislature to enact a criminal anti‑seduction law.1 Deeply concerned about the welfare of young women who were flocking to the nation’s emerging urban centers in pursuit of both employment as well as leisure activities, this unprecedented effort to enlist the power of the state as an agent of moral transformation for the benefit of young women was a critical strand in the female moral reformers’ plan to reshape the behavior of licentious men for the protection of youthful female virtue. Although their efforts were firmly rooted in a traditional view of respectable womanhood, as they set out to rein in male lust, the female moral reformers simultaneously advanced a bold, and at times quite radi‑ cal, critique of the presumed right of male access to the youthful female body—a right which, they forcefully argued, was enshrined in a masculinist legal code that implicitly sanctioned the sexual double standard. Fierce in their resolve, they insisted that this legislative body had a moral duty to divest the legal code of its tilt toward evil, and they vowed to return to the legislature year after year even though their “continual coming” might “weary both friend and foe,” until such time as the lawmakers approved a righteous law holding the “destroyer of innocence” accountable for his actions.2

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Regulating Desire

Discursively constituting them as the passionless victims of licentious men, this early effort to rewrite the law in response to mounting social concerns about the fate of young women adrift in the city raises enduring questions about the appropriate role of the state with respect to the regu‑ lation of youthful sexual expression that are woven into the structure of this book. Firmly grounded in the sexual ethos of the time, as they sought to hold the seducer accountable for his sexual overreaching, female moral reformers did not consider the possibility that some encounters may actually have been consensual rather than exploitative. Young women were thus to be written into the criminal code as the intended beneficiaries of laws designed to rein in the unruly male body; as discussed in chapter 3, it would not be until the Progressive Era that they would come to be regarded as regulatory subjects whose sexualized bodies required the oversight of the state. Although uniquely focused on the particular vulnerabilities of young women, the female moral reformers were not alone in their preoccupation with sexual danger. Reflecting the evangelical fervor of the times, their campaign emerged out of a broader moral reform crusade to cleanse the nation of sin, which included an effort to save the souls of fallen women. Accordingly, before focusing on the American Female Moral Reform Society’s multipronged strategy for rewriting the sexual script in order to save young women from ruin, we look at these earlier stage‑setting efforts.

A Nation Awash in Sexual Sin In the summer of 1830, John McDowall, a young Princeton divinity student who would soon spearhead the moral reform movement, came to New York City as a volunteer missionary for the American Tract Society. Hoping to “diffuse a knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of sinners, and to promote the interests of vital godliness and sound morality”3 through the publication and distribution of religious pamphlets across the nation, the Tract Society was but one of many ecumenical benevolent organizations that sprung up in the United States during the early part of the nineteenth century as an intense evangelical fervor spread across the land. Preaching in religious revivals across the nation, evangelical ministers associated with what is referred to as the Second Great Awakening rejected the Calvinist view that salvation lay entirely in the hands of God. Anchored in the conviction that by working “ceaselessly to make themselves and others perfect,” individuals could help usher in the Millennium and bring about the Second Coming of Christ, adherents stressed the obligation of

Predatory Men and Virtuous Maidens

9

individuals to help cleanse the nation of sin.4 As a “wave of evangelistic fervor surg[ed] toward a peak in the mid‑twenties,” countless pious reform‑ ers, such as McDowall, who were inspired by this message, set out into the field to purify the land and hasten the return of Christ.5 Shocked by the wretched conditions of New York’s notorious Five Points neighborhood, McDowall decided to remain in the city and dedi‑ cate himself to the eradication of urban misery and sin. Struck by the pervasiveness and visibility of prostitution, he adopted “prostitute reform as his cause.”6 Seeking to save those who were sincerely penitent, he helped found the New York Magdalen Society, which opened a house of refuge for prostitutes who were willing to accept the “evangelical moral code and behavioral standards” in their effort to leave their former life of sin behind.7 Reclaiming the Fallen Victims of Male Lust McDowall’s commitment to the cause of prostitution reform was a sign of the changing nature of the trade in women’s bodies. Although prostitution was certainly not new in this country, it had traditionally existed outside of public view. Tucked into discreet corners of the social landscape, the purchase of sexual services was typically arranged through a diffuse and largely invis‑ ible network of personal contacts. Tolerated as a necessary evil in light of prevailing beliefs about man’s naturally lustful tendencies, prostitutes generally operated below the social and legal radar, although they were not immune from prosecution as vagrants or disorderly persons. Moreover, as prostitutes became somewhat more visible in major seaport cities over the course of the eighteenth century, growing public concern about their presence resulted in the occasional police raid or mob attack on brothels. However, mirroring the law’s tendency to characterize prostitution as a disruptive force, rather than as a wrongful sexual exchange, these actions were generally intended to restore public order rather than to suppress immorality.8 During the early decades of the nineteenth century, prostitution moved out of the shadows as a growing number of women began plying their trade on the streets of the nation’s burgeoning large cities, and by mid‑century “the sexual services sold by women had become a highly visible, profitable, and public urban occupation.”9 Of particular concern to many was the fact that as they moved out into public spaces, prostitutes did not confine themselves to the poorer neighborhoods in which most of them lived. Raising the specter of social disruption, Dr. William Sanger, author of an influential study on the “extent, causes and effects” of prostitution, warned that disreputable women were infiltrating respectable neighborhoods:

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Regulating Desire

Unlike the vice of a few years since, it no longer confines itself to secrecy and darkness, but boldly strides through our most thronged and elegant thoroughfares, and there, in the broad light of the sun, it jostles the pure, the virtuous, and the good. It is in your gay streets, and in your quiet, home‑like streets, it is in your squares, and in your suburban retreats and summer resorts; it is in your theaters, your opera, your hotels; nay, it is even intruding itself into the private circles, and slowly but steadily extending its poison.10 Beneath the surface of Sanger’s lament, one can read a quiet fear that as spatial boundaries began to dissolve, the line separating the virtuous woman from the fallen one would begin to blur. By the mid‑1830s, it was evident that the trade had acquired the “characteristics of a rather complex system, including territorial boundar‑ ies and clearly defined classes of prostitutes . . . [and] that both prostitutes and their patrons were very aware that a system existed.”11 Illustrating the growing visibility of prostitution, by 1840, the notorious “third tier”—an area of the theater set aside for prostitutes and their customers—had become a clearly “understood theatrical appendage” in major cities across the country.12 Although upper‑class prostitutes who serviced wealthy patrons freely mingled with their clients throughout the theater, in what Claudia D. Johnson refers to as the “ritual of the third tier,” ordinary prostitutes were directed to this designated area where they would meet with regular customers and be introduced to new patrons who had been “brought up from other parts of the house” by mutual acquaintances. To accommodate this practice, urban theaters were actually designed with a side street entrance with a separate stairway that led directly to the third tier.13 Further highlighting the increased visibility and organized structure of this burgeoning urban profession, if a prospective customer was not fully aware of the local options, he might purchase a “brothel guide” to acquaint himself with the available offerings. Presumably geared to the discriminat‑ ing customer, these guides were particularly useful for locating a city’s finer brothels, which were often discreetly tucked away in elegant townhouses in fashionable neighborhoods.14 As an integral part of his reformation effort, McDowall sought to recast the classic lascivious harlot into the innocent victim of the preda‑ tory male. Challenging the traditional explanation that women were drawn to prostitution because of their innately lustful natures, McDowall instead argued that prostitutes were typically desperate women who had been robbed

Predatory Men and Virtuous Maidens

11

of their purity by a wily seducer, and consequently could no longer hope to marry or to otherwise maintain a place in respectable society. Forced to choose between a life on the streets or an early grave, he compassionately argued that fallen women who opted for a life of infamy over an untimely death were deserving of a second chance.15 McDowall’s rejection of a carnal explanation for why women became prostitutes was consistent with a broader reconceptualization of female sexuality that was closely associated with the rise of evangelical Chris‑ tianity during the early decades of the nineteenth century. According to Nancy Cott, as ministers increasingly came to rely upon women, who had become the majority of church attendees, as “worthy allies and agents of Protestantism,” the historic Anglo‑American understanding of them as the lusty “inheritors of Eve’s legacy of moral danger,” was displaced by a vision of the morally pure female who symbolized God’s grace. Elevated as “moral and intellectual beings,” women—or more particularly, white, middle‑class Protestant women—came to be regarded as inherently pure.16 Although grounded in an assumption of innate female purity, Cott argues that the recasting of women as lacking sexual passion benefited them by elevating their moral stature, which gave activists, such as the female moral reformers, a firm platform from which they could move out into the world in order to improve the human condition.17 Although the opening of the Magdalen Society’s house of refuge did not attract much attention, upstanding New Yorkers were scandalized by the society’s first annual report. Penned by McDowall, its frank discussion of indelicate topics and its bold assertion that the city was home to more than ten thousand prostitutes whose customers not uncommonly included men from prominent and well‑connected families drew an avalanche of criticism. Stung by the response, the society collapsed under the weight of public condemnation.18 However, as Daniel Wright details, the report also helped to feminize the predominately male moral reform movement. Using it as an occasion to boldly assert that rather than disqualifying them from working with their fallen sisters, the “peculiar influences” of virtuous women uniquely quali‑ fied them for this task, McDowall exhorted them to take up the cause.19 Accordingly, when McDowall, who had grown weary of trying to save women who showed little interest in their own reclamation,20 decided to shift his focus from rescue to prevention work, a small group of women, who were drawn to the idea of launching a far‑reaching “crusade against evil,” came together to establish the New York Female Moral Reform Soci‑ ety (NYFMRS), which soon evolved into the nationally focused American

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Regulating Desire

Female Moral Reform Society (AFMRS).21 As developed below, their com‑ mitment to cleansing the nation of sexual sin soon led them to focus their efforts on the particular plight of young woman who had moved from the countryside to the nation’s burgeoning urban centers.

Stepping into the Breach: Ruin and Reform The American Female Moral Reform Society was founded at a time when the nation was experiencing the interconnected dislocations of industrial and urban growth. Like others of their era, the society’s members were deeply concerned about the threat that these changes posed to the long‑standing American agrarian ideal that had been woven into the founding vision of the nation, serving to proudly distinguish the New World from the corrupt ways of the old. This bucolic vision was closely associated with Thomas Jefferson, who confidently predicted that “our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural” and cautioned that if they were to become “piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.”22 Agreeing with Jefferson’s observation that “large cities are great sores,”23 female moral reformers warned that the nation’s teeming urban streets were the “gathering‑places of the most skillful, daring and dangerous of the enemies of morality and piety” and were where “the wicked have great influence upon those who are not yet corrupted.”24 Of greatest concern to them were the unsuspecting young women from the countryside who had been drawn to the cities in pursuit of work or possibly by their glamorous allure. Leaving home at younger ages than was typical of past generations, in contrast to the pattern in rural settings, these urban transplants were coming of age beyond the watchful gaze of their parents and community. Seeking to fill this void, the female moral reformers mobilized to protect innocent country girls from the dangers and temptations that they faced as they reached maturity in settings wholly unfamiliar to their parents. To this end, the female moral reform publications, specifically, the Advocate of Moral Reform and the Friend of Virtue, were filled with dire warnings about the dangers that lay in wait at every corner to “ensnare” the innocent maiden.25 According to one such account, each year countless young women forsook “their friends, their parents, and their accustomed moral restraints,” to seek employment as domestics in the city, only to “like a great holocaust . . . be offered upon on the polluted shrines of lust!”26 Similarly, in an “Address of Ministers of Boston to Their Fellow Citizens,”

Predatory Men and Virtuous Maidens

13

the audience was warned that “[h]undreds—we speak within bounds and moderately when we say hundreds of young women are enticed to Boston, or entrapped when here, by the arts of those who care for nothing but vile pleasure and shameful gain. Even girls, who have scarcely passed the age of childhood, are misled; all their fair hopes blighted, their names tarnished, and the restoration to peace, purity, and happiness, often rendered all but impossible.”27 Penning tragic tales of seduction to draw attention to their cause, a story in the Advocate of Moral Reform, aptly named “Beware of Strangers,” provides a heartrending example of the terrible fate that could befall those unaccustomed to the ways of the city. In this tale, a trusting sixteen‑year‑old girl who was drawn to the “novelty” of the city accompanied her cousin on a business trip to Boston. While in the city, her delight in “the variety of beautiful objects that met her view on every hand” served to blind her to the lurking presence of the “destroyer,” who, disguised as an ami‑ able young gentleman, soon led her to a brothel on the pretense that he needed to visit a dear relative who was like a mother to him. Once there, she was imprisoned by the madam, whose “fiendlike tones . . . contrasted sadly with the sweet voice of maternal affection she had been accustomed to hear from her infancy,” thus leading her to realize the true value of her “virtuous happy home” in the peaceful countryside in contrast to the false allure of the city.28 Although they were not their primary focus, female moral reform‑ ers also expressed concern about the plight of rural young men who, as recounted in the Friend of Virtue, often abandoned “their peaceful and quiet homes for the city,” under the mistaken belief that they would “do better for themselves when away from the parental fireside.”29 Initially shocked by the “scenes of dissipation” these country innocents soon came to relish the corrupt pleasures of urban life.30 Highlighting the potentially tragic outcome of yielding to such pleasures, the Advocate of Moral Reform tells of a young man who, as he stood upon the scaffold awaiting execution for murder, used his final moments to warn others about the temptations that destroyed him. Noting that his downward spiral began when he first “visited the wretched place beside the railroad,” he felt it incumbent to caution other young men about those ruinous places before he left the world.31 Hoping to save them from such tragic ends, reformers thus implored young men to resist the false allure of the city: “We say then, for your own sake, for your parent’s sake, for humanity’s sake, young men, stay upon the farm.”32 As poignantly conveyed in the female reformers’ tales of ruin, it was the nation’s young women (and men) who, as they exchanged the “green

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Regulating Desire

fields, the groves [and] the garden” of their parents’ homes for the “noise and bustle, and impurity and vice” of large cities containing “places which the Bible calls ‘the way to hell,’” were traversing the symbolic border between America’s idealized past and its rapidly changing and highly uncertain future.33 Compelled by a profound sense of urgency, female moral reform‑ ers sought to expose and reform, and ultimately, if these efforts failed, to punish the wily seducer who stood poised to destroy their hopeful futures. In focusing their gaze on the city, despite an occasional sympathetic mention of the plight of their “colored sisters in bonds,”34 and their emu‑ lation of female abolitionists as a model of effective activism (discussed below), the female moral reformers do not appear to have been particularly concerned about the rampant sexual exploitation of young enslaved women. It is unlikely that their silence on this matter can simply be explained by a lack of knowledge on their part about the true conditions under which female slaves labored, as abolitionists, particularly those who were aligned with the woman’s rights cause, such as Sarah and Angelina Grimke and Lydia Maria Child, wrote passionately about their plight. Thus, for example, in her 1837 letter “On the Condition of Women in the United States,” Sarah Grimke wrote as follows: There is another class of women in this country, to whom I cannot refer, without feelings of the deepest shame and sorrow. I allude to our female slaves. Our southern cities are whelmed beneath a tide of pollution; the virtue of female slaves is wholly at the mercy of irresponsible tyrants, and women are bought and sold in slave markets, to gratify the brutal lust of those who bear the name of Christians. In our slave States, if . . . a woman desires to preserve her virtue unsullied, she is either bribed or whipped into compliance.35 Striking a similar chord, the Ladies Department of the abolitionist paper The Liberator “admonished its female readers to work for the immediate emancipation of their one million enslaved sisters ‘exposed to all the vio‑ lence of lust and passion—and treated with more indelicacy and cruelty than cattle.’”36 The fact that there was considerable crossover between the various reform movements of the time, and that, more specifically, many female moral reformers were also active in the abolitionist movement, makes the possible claim of a lack of knowledge even less probable.37 A more likely explanation is that like many white Northerners, includ‑ ing the abolitionists themselves, the female moral reformers had complicated

Predatory Men and Virtuous Maidens

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views about the morality of enslaved women. Although undoubtedly less likely than Southerners to see black women as naturally “governed almost entirely by [their] libido,”38 many abolitionists nonetheless believed, as Ron‑ ald G. Walters writes, that “‘illicit intercourse’ was embedded in the very conditions of Southern life,” and that its geographical “libidinousness” could “only be compared to other examples of utter depravity and dissolution.”39 Although generally placing the white slave owner at the center of the sexual narrative, abolitionist writings also expressed the fear that his corrosive influence would lead to the sexual corruption of enslaved women that in turn would put the purity of white women at risk. Thus, for example, although writing with a sense of “the deepest shame and sorrow” about the sexual exploitation of enslaved women, in the above‑referenced letter on “The Condition of Women in the United States,” Sarah Grimke also comments that they do not “suffer alone” but that the “moral purity of the white woman is [also] deeply contaminated” as a direct consequence of this mistreatment: In the daily habit of seeing the virtue of her enslaved sister sac‑ rificed without hesitancy or remorse, she looks upon the crimes of seduction and illicit intercourse without horror, and although not personally involved in the guilt, she loses that value for innocence in her own, as well as the other sex, which is one of the strongest safeguards to virtue.40 Although, as we have seen, moral reformers relied upon the seduction narrative in order to strengthen the public’s commitment to the cause of purity, in the present context, exposure to the sexual corruption of the slave owner was not seen as having the same salutatory effect, but rather was viewed as posing a direct threat to the moral integrity of white women. This dissimilarity may well reflect the view that sexual exploitation impacted the bondswoman differently than it did the innocent country girl. As the seduction narratives make clear, the fate of the latter was an inevitable slide into ruin and possibly even death. In contrast, rather than passively accepting her fate, the wronged slave woman was presented as more likely to take matters into her own hands. As one abolitionist sug‑ gested, she may well have been tempted to lure “young slaveholders into illicit attachments as a way of lessening chances that the favored slave might be sold—and to destroy the master’s constitution through physi‑ cal indulgence.”41 Similarly portrayed as intent upon retribution, another warned that enslaved women “who have been drawn into licentiousness by

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wicked men, if they retain their vicious habits, almost invariably display their revenge for their own debasement, by ensnaring others into the same corruption and moral ruin.”42 Revealed here is a clear attribution of sexual agency to the wronged enslaved women, thus suggesting that black women were more naturally libidinous than white women—a view that located them outside the boundaries of respectable womanhood despite existing expressions of concern for their plight.43 In this regard, Karen Sánchez‑Eppler makes the interesting argument that although feminist‑identified female abolitionists frequently emphasized “the similarities in the condition of women and slaves . . . their treatment of the figure of the sexually exploited female slave betrays an opposing desire to deny any share in this vulnerability.” To the point, she further explains that the “figure of the slave woman, whose inability to keep her body and its uses under her own control” allowed white women to project their own “sexual anxieties onto the sexualized body of the female slave” who became “a perfect conduit for the unarticulated and unacknowledged failure of the free woman to own her own body in marriage.”44 Although it is difficult to know with certainty whether these com‑ plex views about the sexuality of enslaved women were responsible for the moral reformers’ lack of attention to their plight, it is certainly a reasonable assumption that they both would have known about their circumstances and been influenced by the complex views that abolitionists expressed with respect to the morality of enslaved women. Intent upon filling the vacuum resulting from the erosion of traditional village life, it was thus the wily seducer of innocent country girls rather than the powerful slaveowner whom they sought to bring under control in order to safeguard female virtue. Although unspoken, the complexities of these racial attitudes indicates that the bodies of young white women, who were the ones most likely to be making the perilous journey from the bucolic country to the city, were regarded as more deserving of protection than the marginalized and potentially corrupting bodies of young black women. Attacking the Sexual Double Standard Like their male counterparts, female moral reformers were steeped in the evangelical fervor of the times. Inspired by their deep faith, they believed that only by the “unremitting and continued holding on to the arm of the Lord”45 would they succeed in saving the youth of America from ruin. Piety, however, was not the sole wellspring of their activism. Augmenting the power of their faith and thus distinguishing them from the men in the

Predatory Men and Virtuous Maidens

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purity reform movement, a deep distrust of and anger toward male sexual privilege infused their crusade to expose licentiousness and purify the nation. To the reformers, the sexual double standard—“that perverse max‑ im . . . that licentiousness in man is but a venial offence; while in woman it is a sin of the blackest dye—corrupting her whole soul, and utterly unfit‑ ting her for decent society”46—embodied the corrosive force of male desire. Rather than regarding this gendered characterization of human sexuality as an expression of natural or divinely sanctioned differences between men and women, they boldly sought to expose it as an artificial construct that had been “invented by base men themselves, in order to cover up their own deformity;—while they have heaped upon the victims of their own base‑ ness a large measure of that odium which justly belongs to themselves.”47 Compounding their anger over the asymmetrical consequences of the double standard, female moral reformers also made it clear that while women took the fall, it was men who were responsible for initiating most sexual encounters: “[M]an, as we think, is the great destroyer. In the pride of his heart, and prompted by the indulgence of lust, he goes forth, finds his victim, lays her on the impure altar, and there leaves her in all the agonies of woe.”48 Although certainly refracted through the existing moral code that extolled female virtue and passivity, the reformers’ fears about the young man who considered it a “sport and pastime . . . to destroy female innocence, and to scatter desolation and death through the community,”49 also reflected the very real dangers that young women faced, particularly if alone in the city. Indeed, this was the era of the Jacksonian “rake cul‑ ture,” which valorized unrestrained male sexuality. Reveling in the lifting of traditional familial and community restraints, rakes “took to the streets to enjoy their freedom,” while also enjoying an emerging domestic market in pornographic literature that was “characterized by ‘unbridled sensualisim and sadomasochistic violence.’”50 Seeking to raise public awareness, female moral reform periodicals were filled with seduction narratives in which a sexually aggressive male destroyed the life of an innocent and trusting young woman. For example, in a rather typical tale, Mary, a young woman of fifteen, confides in her mother that she longs for someone to love. Soon afterward, impressed by his gentlemanly ways, Mary’s father extends the “hospitalities of country life,” to a Mr. Everett, who is vacationing from the city. Had, however, Mary’s father, “known more of the character of his guest he would sooner have cherished a serpent,” but so great was Mr. Everett’s charm that he unfortunately failed to realize that along with “all the polish of a great city,” his guest has also imbibed “all its vices.”51

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Regulating Desire

Having “determined upon the ruin” of Mary, whose innocent and confiding nature “never dreamt of deception or dishonor,” Mr. Everett seduces her with the promise of marriage, and then promptly returns to the city. The tale ends with a typically melodramatic recounting of the stark differences in the fates that awaited the seducer and his victim: Would you see that family mansion now? The grass has grown in the pathway, the loaded vine has fallen to the ground, and the owl hoots from the deserted chamber. Would you see that outraged host and father? Behold him weeping over the newly made grave of his wife. Would you view that loving, betrayed, and forsaken daughter? Hearken to her screams as she clanks the maniac’s fetters and calls for her unweaned infant. And would you look upon that vile, and unpunished deceiver? There he goes in his gilded carriage, beside him sits his wedded wife, around him are his baptized children, and he is a candidate for the State Legislature.52 Here was the hated double standard in stark relief. Not only was the lib‑ ertine admitted into the sacred realm of marriage and able to sire children who were blessed by the church, he was also free to make his mark in the public realm of politics, while his victim and her family were left to face a future beset by madness, grief, and ultimately death. Determined to protect young women like Mary from “sinking lower in degradation and sin, until the last gleam of hope has faded away” due to the treacherous seducer who, after securing the confidence of his victim, “finds it comparatively an easy task to accomplish her destruction,” the reformers argued for a single standard of sexual behavior.53 Challenging existing conventions, they insisted that “moral purity in both sexes . . . be regarded in the same light and be esteemed and treated by the same rules.”54 Although advocating the replacement of the double sexual standard with a single standard of expected behavior, they also clearly believed that it was the seducer who deserved greater social censure than his victim. In a further effort to reverse the historic pattern of condemnation, they thus argued that “[i]f there is an individual who merits the deepest disgrace, who should be denied admittance into respectable and virtuous society . . . who should be loathed and shunned as the insidious poisonous serpent, or the foetid death breeding carcass, it is the libertine.”55 In keeping with the sexual ethos of the time, as they sought to replace the double standard with a single standard of morality, the female moral

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reformers did not consider the possibility of giving young women a wider berth within which to explore their sexuality, but rather, as discussed, they focused on persuading men to control their lust. Although their approach certainly reinforced prevailing notions of female purity and passivity, it also advanced a bold critique of male conduct on both an individual and a societal level. As Nancy Ryan writes: “Female moral reform . . . constituted a concrete, specific attempt to exert women’s power. . . .  [I]t was a direct, collective, organized effort, which aimed to control behavior and change values in the community at large.”56 Suggesting a degree of agency that was arguably at odds with their vision of the sexually passive female, these activists employed a multipronged strategy to bring about the desired change in sexual norms and behavior, which, as we will see, included the courageous demand that the state treat the seduction of an innocent girl as a punishable offense. THE INCULCATION OF INTERNAL RESTRAINT

Reflecting the growing importance of maternal nurture within the increasingly privatized and non–economically productive domestic realm (see chapter 4), one strategy the female moral reformers adopted for advancing a single standard of morality was to call upon mothers to develop appropriate stan‑ dards of behavior in their children. Honoring women’s special capacities and responsibilities, members of the AMFRS adopted the following resolution at their 1841 annual meeting: “That as the principles of licentiousness are often implanted or developed in early life, it is therefore the peculiar duty of mothers to attend strictly to the private habits, and carefully guard the associations of their children while very young.”57 This vigilance could not start too early. Pregnant women were accord‑ ingly advised to avoid certain stimulating beverages, such as tea, coffee, and alcohol, based on the belief that the ingestion of these stimulants would encourage the “precocious development” of their baby’s organs, thus unleash‑ ing “their animal propensities” and dooming the child to a life governed by the “dominion of appetite and lust.”58 Following birth, mothers were advised not to overfeed their children so as to not stimulate their bodies and prematurely inflame their passions. Reformers warned that if indulged, a child’s “disposition to yield to unshallowed desires [would be] greatly increased.”59 In this regard, the eating of sweets from the confectioner’s shop was thought to be particularly dangerous, and mothers were warned that the consumption of these “poisonous articles . . . benumbs the moral and intellectual powers, inflames the passions and leads to impurity in heart and life—to the ruin of body and that of the soul too.”60

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Excess salt was also cited as a possible source of “licentious tendencies,” thus provoking the question as to “whether the fabled notion that Venus rose from the sea, had not its origins in the general notion among the ancients, that the salt of the sea water had the tendency in question.”61 Of particular concern was its “excessive use in the way of pickling or preserving food,” which one article seems to suggest that by being “incorporated into the texture of . . . food,” was more likely to “implant” a “love of excitement” than when simply added to food after its preparation.62 Novel reading was likewise regarded as a source of dangerous cor‑ ruption that mothers needed to carefully guard against. Highlighting these dangers, Miss M. V. Ball, who introduced a resolution against the reading of novels at the 1847 annual meeting of the New England Female Moral Reform Society, cautioned that “[p]rinciples thus embraced will not remain dormant. Action will follow—dark and fearful action  .  .  .  that in multitudes of cases brings the individual to an untimely grave.”63 According to one physician who had apparently treated a number of young women who had overindulged in this pastime, excessive novel reading could actually result in a particular type of mental derangement known as “moral insanity.”64 Mothers were also advised to inculcate internalized standards of appro‑ priate moral behavior in their children so that they would gain self‑mastery over their impulses. Children were thus to be provided with predictable schedules and clear behavioral expectations to help them develop into self‑regulating adults who would not be led astray by temptation.65 To fur‑ ther enhance the development of internal controls, children were also to be given a sound moral education, which, in a marked departure from the conventions of the time, was to include information about sex, albeit in veiled and highly moralistic terms. Directly challenging the prevailing view that this would lead to immoral behavior, female moral reformers firmly believed that only by directly addressing the evils of licentious behavior “in the nursery and family circles” could parents hope to protect their children from the corrupting influences of an impure world.66 Although the principles of right living and the love of virtue were to be inculcated in both sons and daughters, a mother’s responsibilities were thought to take on a heightened urgency when it came to her sons, as it was unbridled male lust that threatened to plunge the nation into a vortex of sin. A mother was thus advised to spend time with her son before he took leave of the family home for life in the city. She was to sit quietly by his bedside and explain the importance of resisting temptation and preserving his sexual purity, and it was recommended that she extract a promise from him that “he would return to her as virtuous as he left.”67

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By internalizing a mother’s image and words, it was hoped that a young man would have a well of strength to draw upon when temptation beckoned. In a paean to his mother’s beneficent influence, one grateful son wrote: Five years I lived in the western part of New York where . . .  [t]emptation after temptation assailed me, and many a time was I almost carried captive by Satan at his will. But when on the very verge of the precipice, the bulwark of my mother’s instruc‑ tions would rise up before me, and I started back with horror from that awful abyss before me.68 Sadly, however, as captured in the following sorrowful excerpt from a poem by an inmate in the Massachusetts State Prison, the reformers also recognized that a mother’s love and guidance might not always be sufficient to save her son from ruin: I’m thinking of those days, mother,    When, with such earnest pride, You watched the dawning of my youth,    And pressed me to your side. . . .  I’m thinking of the day, mother    I left thy watchful care, When they fond heart was tilted,    To Heaven—thy trust was there . . .  I would not have thee know, mother,    How brightest hopes decay— The tempter, with his baneful cup,    Has dashed them all away.69 Rooted in the fear that maternal influence might not be powerful enough to save all sons from ruin as they faced the temptations of the city, reformers also called upon virtuous women to cast out the rogue from civil society thus depriving him of access to the intended targets of his sensual longings. CASTING OUT THE LIBERTINE

Directing their attention to the wily sensualist, female moral reformers imple‑ mented the dual strategy of exposing and shunning the libertine. Far bolder

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than the turn to mothers, this approach openly challenged male privilege and gave young women a concrete strategy for resisting sexual pressure. With respect to public exposure, the female moral reformers announced in the Advocate that where the mask of the offender “renders the accomplish‑ ment of his villainous schemes comparatively easy,” it was incumbent upon them to reveal “him to the world as he really is” in order to “forewarn the victims he designs to entrap.”70 Thus, for example, the Advocate warned its readers that: “[t]wo young men of the village of Oswego whose names are Young and Cochran, have pursued for many months a course of atrocious villainy. It is thought proper to give their names and characters that their iniquities might be rebuked.”71 In another issue, noting that not even in “puritanic New England” were young women safe from male predation, the Advocate warned its Vermont readers, particularly those in Rutland and Windsor counties, that a “walking pestilence,” named Morgan was passing himself off as a dance instructor, but in reality, was nothing but “a monster in bodily size” who preyed upon those entrusted to his care.72 Presumably in an attempt to deflect anticipated criticism, the reformers insisted that if newspapers had the right to publish the names of common criminals, they certainly were entitled to publish the name of a thief who stole from a woman the “very life of life—her priceless virtue.”73 Drawing upon a central theme in their legislative campaign to criminalize seduction, we see here the reformers’ effort to impress upon their readers that the tak‑ ing of a girl’s virginity was a matter of grave social concern that demanded a visible public response in order to disarm those with evil intent.74 In addition to insisting that the sexual rogue was an enemy of virtu‑ ous women who deserved to have his name imprinted upon the public’s mind, reformers further sought to exclude him from respectable society. To this end, members of female moral reform societies were required to sign a pledge to not associate with the libertine so he would know that “his conduct is abhorred by the virtuous [and] is an abomination in the sight of God.”75 Aware that this strategy was unlikely to deter the hardened destroyer of virtue from his evil ways, reformers focused their efforts on the rising generation. By sending a strong message to young men that their unchaste behavior would no longer be greeted with a wink and a nod, but, as in the case of women, would result in their being “cast out of society and shunned as contaminating and vile,” reformers hoped they would come to embrace the principles of righteousness living.76 Perhaps even more importantly than seeking to alter male behavior, the female moral reformers hoped that by making it socially acceptable to withdraw from unacceptable society, the young women, who were the

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“objects sought, with a truly satanic avidity by all the panders and votaries of lust who prowl through the land,”77 would be provided with the tools they needed in order to “protect themselves from profligate men.”78 Declaring that in “[u]nion is strength,” young women were thus encouraged to band together in moral reform societies in order to “be mutual helpers, and to stand by each other’s welfares.”79 By “firmly and unitedly,” declaring that they would have “no social intercourse with a young man who is known to be lewd or even suspected of it,” young women were thus encouraged to carve out a social space in which they could be free from unwanted sexual advances, even if this meant cutting themselves off from male companionship.80 Exemplifying this resolve, one story tells of a “respectable young female” who chastised her friend for refusing to take her brother’s arm the previous evening. Explaining that she refused to do so because she understood that he was licentious, the sister responds: “Pshaw . . . if you refuse young men on that account, you will not have many to wait upon you, I can assure you.” Nobly, the friend responds “then I will do without their attention.”81 By insisting that the redemption of society depended upon the isolation of the libertine, reformers invested the rejection of predatory men with a profound social and spiritual significance, thus signaling that young women had the right, if not the duty, to resist unwanted sexual attention. Although this strategy reflected the prevailing belief that women lacked sexual agency, the female moral reformers clearly did not equate female passionlessness with female powerlessness.82 Aware that their cause was highly unpopular, they claimed a right to remake male sexual behavior for the betterment of women, even if this required revealing the sexual habits of prominent men, or pushing them to the margins of respectable society. Deeply steeped in a sense of female identity, they sought to harness women’s “moral power” as a powerful force for change.

Turning to the State: The Legislative Campaign to Criminalize the Act of Seduction A decade before the first Woman’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, the AFMRS moved into the political realm with the demand that the New York legislature reform its criminal code to take account of the ruinous injuries of seduction.83 Acutely aware that as women they had no “voice in electing our law makers, except by the influence we may properly exert over those with whom we are connected,”84 and that they were unlikely to persuade

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their male relatives to focus on the “important question of morality,” given their investment in partisan politics,85 female moral reformers launched a petition campaign to let their lawmakers know that “the female portion of their constituents [had] some claim upon them.”86 Eschewing, as Anne M. Boylan discusses, the deferential and highly individualistic approach that female benevolent groups typically adopted when requesting support or assistance from politicians, the leaders of the AFMRS sought to mobilize the collective power of their supporters in to advance their cause.87 Accordingly, they vowed to act with “unceasing firmness,”88 and to resubmit their petitions each legislative session, even if their “continual coming, might weary both friend and foe,” until lawmakers took “right action” against “the destroyer of innocence whatever may be his garb or profession.”89 Despite this sweeping call to action, the AMRFS’ legislative campaign remained tightly focused on New York. Although the New England Moral Reform Society (NEFMRS) eventually launched a similar campaign directed at the Massachusetts legislature, according to Daniel Wright, theirs was a “comparatively half‑hearted effort,” and when the “anti‑seduction law failed to pass after three legislative sessions, the NEFMRS gave up the campaign, settling for an anti‑abduction bill,” which was limited to punishing the lur‑ ing of young women into prostitution.90 Although other states eventually followed New York’s lead and passed similar anti‑seduction laws, in contrast to the campaign to raise the age of sexual consent (see chapter 2), this early foray into the legislative arena to protect the interests of young women did not blossom into a coordinated national effort, but instead remained the province of locally focused activists. Although, as discussed above, the female moral reformers were not particularly concerned about the sexual exploitation of young slave women, in seeking to influence the political process, they invoked the activism of female abolitionists as a source of inspiration. Lauding the abolitionists’ petition campaign as a proud example of what collective and sustained female activism could accomplish, in 1841, in an effort to energize a membership that was continually disheartened by the disregard in which their cause was held, the AFMRS adopted a resolution calling upon its members to emulate the “zeal and energy” of women in Britain who had collected a “roll of petitions reaching one mile and a quarter in length, and requiring the strength of four men to raise it from the floor of the House of Parliament” in support of the anti-slavery cause.91 Similarly, in its 1841 Annual Report, the Utica Female Moral Society noted that “[i]t was woman’s petitioning the British Parliament that gave the death-blow and

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final overthrow to the system of English slavery,” and asked its members to similarly commit to doing “as much work towards rescuing [their] sisters from the fell destroyer of virtue.”92 In insisting that, as described below, a recalcitrant and frequently belligerent audience listen to their testimony regarding women’s sexual grievances, this effort signaled, as Boylan asserts, that “organized woman‑ hood had the right to formulate its own political agenda.”93 At the center of this political agenda was an unprecedented demand that the state align itself with the interests of young women by punishing men who tricked them into relinquishing their virginity. Although not challenging existing beliefs about female purity, this demand was nonetheless quite subversive on several mutually reinforcing levels. First, despite their formal exclusion from the political realm, reform‑ ers insisted that as women they had a “right to petition the legislature” in order to make their collective voice heard.94 Second, and again despite their formal exclusion from the political realm, the moral reformers insisted that young women were entitled to legal recognition based upon their distinc‑ tive needs. Seeking to render them visible as political subjects, they cast them as juridical persons with an unmediated claim upon the protective authority of the state. Thirdly, their effort was a broad frontal attack on male sexual privilege, which carried with it a presumed right of access to youthful female bodies. Lastly, building upon these inherently disrup‑ tive claims, their demand for a criminal anti‑seduction law also sought to destabilize the presumed objectivity of the legal system by exposing the fact that in an “age of reformation and improvement—when statutes on almost every subject have been revised” the laws that impacted women remained “unimproved . . . [and] defective” as evidenced by their continued privileg‑ ing of male lust over youthful female virtue.95 The response of lawmakers to the reformers’ petition campaign is clearly indicative of its subversive and destabilizing nature. Deriding their ill‑advised attempt to regulate private morality, one elected official com‑ mented that while his colleagues laughed at the first two or three petitions as “ridiculous absurdities, springing from the fruitful brains of some wags, who adopted this expedient to amuse themselves,” once they recognized that “these wags” were actually serious, he suggested the bill proposed by these “sagacious statesmen in petticoats” should be entitled “an act to subdue the passions and control, the thoughts, intents and motives of the human heart.”96 Making clear that this was not an isolated reaction, an article in the Advocate complained of the fact that “the rights, the feelings, the welfare,

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temporal and eternal, of women, [were] not among the subjects of their legislative guardianship,” and that lawmakers not uncommonly responded to the “applications of honest and honorable women for legislative attention to their own rights, and to the crimes especially affecting their sex,”97 with “heartless cavils, frivolous objections, and unkind insinuations” which were “sharper than a serpent’s tooth to the sensitive heart.”98 In a similar vein, E. P. Hurlbut, a prominent member of the New York bar, recounted that when last presented with the reformers’ petitions: “[t]hese grave legislators ill concealed their mirth at this outbreak of humanity. It was a capital joke, and made them merry for a season.”99 Underscoring the depth of the legislative resistance to enlarging the concept of criminal harm to encompass the wrongs of seduction, Hurlbut further commented that if instead of presenting a petition praying for pro‑ tection from licentious men, “these ladies had presented a petition, praying for further protection of their wardrobes from theft, a bill for that purpose would have been passed by this gallant legislature.” However, although valu‑ ing “silks and laces,” these “Solons” derided “the holiest sentiments of the being they adorned—they ‘could pity the plumage—and forget the dying bird.’”100 Although it is easy from a modern sensibility to dismiss Hurlbut’s comments as simply another manifestation of the overarching emphasis on female purity, they can also be read as a demand that the law take the claims of women to bodily integrity as seriously as it took other injuries, such as the theft of one’s material possessions—a theme that, as discussed in the next chapter, would become popular in the campaign to raise the age of sexual consent. In a rather daring critique of male authority, the reformers charged that the lawmakers’ resistance to change stemmed from their unwillingness to subject their own sensual passions to the authority of the law. Identifying their “secret love of vice,” as a fertile source of resistance to this “whole‑ some” law, they stressed the importance of electing virtuous men to office, so as to avoid the moral taint of corrupt rulers.101 In fact, as the Advocate pointed out, this “secret love of vice” was not so secret, but rather was a visible and well‑enjoyed prerogative of office, noting that: “[w]henever a legislature is in session at Albany, Harrisburg, Columbus, or any other inland seat of government, including Washington, abandoned women seek each of these places by dozens or scores, and remain there during the session, for the especial accommodation of Senators and Representatives.”102 Acting under these influences, was it thus any wonder, the Advocate opined, that legislators responded to the reformers’ petitions with a “contemptuous and indecent laughter” better befitting the “libertine and the profligate” than the Christian or the “good member of society.”103

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27

The anti‑seduction campaign was rooted in a powerful critique of prevailing legal norms in both the civil and criminal arenas, which, they argued, served to reinforce male interests in and authority over young women’s bodies. In advancing this gendered critique of the law, female moral reformers hoped for statutory change that would simultaneously protect young women from sexual coercion and enshrine the value of female sexual purity into the criminal code. Weaving through their legislative campaign, these entwined motifs reflect the reformers’ powerful and early demand that lawmakers divest the law of its overt masculine tilt through the incorpora‑ tion of a female‑centered concept of sexual injury into a legal regime that sanctioned unchecked lust to the detriment of innocent young women. At the time the AFMRS launched its petition campaign, seduction was cognizable in tort as a private civil wrong. Reflecting its origins as a proprietary action, the reformers were highly critical of the mockery they believed this cause of action made of a young woman’s devastating loss. Embodying the Roman law principle that “some individuals may hold property interests in the bodies and sexuality of others,” the civil seduc‑ tion action emerged out of the ancient writ of “per quod servitium amisist,” which enabled a master to recover damages from a third party for the loss of services stemming from an injury to his servant.104 Reflecting its origins, a suit against a seducer was similarly intended to compensate a father for the loss of his daughter’s services resulting from her seduction. Further underscoring the fact this sexual injury was cognizable only to the extent it resulted in an economic loss to him, in its original form, a father could only maintain an action against his daughter’s seducer in cases where the seduction had resulted in pregnancy, thus demonstrably interfering with her ability to render services to him. Over time, courts began to regard the loss of services requirement as more of a legal formality, and they thus moved away from the necessity of proving that the seduction had actually resulted in a pregnancy. Con‑ comitantly, the law began to regard the true injury as moral in nature; consequently, the interest to be vindicated became the irretrievable loss of a young woman’s virginity, rather than the loss of her services. However, this growing emphasis on the moral devastation of seduction did not result in the legal empowerment of young women.105 Still considered to be the aggrieved party, a father thus became entitled to compensation for the “dishonor and disgrace thus cast upon his family” and for the “atrocious invasion of his household peace.”106 The potential ruin of a young woman’s future remained legally invisible and therefore uncompensable. Highly critical of this approach, the female moral reformers insisted that seduction was not simply a private wrong that could be rectified

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by compensating a father for the harm to his proprietary interest in his daughter’s body and the loss of his good name. Critically, they argued that this highly individualized approach failed to recognize that seduction was a public wrong, which was “degrading to moral and accountable beings and destructive of the best interests of individuals, families and society at large.”107 On behalf of an “outraged, bleeding humanity,” the reformers thus called upon the New York legislature to elevate the nation’s “standard of VIRTUE, rather than crushing it in the dust,” by taking a firm stand against the “destroyer of innocence” who was wreaking havoc “through the length and breadth of our beloved country.”108 The reformers’ resolve to make seduction a crime was strengthened by their moral outrage over the fact that the monetary damages that were awarded in a civil suit did not account for the true injury of seduction, namely, the theft of that “which is more precious than all earthly treasures.”109 They also vigorously resisted the idea that money could ever compensate a woman for the loss of her virtue. Characterizing seduction as a more detestable crime than murder in which “physical suffering is but momentary,” while seduction destroyed “both the character and hopes of his victim, leaving her a burden to herself and a disgrace to her friends,”110 they were indignant at the sug‑ gestion that the “wreck of all that makes life desirable, could be repaired” by the payment of “a little sordid dust,” which then enabled the “perpetrator of one the foulest crimes that disgrace humanity” to proceed with his life as if he was not responsible for the ruination of another.111 Another important reformist critique of the civil law approach was that it failed to act as a deterrent to seduction. As they pointed out, this was particularly true where a man of means was concerned, since once he had paid whatever damages were due, the “vile destroyer” was once again free “to seek fresh victims, and desolate other hearts.”112 Highlighting the ineffectiveness of attempting to stem the tide of licentiousness by threat‑ ening men with a damages award, Attorney Hurlbut recounted a case in which “the defendant insultingly sent the L 1,000 damages awarded by the jury to the injured father, by a livery servant, with his compliments, and that he would with pleasure pay him another L 1,000, if he would send him his second daughter!”113 Although highly critical of the limits of the civil law approach, the reformers reserved their greatest wrath for the criminal justice system whose hierarchy of wrongs, they argued, ignored the grievous theft of female virtue while punishing far more minor transgressions. Capturing this skewed concept of justice, the Advocate disdainfully referred to the inherent unfairness of a system that permitted a loathsome seducer to move freely about “in the society of the virtuous and the fair as though he were not a villain and a

Predatory Men and Virtuous Maidens

29

moral murderer” while sentencing the “poor wretch who steals a few dol‑ lars . . . to appease his hunger or hide his nakedness” to hard labor or a lengthy prison term.114 “Shame” the Advocate thus proclaimed—“on such laws that punish the small offender, and let the larger ones go unwhipped of justice—that strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, nay a mammoth.”115 Further revealing the criminal justice system’s utter lack of regard for the fate of young women, the Advocate mockingly describes a case in which the law cared not for the seducer who had “destroyed every worldly happiness and forced [a young woman] to the den of death,” while the man who sub‑ sequently disinterred her body from the grave for dissection was sentenced to three years at a state prison for “robbing the worms of their portion.”116 To the reformers, these and other similar miscarriages of justice were clear indications that the law cared little for the suffering of the ruined woman who most likely was consigned to “a life of infamy here and almost certain perdition hereafter.”117 The fact that no counterbalancing “brand of legal infamy” was stamped on the seducer’s forehead118 confirmed to them that the double standard was not simply a cultural phenomenon but had been formally encoded into law through a male‑centered concept of injury. Taking their critique a step farther, the reformers argued that this dual system of justice encouraged predatory behavior by signaling to men that the debasement of young women was acceptable behavior: The Thief of virtue is abroad in our cities. . . . He marks those who tempt him as the lambs of a sheep‑fold tempt the wily wolf . . . and stops at nothing till they becomes [sic] his prey. He beholds them writhing amid the chains his hands have forged, laughs at their agony—boasts of his prowess—glories in the thought that there is no law that can reach him, and turns away to seek new victims.119 Only, they argued, by treating this murderer of innocence in a similar fashion to the murderer of the physical body would society be made safe from the seducer’s “fiend like depredations,”120 which threatened to destroy all that was good and pure. In 1848, after nearly a decade of sustained agitation, the AFMRS finally succeeded in persuading the New York legislature to punish the destroyer of innocence by making it a crime for any person, “under the promise of marriage,” to seduce and have sexual intercourse with a female of “previ‑ ous chaste character.”121 Other states soon followed suit, and by the turn of the century a clear majority of states likewise punished the seduction of a chaste female as a crime.122 According to Daniel Wright, in addition to

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the reformers’ gritty perseverance, this hard‑won victory also reflected the growing acceptance of the previously discussed “new gender ideology which located sexual aggressiveness in men and victimhood in women” as well as the impact of several sensational murder trials which “gripped the morbid imagination of the public for a decade and roused widespread sympathy of the plight of young, single women in the city.”123 Reflective of this new gender ideology, if a young woman had already relinquished her “treasure,” any subsequent act of seduction was not likely to be actionable as a crime as the irreparable harm was deemed to have already taken place. In short, there was nothing left of value to steal. Despite this victory, by 1850, the female moral reformers’ evangelically inspired preoccupation with the “fallen” woman had largely run its course. No longer buoyed by the perfectionist zeal of the Second Great Awakening, the American Female Moral Reform Society, now renamed the American Female Guardian Society, had largely abandoned its transformative crusade to rewrite the sexual script on behalf of youthful female innocence in favor of “social welfare institution‑building in the city” in order to aid the grow‑ ing number of urban poor.124 This shift in direction should not, however, be read as a sign of the reformers’ acceptance of a more relaxed sexual code; rather, as Wright puts it, “their avowal of social reform”125 signaled the waning of their millennial optimism about the possibility of changing male behavior for the benefit of young women.

Conclusion Going well beyond the acceptable parameters of ladylike behavior, female moral reformers sought to expose the hypocrisy of a justice system that punished the poor for stealing bread to assuage their hunger while wink‑ ing at predatory behavior. In a bold assault on male sexual privilege, they decried the biased nature of the law, which they argued was shaped by men in order to hide their own transgressions. Seeking to correct the masculin‑ ist structure of the law, they insisted that the protection of young women from sexual predation was a moral imperative that overrode the right of male access to their bodies, although, as we have seen, the bodies of young enslaved women largely lay outside the scope of this transformative vision. Further, the crime of seduction also expanded the narrow borders of what was considered to be actionable nonconsensual sexual activity, thus pre‑ saging the efforts by late‑twentieth‑century feminists to broaden the legal boundaries of the criminal concept of rape.

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31

Although quite bold and radical on one level, the anti‑seduction campaign was also rooted in and sought to reinforce prevailing sexual norms. Casting young women solely as sexual victims without desire or agency, female moral reformers hoped to enlist the strong arm of the state to help them preserve the crown of their womanhood. Reinforcing the fact that the drive to criminalize seduction was as much about the preservation of virginity as it was about punishing male predatory behavior, not only did the New York statute fail to protect girls who were not of a “previous chaste character,” it barred the prosecution of a man who was willing to hide his transgression under a patina of respectability by offering to marry the young woman he had seduced. This first organized effort to reform the law based upon the categorical needs of young women, raises important questions about the ways in which the law can be used to both safeguard their bodily integrity and police the boundaries of their sexual activity, as well as, in more contemporary contexts, to enhance sexual autonomy and decision making. Accordingly, this early campaign sets the stage for our ongoing inquiry into the ways in which social anxiety about youthful female sexuality has been channeled into statutory regimes that regulate young women’s bodies in ways that are both potentially liberating and stifling.

2

Protecting Her Most Prized Possession The Campaign to Raise the Age of Sexual Consent

Introduction As we saw in the last chapter, by mid‑century, with the fading of millennial optimism regarding the perfectibility of society, the female moral reformers shifted their focus from ridding the nation of sexual sin to social service work on behalf of the growing ranks of the urban poor, thus effectively marking the end of “female moral reform as a nationwide moral crusade.”1 In the years after the Civil War, however, a loosely linked group of reformers once again turned its attention to the hated double standard as a social signi‑ fier of male sexual excess. Responding to a growing demand by physicians and public health officials that American cities adopt the European model of regulating prostitution in order to halt the spread of venereal disease, these activists joined together under the aegis of the New York Committee for the Prevention of State Regulation of Vice, to prevent, as Josephine Butler, the renowned British Social Purity leader, put it, “the patronage of debauchery on the part of the State and authorities.”2 Likening prostitution to slavery, and drawing upon antebellum themes of social and moral regeneration, these “new abolitionists,” as they came to be known, soon moved beyond their initial defensive position to embrace a far more transformative vision of emancipating “both woman‑ hood and manhood from the degrading bondage to abnormal passions and sensualism.”3 Reawakened to the potentially devastating consequences of the double standard of morality, which they regarded as the wellspring of prostitution, the new abolitionists gradually coalesced under the broader banner of “social purity.” 33

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Like the female moral reformers before them, their concerns about the devastating consequences of unchecked male lust quickly blossomed into a renewed focus on the particular vulnerability of young women—a focus that set the stage for a new phase of activism aimed at protecting the rising generation from ruin. More specifically, upon learning that in many states, girls as young as the age of ten were “held to be legally capable of ‘consenting’ to their own ruin,”4 social purity reformers launched a nation‑ wide campaign aimed at persuading state legislators to enact laws raising the age of consent to at least eighteen, thus once again positioning young women at the center of the sexual reform agenda. However, the campaign to raise the age of consent was not simply a replay of the millennially inspired effort to rewrite the sexual script for the benefit of young women. Originating in an organized attempt to defeat the pro‑regulationist physicians, these postbellum reformers focused their energies on legal change. Moreover, in seeking to rewrite the law, rather than being primarily dependent upon a morally outraged womanhood to bring the predatory male under control, they were able to capitalize on the contribution of professional women, including attorney Georgia Mark, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, and Reverend Antoinette Brown Blackwell, who lent their expertise to the cause. We thus see a bolder and more informed asser‑ tion of female power in this late‑nineteenth‑century drive to restructure the relationship between the state and the youthful female body. Setting the stage for our discussion of the campaign to raise the age of sexual consent, we begin with the precipitating debate over the legalization of prostitution.

“One Night with Venus and a Lifetime with Mercury”: The Battle over State‑Sanctioned Vice In 1858, in his highly influential treatise The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes and Effects Throughout the World, Dr. William Sanger, a prominent New York physician, expressed grave concern about the “moral pestilence” of venereal disease and its insidious infiltration of “the privacy of the domestic circle.”5 Pronouncing it a “mere absurdity to assert that prostitution could ever be eradicated” given the “inextinguishable natural impulse on the part of one sex,” he urged the adoption of the Parisian system of inspection and licensure of prostitutes in order to direct the trade “into channels where its most injurious results can be encountered, and its dangerous tendencies either entirely arrested or materially weakened.”6

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Although many in the medical profession apparently shared Dr. Sanger’s views that prostitution would never be eradicated and should thus be controlled by the state, most physicians were not yet ready to breach the formidable wall of silence surrounding the “social evil,” as it was often called.7 This wall, however, began to crumble in the years after the Civil War as prominent physicians became increasingly alarmed about the spread of venereal disease, which they linked directly to the contaminated body of the prostitute.8 Rescuing the Nation from the Diseased Female Body In 1874, in a groundbreaking speech before the American Medical Associa‑ tion, Dr. Samuel D. Gross, an eminent surgeon from Philadelphia, warned that syphilis was having a “deteriorating influence upon the human race.”9 Convinced, like Sanger, that man’s “sexual passions must and will seek indulgence,” Gross advocated the mandatory inspection of prostitutes “at least once every fourth day, or twice a week” and the placing of all “women found to be unclean . . . in quarantine, or under proper restraint” in order to bring the scourge of venereal disease under control.10 Accordingly, he exhorted the medical men before him to “march to the front and discharge their duty, however much they may be abused or reproached for their con‑ duct by the ignorant and the foolish.”11 Echoing similar themes, in his 1876 anniversary address before the American Medical Association, Dr. Marion J. Sims, the father of American gynecology, warned that a syphilitic scourge was “sapping the foundations of society, poisoning the sources of life, rendering existences miserable, and deteriorating the whole human family.”12 Declaring syphilis an even greater threat to the “well‑being of the human race” than the combined effects of yellow fever, cholera, and smallpox, Sims insisted that doctors were under a moral obligation to awaken those who “live in darkness and utter ignorance of the dangers that threaten them.”13 As the “custodians of the health of forty millions of people,” he exhorted his colleagues to appeal to state legislatures to “give us the power to blot out this blight from among us.”14 As discussed below, pro‑regulation physicians derided the plan of the social purity reformers to control the spread of venereal disease by inculcat‑ ing the value of sexual restraint in men as the naive vision of “outspoken women, of sensitive and sincere natures, but of inadequate knowledge and narrowed judgment.”15 Claiming that these women lacked the scientific train‑ ing needed to appreciate the fact that sexual intercourse was an “imperious

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necessity” for men who would naturally “brave any danger, however great, to health and even life”16 in order to satisfy their desires, they argued their approach to the problem was as foolish as attempting to “dry up the Atlantic ocean” or “arrest the movement of the earth around the sun.”17 By shifting the discourse about the “fallen” woman from the realm of morality to the scientific realm of the body, pro‑regulation physicians were able to claim that the matter should be entrusted to their expertise.18 Privileging their professional status, they asserted that they alone had the specialized knowledge needed to comprehend the fact that the causes and harms of prostitution were physiological in nature. Asserting that the allure of prostitution was rooted in a biological imperative rather than in impure impulses, they argued that the true evil of prostitution lay not in the sating of desire, but in the spread of disease, thus making it clear that moral transformation would have little impact on the scourge threatening the well‑being of the nation. Dismissing the argument of the social purity reformers that the effec‑ tive legalization of prostitution would promote both immorality and the subjugation of women as naive and uninformed, activist doctors insisted that redemption from the ravages of venereal disease justified curtailing the autonomy of the prostitute. Looking to Europe, including England, which had recently enacted a series of Contagious Diseases Acts, for direction, they thus argued for a regulatory scheme that would entail the registration and medical inspection of prostitutes, their quarantine in a hospital if found to be diseased, and the issuance of certificates of clean health to those free from or cured of disease.19 In short, the doctors’ proposed solution to the spread of disease entailed vesting them with formal supervisory authority over the body of the prostitute. Although the campaign to regulate prostitution did not generally meet with success, medical professionals did score a significant, although short‑lived, victory in the city of St. Louis, which enacted a “Social Evil Ordinance” in 1870 after a warning was issued by city health inspector Dr. William L. Barrett that prostitution was “destroying the health and vigor of a large portion of our inhabitants, and tainting their blood with an ineradicable poison.”20 Until its repeal in 1874, following an outpouring of condemnation, the ordinance required prostitutes to register with the city and submit themselves to regular examinations with one of the six doctors appointed by the Board of Health for that purpose. If diseased, the women were quarantined in the Social Evil Hospital until cured. Registered prostitutes were also required to pay a weekly stipend to the hospital to help defray the medical costs of treatment.21

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Although the prostitute was the primary target of social control measures, some pro‑regulationist physicians also believed that immigrants were a potential source of disease. Accordingly, to safeguard the nation from their believed contaminating influence, they recommended the man‑ datory inspection of all newcomers, with the quarantine and treatment of those found to be infected. Women emigrating from China generated a particular anxiety, as many pro‑regulationist doctors believed that most of them were being brought into this country as sex slaves. Characterizing them as “degraded wretches,” Dr. Sims accused them of breeding “moral and physical pestilence.”22 Undoubtedly, most proponents of regulation were genuinely concerned about the suffering of those infected with venereal disease. In particular, the recent discovery of “syphilis of the innocent,” most notably the wives and unborn children of men who frequented prostitutes, challenged the traditional belief that “venereal diseases were punishment for moral trans‑ gressions” and lent a poignant urgency to their effort to bring the disease under control.23 Nonetheless, the call for regulation was a deeply gendered approach to the management of disease that pathologized prostitutes as the source of contamination while naturalizing the desires of the men who purchased their sexual services. Steeped in the traditional medical view of female bodies as inher‑ ently inferior and unclean, doctors generally assumed that “men acquired venereal disease from women.”24 In direct contrast to the below‑discussed view of the purity reformers that prostitutes were the victims of man’s ani‑ malistic passions, the medical proponents of regulation represented men as the victims of contaminated woman. As Mary Sponberg writes, “The body of the prostitute came to be synonymous with venereal disease. Prostitutes were not merely agents of transmission but somehow inherently diseased, if not the disease itself.”25 Echoing these themes, in his 1874 speech before the AMA, Dr. Samuel D. Gross compared the prostitute to the vendor of food who places contaminated goods into the stream of commerce: Prostitution is an occupation, a profession, a trade, a business; and is the degraded creature who follows it and infects those who hold commerce with her any better than the baker who sells unwholesome bread, the woman who poisons her custom‑ ers with decayed vegetables, or the butcher who sells infected meat, a crime which in the dark ages used to be punished with death?26

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He thus argued that, like the vendors of food products who “do not com‑ plain when the market inspector comes along, and condemns their rotten goods, because they know he is only carrying out the injunctions of the law . . . made especially for the benefit of the citizens of the state,” the prostitute should likewise be willing to submit her “rotten goods” to legally mandated inspections for the good of her innocent customers.27 Reflecting similar sentiments, in a speech before the Philadelphia County Medical Society, Dr. White, in describing his treatment of an infected young prostitute and four of her customers, identified her as the source of “all this evil,” without considering that she had most likely been infected by a customer, perhaps even by one of the men he was treating. Commenting that it “would be idle to speculate upon the possible extent of the damage inflicted upon this community by that one woman,” he lamented the fact that she had not been “forcibly and peremptorily isolated, and kept so while she suffered from contagious lesions,” in order to have prevented the ensuing “endless and ever‑widening series of evils,” which extended to the mistress of one customer, who subsequently gave birth to a syphilitic child, and the “syphilized” wife of another.28 In identifying the prostitute as the source of contagion, doctors referred to the male body as if it were simply a conduit for the transmission of venereal poison from the diseased woman to the innocent one. As in Dr. White’s “endless and ever‑widening circle of evils,” it was the woman’s sexualized body, rather than the man’s naturalized desires, that was thought to threaten the health of the nation. Particularly insidious, one could never predict when her venom might fell another innocent victim. Stressing that if they failed to take action, not even the better sorts of families would be immune from the spread of this poison, Philadelphia physician George Swazy warned his colleagues that the “contagions of these women, from the erring to the innocent, may find their way into even our families, through the process of marriage.”29 Similarly, a group of physicians serving on the Sanitary Committee of New York’s Metropolitan Board of Health cautioned that “no one can know what the young man is who proposes to marry his daughter. He may possess a good character and the noblest character, and yet this daughter may give birth to diseased children, and die of the diseases which prostitutes have generated and disseminated.”30 Transgressing the Victorian ideal of the desexualized woman, in whom “sexual characteristics [were] co‑opted as maternal characteristics,”31 the prostitute was thus cast as a sexual outlaw who crossed the boundaries of appropriate female behavior. In keeping with the emerging trend of holding municipal governments responsible for cleaning up urban environments,

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doctors argued that sanitizing the body of the prostitute was accordingly a legitimate public function for the good of the community. Dismissing the view of opponents that state‑mandated inspections violated the personal dignity of prostitutes and divested them of a protected liberty interest in their bodies, they insisted that any such affront was easily justified by the urgent need to protect the public from their reckless “traffic[king] in dangerous poisons.”32 “What Is Morally Wrong Can Never Be Physiologically Right” Under the leadership of the newly created New York Committee for the Prevention of State Regulation of Vice, reformers who were involved in a number of social causes, including abolitionism, woman’s rights, and moral education,33 came together to challenge the pro‑regulation physicians. Setting the stage for the emergence of the more comprehensive social purity move‑ ment with its wholesale call for sexual restraint, these reformers demanded that rather than seeking to end the spread of venereal disease by providing men with “non‑contagious women at the public expense,” the solution instead lay in persuading men to learn how to control their passions.34 These opponents of regulation faced the formidable task of refuting the doctrine of “sexual necessity”—the structural underpinning of the doctors’ pro‑legalization position, which presumptively was rooted in their scientific expertise.35 Rising to the challenge, several prominent female physicians sought to dislodge the self‑proclaimed hegemonic authority of their male colleagues over the biological discourse of desire. Highlighting the importance of their role in the struggle, Dr. Rebecca C. Hallowell thus proclaimed: “Our chief hope is in the medical women. With their wide range of opportunity to instruct and warn, much can be accomplished toward overcoming many popular errors, and elevating the moral tone of the community.”36 Likewise drawing upon her expertise as a trained physician, Dr. Eliza‑ beth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from an American medical school, engaged in a searing critique of the “radical physiological error” of male desire.37 Writing in the Phrenological Journal and Science of Health with, as she put it, “a positive and practical knowledge rarely possessed by women,” Blackwell relied on her intimate knowledge of the “physiological and pathological laws of the human frame” to condemn as a “dangerous falsehood” the idea that “men are so dominated by overwhelming physical instincts that they can neither resist nor control the animal nature, and that they would destroy their mental or physical health by the practice of self‑control.”38

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Drawing not uncommon parallels between the twin evils of alcohol‑ ism and licentiousness, Blackwell painted a compelling picture of how uncontrolled lust divested men of their humanity: Passion unchecked . . . is like fiery alcoholic poison to the human constitution. It constantly grows by indulgence; the more it is yielded to, the fiercer it becomes; an instinct which at first was governable, and susceptible of elevation and enlightened direction and control, becomes, through constant indulgence, a vicious domination . . . [which] grows into an irresistible, tyrannical possession, which converts human beings into selfish, cruel, and inhuman devils.39 Far from being grounded in inviolate physiological truths, both Blackwell and Hallowell argued that the “monstrous theory” of sexual necessity was a socially constructed myth that served to provide a patina of respectability on the self‑serving falsehood that men were biologically compelled to sow their wild oats.40 So viewed, untamed desire was accordingly reframed as an unnatural surrender to biological impulses, which, in the words of one editorial, served to reduce man to a mere “beastly carcass,”41 rather than representing an inexorable fact about male sexuality. Having refuted the “radical physiological error”42 of male desire, purity reformers sought to shift the location of social danger from the contami‑ nated body of the prostitute to the lustful body of her customer. As Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell explained, it was not the prostitute who was the source of disease; rather, it was the “unchecked licentiousness” of her customer that contained within “itself the faculty of originating venereal disease.”43 Far from being necessary to protect society from the prostitute’s poisoned body, regulation thus simply served to place “the criminality, the odium and shame and all their vicious consequences upon the shoulders of the poor woman [while] regarding man substantially as her victim to be protected against the consequences of her vices and crimes.”44 Seeking to highlight the moral bankruptcy of regulation, social purity reformers argued that if preventing the spread of disease was truly the goal, by necessity the law would be required to [s]tation a policeman at every brothel. Compel every man who enters to register his name and residence, and report himself to the medical authorities every three days for a month. Provide

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41

the same penalties, the same restrictions, the same disgraces and painful humiliations for one party that you do for the other, and then see what would come of it.45 However, the fact that only women were to be stripped of their civil lib‑ erties and subjected to humiliating procedures to ensure that their bodies were free of disease made it clear that the true purpose of regulation was to provide men with ready access to uncontaminated women. Hoping to expose the gendered norms that they believed the regu‑ lationists were seeking to encode into law, Reverend Antoinette Brown Blackwell denounced this approach as a shield manufactured and uplifted exclusively for men. It recog‑ nizes only their perils, needs and wishes to be protected along a line of admitted debasement. It ignores the interests and rights of their women associates as completely as some vivisectionists ignore the sentient claims of the lower animals.46 Asserting that this discriminatory plan would place women under the author‑ ity of unscrupulous men “from whose decision they have no appeal and against whose conduct they have no redress; they are practically enslaved and robbed of all personal rights . . . [and] have no rights which either law or custom feel bound to respect,” some purity reformers accordingly likened legalized prostitution to slavery. Elegantly expressing this view, Blackwell proclaimed that by abrogating the “essential principle of freedom,” namely the inviolability of the “sacredness of the human body, through which the soul must grow,” regulation signaled the continued acceptance of “the slave‑holding principle that the human body may be an article of merchandise.”47 Although vigorously protesting the idea that a “certain portion of women [be] set aside for the lowest form of subjection—the service of sensuality” in order to save their more “favored” sisters from ruin,48 it was also clear that their sympathy for and connection with these women only went so far. Threaded throughout the social purity reformers’ antiregula‑ tion arguments, one can clearly see their self‑proclaimed sense of moral superiority and their apprehension about the corrupting influence of “the influx of socially uneducated, or wrongly educated people from the countries of Continental Europe, where social vice is regulated and legalized by the state.”49 Revealing the reformers’ privileged social location, Francis Willard,

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impassioned president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, declared that the battle against legalized vice was to be waged by the “best and most capable women who speak the English tongue” thus proclaiming it the special responsibility of Anglo‑Saxon women to extend middle‑class norms of sexual respectability to those plodding “on in shadowy paths of sin.”50 In taking on the pro‑regulationist physicians, purity reformers insisted that as the elected representative of the people, lawmakers had a moral duty to avoid “incorporating any evil principle into law.”51 This position was not simply the incantation of a noninstrumentalist vision of the mor‑ ally pure state; rather, they believed that by enacting laws to “make sin safe,” the state would be giving men permission to indulge their passions, thus sending society on a downward spiral.52 As eloquently articulated by Aaron Powell, president of the New York Society: When the State, by its license and official certificate, gives to the prostitute a legal status, and at night, as in some European cities, puts up its colored signal lights in front of its brothels, it, in effect, consigns a victim class of its women to an odious form of slavery, digs pitfalls for its young men, [and] perverts the true function of government, which is “to make it easy to do right and difficult to do wrong.”53 Likewise, Elizabeth Blackwell warned: “The laws of a country possess a really terrible responsibility through the way in which they influence the rising generation,” and by seeking to “check disease by the inspection of vicious women, while equally vicious men are untouched,” the state would, she argued, “become a powerful agent for evil.”54 Seeking to avoid these wicked ends, like the antebellum moral reform‑ ers before them, social purity reformers also insisted that men learn how to control their passions.55 Intent on dislodging the hated sexual double standard—the view that “unchastity, in the sense of sexual relations before or outside marriage, is for a man, if an offense, none the less a mild and pardonable one, but for a woman a matter of the utmost gravity”56—they were determined that men be held to a female standard of behavior. In short, chastity was to now be the centerpiece of a reconstructed moral manhood. As a direct corollary of this masculine uplift project, men who violated these behavioral norms would henceforth suffer the same social condemnation and scorn that until then had been reserved for the errant woman.

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Purifying Society In calling for a single standard of moral purity, the narrow goal of defeating the legalization of prostitution that had initially brought reformers together under the aegis of the New York Committee for the Prevention of State Regulation of Vice soon blossomed into a more comprehensive program to liberate society from the degrading bonds of sensual passion. This devel‑ opment was aided by the fact that by the mid‑1880s, a growing number of physicians had begun to lose their faith in the ability of regulation to reduce the spread of disease and had come to appreciate “the importance of moral forces . . . in social medicine.”57 Giving voice to these changing views, a 1904 article in the Philanthropist entitled “The Changing Views of Medical Men,” proclaimed that “[a]t the present time there are strong evidences of a turn in the tide, and some of the most prominent men in the profession are giving strong expression in favor of moral instruction and against regulation by city officials”58—a turn of events that led to the 1913 founding of the American Hygiene Association, which was a collabora‑ tive effort between purity reformers and medical professionals to eradicate prostitution and venereal disease. As this early group of reformers moved beyond the initial reactive phase of social activism to promulgate their sweeping vision of a morally just society, they were joined by other national reform‑oriented organizations, most notably the White Cross Army and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), who were likewise committed to the goal of replacing the hated double standard with a single standard of morality, which was to be equally binding on men and women. As reformers coalesced around this objective, it became clear that their collective vision of a pure society extended beyond a singular commitment to “premarital chastity and marital fidelity.”59 As Alan Hunt argues, deeply invested in the value of an orderly respectability, their steadfast dedication to the purity ideal “encompassed a more generalized sense of sexual restraint and self‑control and stigmatized all forms of non‑marital sexuality, particularly prostitution.”60 Grounded as they were in a mix of Christian piety and fierce support for women’s equality, as purity reformers fanned out across the nation to convince others of the value of a chaste life, they were undoubtedly aware of the particular vulnerabilities of young women. However, any concerns they had were generally enfolded into their broader critique of the sexual double standard, with the youthful loss of innocence simply serving to mag‑ nify the grievous wrongs of this corrupting dynamic. However, in 1885, a

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shocking revelation by British journalist William Stead regarding London’s flourishing trade in working‑class girls served to reposition the sexually vul‑ nerable young woman at the forefront of the social purity reform agenda. Appalled to learn in the wake of Stead’s expose that girls in most states in this country could legally “consent to their own ruin” at the tender age of ten, purity reformers promptly launched a vigorous national campaign to raise the age of sexual consent. Although not abandoning their broader purity agenda, safeguarding America’s girlhood from sexual exploitation became an urgent and central reform project.

You Can Steal Her Virginity but Not Her Doll: The Campaign to Raise the Age of Sexual Consent In July 1885, William Stead issued a stern caution to the readers of London’s Pall Mall Gazette that over the next few days the paper would be running a series of articles graphically depicting the results of his investigation into the “strange inverted world . . . of the streets and of the brothels” of London.61 With the provocative title “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” Stead proceeded to reveal the existence of an organized trade in young working‑class girls for the benefit of the debauched patrons of the city’s finest brothels, for whom “the shriek of torture [was] the essence of their delight.”62 Supporting these shocking revelations, Stead riveted his readers with a firsthand account of how he was able to secure the purchase of a young girl for immoral purposes from her drunk and uncaring mother—a scheme that ultimately landed him in prison.63 Stead’s expose triggered a massive public outcry in England for laws to protect the honor of young women and girls, which resulted in the passage of the country’s previously stalled Criminal Law Act that raised the age of sexual consent from thirteen to sixteen years of age.64 Appalled by Stead’s revelations, American purity reformers sought to learn more about this nation’s sexual consent laws. Based upon the care‑ ful research of attorney Georgia Mark, they soon learned that the English laws they had “scarcely done condemning” were, in fact, “far in advance of [their] own legislation on the subject.”65 As the The Philanthropist regretfully informed its readership: An inquiry concerning our own land reveals the shocking fact that the legal “age of consent” on the part of young girls to their

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own corruption, raised last year in Great Britain . . . is now in the State of New York, and in most of the States of the Union and in the national capital, but TEN YEARS!66 To their dismay, they thus realized that under the current statutory regime, a mature man who coerced a ten‑year‑old girl into having sex with him could successfully avoid a rape conviction by asserting that the encounter was consensual, unless the evidence clearly established that she had fought him off to “the uttermost limit of exhaustion.”67 The reformers’ sense of betrayal upon learning that our legal code deemed “womanly purity . . . to be fair game for wily Lotharios, who may take advantage of their own wrong and escape punishment . . . by showing to the judge and jury that their artifices were successful in leading their victims into error,”68 was intensified by the realization that while they had been fighting against the regulation of prostitution in order to prevent the incorporation of “evil into law,” unbeknownst to them, the law already sanctioned the sexual exploitation of girls barely on the brink of puberty. As Emily Blackwell wrote on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the New York Committee for the Prevention of the State Regulation of Vice: When our Committee began its work ten years ago, the motive for its action was to prevent the disastrous innovation, as we considered it, of legislation favoring and encouraging vice. We were not then aware of the fact that we have already legislation, in all our States, making that most extraordinary discrimination in its favor.69 Locating the protection of youthful innocence at the forefront of their activist agenda, purity reformers committed themselves to ridding the law of this “extraordinary discrimination” in favor of the licentious male. Grounded in the painful awareness that lawmakers had already opted to align themselves with viciousness over virtue, purity reformers were forced to relinquish their vision of the morally neutral state that makes it “easy to do right and difficult to do wrong,”70 which they had promoted in response to the call for the legalization of prostitution. As they embarked upon the urgent task of divesting the law of its tilt toward evil, they now advanced a more activist model of government, which, they argued, had an affirmative obligation to defend the “the weak from the outrages of the strong and [secure] as far as possible equal justice for her citizens.”71 To this end, the New York Committee launched the publication of its reformist

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journal, The Philanthropist, which stressed the “duty of the State” to enact laws to protect youth from debauchery, and among other aims promised to “earnestly call upon legislators . . . by appropriate legislation to provide exemplary penalties . . . for the defilement of the persons of girls, without or with consent, under the age of at least eighteen years.”72 A Most Womanly Cause Asserting that the shockingly low age of consent laws bore the stamp of the depravity of the “fathers, husbands, and brothers” who enacted laws “for the furtherance of animal lust and moral degradation in men, and the destruction of maidenhood,”73 reformers called upon their sisters to rise up against this abuse of male authority. Invoking the bonds of true woman‑ hood, attorney Georgia Mark proclaimed that, “No truly womanly heart can resist the call to work for the preservation of the purity of our young girls. There could be no work more distinctively womanly than this.”74 Similarly, an editorial in the Union Signal declared that “God is turning the hearts of women to this subject in a wonderful way. Without consultation with one another . . . the great societies of women are arousing to their responsibility in this direction.”75 Acutely aware that except for in a tiny handful of states, they could not effectuate change through the ballot, female purity reformers, like the female abolitionists and moral reformers before them, turned to the peti‑ tion as the most effective tool for influencing public opinion and pressuring elected officials into changing the law. To this end, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union drafted a petition, which was ultimately signed by thou‑ sands of supporters and presented to state legislatures across the country, directing the attention of lawmakers to the fact that “protection of the person is not placed by our laws upon so high a place as protection of the purse,” and calling upon them to rectify this inequity by increasing “the age of consent to at least eighteen years.”76 Reflecting the growing influence of the Woman’s Suffrage Movement, some purity leaders, such as Helen M. Gardener and Emily Blackwell, emphasized the fact that if women had been invested with political rights these “disgraceful enactments” would never had been encoded into law.77 Others, most notably, WCTU president Francis Willard, used the occasion of this “womanly” effort to push for an expanded sphere of female influ‑ ence. Invoking domestic imagery, she argued that the formidable task that lay before them of “clean[ing] house in a governmental sense, until this record of defilement be washed away” was a virtual impossibility so long as men held the reins of power.78

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In addition to these state campaigns, reformers also set their sights on Washington, D.C. Declaring it a “reproach and scandal to the whole country” that “within sight of the dome of the Capitol” a mature man could assault and despoil a ten‑year‑old girl and “if able to plead ‘consent’ . . . go scott free,”79 they urged Congress to pass a federal law that would raise the age of consent to eighteen in the District of Columbia, which would then serve as a beacon of righteous inspiration to state legislatures across the country. Perhaps hoping to shame Congress into taking immediate action, articles in The Philanthropist recounted how when President Grant’s stables had burnt to the ground a few years earlier leaving his horses without shelter, “a bill was passed by both houses of Congress, we believe inside of an hour, providing for the rebuilding of the stables.”80 Citing this remark‑ able occurrence as proof that “where there is a will there is a way,” the journal asked with a rhetorical flourish whether “the President’s horses [are] of more account than the young and legally unprotected daughters of the nation’s capital?”81 Seeking parity, it exhorted Congress to “do at least as much, and as promptly, for the legally exposed young girls of the nation’s capital” as it had done for the President’s horses.82 Before turning to a consideration of the core themes of the age of consent campaign, it is important to recognize that not all women who were actively committed to the cause of social purity were part of this effort. According to Mary Odem, the mostly middle‑class African American club‑ women and suffragists who “shared with their white counterparts a belief in the value of morality for both sexes, wholesome marriages, and family life,” and were similarly “actively engaged in moral protection work for the young women of their own race,” were reluctant to join this effort based on their fear that resulting laws would be used against African American men, particularly if they were involved in an intimate relationship with a white woman.83 Their well‑grounded fear that the law would be selectively used against African American men reflected the volatility of race relationships in the postbellum era. As Peter W. Bardaglio explains, once the “the racial controls of slavery” had been lifted, white dismay about black male sexuality combined with fears about African American political and economic autonomy, forming an inflammatory mixture that exploded at the slightest provocation. Seizing on any infraction by individual black men of the etiquette governing interactions with white women, white men sought to justify retribution against an entire race and to ensure the purity of white women.84

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Having borne witness to the “extralegal employment of the noose . . . to protect white womanhood against the alleged hypersexuality of this suppos‑ edly subhuman creature,”85 it is thus not surprising that although committed to the ideals of purity, African American reformers and clubwomen did not actively join in the campaign to raise the age of sexual consent. Their sense of the danger that an expanded realm of legally punishable sexual conduct would present to men of their race was compounded by the fact that white purity reformers did little to support the antilynching campaign that black clubwomen launched in the early 1890s, thus suggesting that it was highly unlikely that they would speak out against racially targeted abuses of the newly proposed consent law.86 “Shame on America:” The Core Themes of the Campaign to Raise the Age of Sexual Consent Within a decade or so of having been shocked into action by Stead’s exposé, reformers had made considerable progress toward their goal. Not only had Congress passed a federal law that, although falling short of the desired age of eighteen, raised the age of consent in the District of Columbia and the federal territories to sixteen, more than half of the states had also raised the age of consent from age ten or twelve to somewhere between thirteen and sixteen years of age. Additionally, as reformers proudly liked to point out, in the two states in which women had the vote, namely Kansas and Wyoming, the age of consent had been raised to a high of eighteen years of age. But these gains were in fact quite modest. Falling far short of the reformers’ expectations, most states had only raised the age of consent by a few years, rather than to the requested minimum age of eighteen or twenty‑one. Moreover, highlighting the partial and fragile nature of these victories, lawmakers frequently approved amendments that limited the scope of the law, by, for example, denying protection to “girls of previous unchaste” character, thus effectively declaring that once robbed of her virtue, a young woman was fair game for any man. In 1894, an editorial in The Philanthropist declared that it was a “great scandal and wrong that in so many States, after all the discussion of the subject during the last decade, the age remains so low, and that in all the property of the young girl is still held to be of more importance than her person for the State’s legal interposition.”87 Hoping to reinvigorate the campaign, in 1895, activist and author Helen H. Gardener published a sym‑ posium in the Arena, a popular social reform journal, entitled “The Shame

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of America—The Age of Consent Laws in the United States,” in which luminaries of the social purity movement came together to decry the fact that despite their best efforts, young girls were still the legal prey of “the merciless, wily sensualist and debauchee.”88 The symposium was followed by a four‑part series in the Arena entitled “A Battle for Sound Morality or the History of Recent Age‑of Consent Legislation in the United States.” Reflecting the growing sophistication of the movement, this series provided readers with a careful analysis of the progress that had been made to date in legislative battles across the country. The Arena publications provided the movement with a needed boost, and by the turn of the century, reformers had persuaded lawmakers in more than half of the states to raise the age of consent to at least sixteen years of age.89 Drawing upon the interrelated motifs of the destructive power of unconstrained male lust and the devastating consequences of female ruin, the publications in the Arena (as well as ongoing articles in The Philanthropist) advanced two primary arguments in support of the demand that states raise the age of sexual consent to eighteen or twenty‑one. First, emphasizing the vulnerability of young women in the years following the onset of puberty, they argued that states had a duty to protect them from predatory men who sought to take advantage of their youthful innocence. Second, reflecting prevailing views that the loss of virginity outside of marriage was perhaps the greatest disaster that could befall any woman, they also argued that states should buttress existing moral constraints on illicit conduct by mak‑ ing it legally impossible for young women to consent to sexual activity.90 In advancing these arguments, purity reformers continued to rely upon the seduction narrative to advance their cause. However, in addition to presenting heartbreaking tales of female ruin, beginning with, as we have seen, Drs. Elizabeth Blackwell’s and Rebecca C. Hallowell’s use of their medical training to refute their male colleagues’ theory of sexual necessity and attorney Mark’s comprehensive study of the existing state laws that ignited the age of consent campaign, these postbellum activists also relied upon the expertise of professional women (and men) to advance their cause. Moving between pathos and empirical knowledge gained from survey research or advanced study, their campaign, although containing strong echoes of antebellum moralism, was also infused with a more modernist impulse, thus pointing the way to the scientifically grounded approach of the Progressive Era reformers—the next wave of activists to tackle the issue of youthful female sexuality (see chapter 3). Both approaches are evident in the work of attorney Georgia Mark. As we have seen, it was her “serious [and] impartial comparison of the

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laws” of the United States with those of England that helped to launch the age of consent campaign. However, alongside the meticulous presentation of the results of her research, Mark also employed the flowery language of the classic seduction narrative to explain the necessity of taking action. Thus, for example, in addition to documenting “the chasm that separates the justice of the Old World from that of the New,” she also remarked that “the sentiment of mankind has recognized the superior chastity of a woman’s nature; her natural purity of heart has been acknowledged and praised in prose and poetry,” while the law holds “female purity . . . to be fair game for wily Lotharios” whose trickery leads “ignorantly innocent” girls to consent to their own ruin.91 In a similar fashion, in her introduction to “A Battle for Sound Moral‑ ity,” Helen Gardener insists, notwithstanding the name of the series, that age of consent legislation was not about morality per se, but was about the rights of girl‑children to the “legal protection of their persons,”—a right that she declared is “more imperative by far than is the protection which every state has recognized as a matter beyond controversy when applied to a girl’s property or her ability to make contracts, deeds, and wills.”92 Grounded in this rights discourse, this four‑part series offered a detailed study of the vari‑ ous legislative efforts underway in the country to raise the age of consent, replete with texts of the proposed statutory amendments, reports by their sponsors, and meticulous recounting of each procedural step in the often arduous legislative battles. States were also catalogued and ranked based upon their success to date in raising the age of consent. However, simultaneous with this careful study of the law, the series also drew heavily upon the seduction motif. Thus, for example, in speaking out in favor of the proposed New York bill to raise the age of consent to eighteen, Dr. George W. Brush, asks with a rhetorical flourish: “Why should our daughters be subjected to the perils of the approaches of the ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’ who entice them unwittingly to their destruction, and the brutes be privileged to hide themselves under the cloak of law?”93 In a similar vein, in her speech to the Colorado legislature, Carrie Clyde Holly, one of the first women in the country to be elected to a state legislature, forcefully cast men as duplicitous villains who “by persistent solicitation, by fraud, by delusive representations, by simulated affections, by all the arts known to such fiends,” sought to lead the innocent lamb “on to her ruin.”94 Before focusing on the two dominant motifs of the age of consent campaign, namely, the provision of a safe passage to adulthood and the zealous safeguarding of female virginity, it is also worth noting that in “A Battle for a Sound Morality,” Helen Gardener also suggests that in addition

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to protecting a young woman’s rights in her own body, reform would serve the public good by preventing the birth of defective children who were “born with vice in their blood,” thus protecting the “clean heredity” of future generations.95 Although a minor chord in this campaign, Gardener’s linkage of the public good with the management of young women’s bodies presages eugenic arguments, which, as discussed in the following chapter, added an urgency to the Progressive Era effort to reform the female sexual delinquent. PROVIDING A SAFE PASSAGE TO ADULTHOOD

According to the purity reformers, the clear purpose of the existing age‑of‑consent laws was to “shield men of mature and vicious lives from the results of their most heinous vices.”96 By allowing encounters between adult men and girls as young as ten years of age to be cast as consensual in nature, they argued that these unjust laws served to make girls “the easy prey of bad and viciously inclined men.”97 Capturing the indignity of this unfettered male bias, Francis Willard proclaimed them a “barbaric reminis‑ cence of those dark ages when all women were the property of all men.”98 Reformers emphasized two specific inequities in support of their claim that the existing statutory framework had been adopted for the sole purpose of allowing “wolves in sheep’s clothing” to “hide themselves under the cloak of the law.”99 First, they pointed to the irrationality of an age‑based clas‑ sification system that withdrew protection from maturing girls just at the age when it became imperative. Underscoring this point, Emily Blackwell commented that by offering protection only during the years in which “the physical abuse of children is so brutal an offense as to excite indignation even among the majority of persons of vicious life,” and then “distinctly and emphatically [withdrawing it] from girls during the first few years of early womanhood, when it is most needed,” the law established the border between childhood and womanhood “just where those who are interested in vice would have it.”100 In short, by treating maturing girls as adult women with respect to their ability to consent to sexual relations, the law fortified male sexual privilege with a state‑sanctioned right of access to any female body above the threshold of childhood. Although adolescence would not be formally recognized as a distinct stage in the life cycle until after the turn of the century, in demanding protection for maturing girls during the “first early years of womanhood,” the reformers conceived of the period between the onset of puberty and the age of majority as a critical and somewhat bewildering transitional period

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between girlhood and womanhood. Precariously poised between these two distinct and more carefully defined phases of female existence, the matur‑ ing girl might well be exposed to dangers that did not similarly threaten the well‑being of either the prepubescent girl or the mature adult woman. Compounding the precarious nature of these transitional years was their heartfelt concern that, as discussed in greater detail below, adolescents lacked the maturity of judgment needed to safely navigate these potentially perilous waters. Even more revealing, however, of immoral purpose was the uneven approach that the law took with respect to setting the age at which minors were considered to possess decisional capacity. As expressed in the following passage, reformers repeatedly decried the fact that while the law typically shielded young people from the consequences of their own immaturity until they reached the age of eighteen or twenty‑one, it permitted girls as young as ten to consent to “their own ruin”: However great the variety of opinion and custom as to what law may or can do toward regulating personal relations among adults; there . . . is a unanimous consent in fixing an age of majority, a period before which the child has neither the pow‑ ers nor responsibilities of an adult, is recognized as incapable of deciding and acting for himself, and is entitled, on account of such disability, to legal protection. Thus, in the United States, before eighteen, a girl is incapable of controlling property, making a contract . . . [or] by her own consent only mak[ing] a legal marriage. Yet, while thus incapable in the most insignificant things of independent judgment and action, for the purpose of vice she is held adult and legally responsible at the age of ten!101 It was thus clear to the reformers that by declaring that a young woman could not “legally give away her pocket handkerchief or sell her doll,” while leaving her body unprotected, the law had purposefully skewed the border between childhood and adulthood in order to pander to the masculine imagination.102 Seeking to divest the law of this tilt toward evil, reformers thus insisted that “the age of legal protection for the person be made at least equal to that of property.”103 In demanding this evenhanded legal approach with respect to the age of capacity, reformers implicitly distinguished between the processes of physical and mental maturation. Rejecting the argument advanced by some of their opponents that the law need not intervene

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because nature established the true age of sexual consent at puberty, the reformers sought to make clear that the acquisition of a womanly body did not indicate the simultaneous acquisition of adult reasoning abilities and judgment. Enforcing this point, one activist asked with a rhetorical flourish, “Is there a man, worthy of being called a man, who believes that a little girl twelve years of age is so well versed in the world’s villainies that she is able to protect herself against the wiles of designing and unscrupulous lust?”104 As Dr. O. Edward Janney explained in his article “A Physician’s View of These Laws,” the attainment of mature reasoning capabilities did not happen overnight, but was a complex process that unfolded separately and apart from physiological maturation: It should be remembered . . . that the judgment is developed by observation, study, experience and the habit of weighing evidence. A child of fourteen years is only beginning to observe and to study; has had no experience of the world, and knows nothing of how to weigh evidence. It follows, then, that such a child’s judgment cannot be trusted.105 Echoing these views, in a companion article entitled “Another Physician Speaks,” Emily Blackwell drew a direct line between these developmental considerations and the law’s approach to adolescent decisional capacity in matters such as entry into contracts and marriage: By fixing the age of legal majority the state declares that young people have not the experience nor the maturity of judgment, which would qualify them for independent action in matters of importance affecting their own interests. They are in consequence made incapable of such action. . . . Thus their power of action is, in their own interest, so limited that their consent is not sufficient to make valid even perfectly legitimate transactions.106 Accordingly, in analogous fashion, they argued that a young woman’s “power of action” in her own interest was “so limited” that “her consent is not suf‑ ficient to make valid” even a seemingly consensual act of sexual intercourse. Lacking a fully developed understanding of the devastating conse‑ quences of engaging in illicit sexual relations, a young woman was thus far more likely than an adult woman to yield to a range of tactics, such as “persistent solicitation, fraud . . . delusive representations . . . mental duress [and] simulated affection,”107 which a predatory older man might employ

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in order to overcome her resistance. Much as one might place a “dove in the clutch of an eagle, and, when it lies bleeding and dead, declare that the eagle is free from blame because the helpless bird ‘consented’ to its death,”108 they believed that existing consent laws served to shield men from blame for their gross overreaching by treating young girls as if they possessed an adult ability to consent to sexual activity. In asserting that meaningful consent was impossible, reformers hoped to upend the prevailing legal paradigm that essentially declared that so long as she “acquiesced,” a man had an untrammeled right to have sex with a young woman. Taking a bold stand against the prevailing legal regime, as Jane Larson argues, the drive by reformers to expand the definitional boundaries of unlawful sexual activity to include situations in which a young woman’s will had been overcome by coercive or deceptive tactics that fell short of actual physical violence, presages the arguments of late‑twentieth‑century feminists that rape laws failed to capture the full range of nonconsensual sexual activity.109 Their acute awareness of the potential inequality of sexual bargaining power can thus be understood as a bold and prescient forerun‑ ner of more recent efforts by feminist activists and scholars to expose both the prevalence and the damaging nature of sexual violence and coercion. In focusing upon the vulnerability of young women to the sexual entreaties of older men, reformers do not appear to have distinguished between their developmental trajectories or capacities based upon their class status. However, when it came to the real‑world consequences of their inability to make informed decisions about their own interests, class considerations became paramount. Reflecting, as discussed in the following chapter, emerging middle‑class views that children belonged in the domestic sphere of love and nurture rather than in the wage economy, reformers were confident that daughters of the “wealthy and favored classes” would be “shielded from exposure and protected by good home environments,” thus obviating the need for legislative interposition.110 Whether understood as a radical demand that the law protect the most vulnerable class of young women, or as an effort to control the non‑ conforming behavior of working girls, reformers were primarily concerned about the vulnerability of those whose “poverty obliges them to go to work as soon as they are capable of earning.”111 Both echoing the concerns of the moral purity reformers and anticipating the preoccupations of Progres‑ sive Era activists (discussed in the next chapter), they warned that young working women were constantly “surrounded by a network of snares and pitfalls” and “coveted as prey by the licentious and by those who live by pandering to licentiousness.”112 Lacking the domestic supports needed to

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safely navigate these shark‑infested waters, it was their plight that made the “need of developing added legal safeguards most urgent.”113 Although, as discussed in the following section, the age‑of‑consent cam‑ paign certainly rested upon and sought to enshrine the existing middle‑class version of respectable sexuality into law, it should also be understood as a bold insistence that the state had a duty to provide the maturing girl with safe passage to adulthood by way of a formal declaration that her body was off limits to the designing older male. By redrawing the border between girl‑ hood and womanhood, revised age‑of‑consent laws would mean that a girl’s interest in her bodily integrity would command the same legal respect as her interest in her worldly possessions—both would be declared off limits to the overreaching adult who sought to take advantage of youthful innocence. At a moment in time when women were still not generally regarded as political persons with a rightful place in the civic arena, purity reformers were thus actively engaged in a fierce national campaign to invest girlhood with a public meaning. Seeking to redraw the legal boundary between girlhood and womanhood in order to safeguard young women from sexual coercion until they were old enough to protect themselves from the decep‑ tive practices of the mature sensualist, they insisted that young women had legally cognizable interests in their bodies that states were obligated to formally encode into law. Challenging the deeply entrenched masculinst structure of the existing legal framework for adjudicating bodily rights they accordingly battled to make young women visible as juridical persons with categorical age‑based needs. PROTECTING THE LARGEST DIAMOND IN THE CROWN OF YOUTHFUL VIRTUE

As we have just seen, in seeking to protect young women from sexual coer‑ cion, purity reformers advanced the view that they lacked the decisional capacity to consent to having sex. So viewed, if an underage female did succumb to a man’s entreaties, they asserted that it was only because her will had been overcome. Notably in this regard, their operative assumption appears to have been that all potential sexual encounters involved older men, thus eliding from their discussions the possibility of intimate peer relations. Flipping the contemporary adage that “no means no,” according to the purity reformers, “yes” never actually meant “yes,” thus, effectively classifying all sexual activity involving young women as nonconsensual, again, premised upon the implicit belief that all such encounters involved a significant age gap.

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Closely intertwined, however, with the belief that young women could not give true consent was an equally powerful belief that they should not be permitted to consent to sexual relations because of the all‑important role that virginity played in determining their life course. Accordingly, by campaigning for a higher age of consent, in addition to seeking to pro‑ tect young women from coercion, purity reformers were also intent upon encoding prevailing moral values into law by making sexual consent a legal impossibility. This commitment reflected their firm belief in the sanctity of female sexual purity. Imbued with an almost palpable physicality, virginity was thus characterized as the “most precious jewel in the crown of . . . woman‑ hood.”114 Mapping her destiny, a girl simply could not afford to give away this “priceless treasure,” which, as Blackwell put it, was a “presupposed absolute requisite in marriage.”115 The vision of the inevitable fall into ruin was so horrifying that, like the moral reformers before them, social purity reformers similarly articulated the belief that “a moral death was a greater misfortune than physical death.”116 The “precious jewel” trope is tightly woven into the arguments pre‑ sented in “A Battle for a Sound Morality” for an increased age of consent. Thus, for example, Gardener praised the comments of the retiring president of the Arizona Medical Association who argued that the law should step in to “prevent the barter of her virginity, that which every man demands of the woman he loves, and the loss of which is a cancer which destroys all that is good and pure in her heart.”117 Similarly, in her speech before the Colorado legislature, Representative Holly stressed that a woman “can have no natural right to surrender what, once gone, life itself is valueless.”118 Accordingly, she argued that the proposed law was necessary to ensure that at least until her twenty‑first birthday, a young woman would not “be legally free to deprive herself of what is dearer and more important to her than any franchise, any property, or even life itself—her virtue!”119 Given its central importance in their campaign, one might think that the purity reformers would have attempted to explain exactly why a young woman’s place in the universe was determined by her sexual status. However, they simply spoke reverentially about virginity as a moral abso‑ lute that did not require explanation. If one seeks to unpack the meaning that virginity had in the reformers’ moral universe, traditional explanations seem to fall short. For instance, although mentioned briefly by Gardener, concern about pregnancy and the birth of “illegitimate children” was not a major preoccupation. Nor, given their repudiation of the right of male sexual control over women, does it make sense to see their impassioned

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defense of virginity as an effort to protect the property interest that men had in women’s bodies, as this runs directly counter to their firm rejection of male sexual privilege.120 Another possible explanation, which is certainly more consistent with their activist stance is that, as discussed in the previous chapter, the portrayal of women as naturally virtuous may well have helped these reform‑minded women secure their social position. Recalling Cott’s argument about the potential value of being cast as “passionless,” by embracing “a resounding alternative to the idea that women were made for men’s pleasure,” their sanctification of virginity may have represented their belief in female moral superiority, which, according to Cott, provided middle‑class women with the claim of right to an enlarged sphere of social influence.121 In short, the construct may well have offered female social purity activists a platform upon which to move into the masculine arena of legal reform. It is also possible that their focus on virginity served as a hedge against disorder. In a rapidly changing world, the reformers may well have been seeking to secure their social position through the codification of the middle‑class “ideal of respectability.”122 By making virginity the gold standard of female virtue, they may, as Alan Hunt writes, been engaged in a “dividing practice,” which served to “construct and reinforce the bound‑ ary between the respectable and non‑respectable classes” whose potentially disruptive understanding of female sexuality challenged the sanctity of the marital bond—the celebrated centerpiece of a well‑ordered life.123 Suggesting that concerns about social disintegration may well have influenced the reformers’ emphasis on the sanctity of virginity, in her remarks to the Colorado legislature, Representative Holly made clear that while the state had an interest in encouraging women to marry, because “marriage promotes not only private virtue, but the public morals,” and was thus the “cement of society,” it had an equally strong interest in preventing them from committing the “crime” of surrendering their virginity prior to marriage—an act that, she declared, “threatens the very foundation of our civilization.”124 In a similar vein, Gardener’s eugenic concerns about young women giving birth to children with “vice in their blood,” also suggests an anxiety about the possibility that by “pollut[ing] the public fountain of health,” nonmarital sexual relations endangered the public welfare.125 Although a cogent explanation of why virginity was so important to the social purity reformers is lacking in their literature, in this regard, their activism reflected rather than challenged existing normative under‑ standings about female sexuality. Accordingly, wholly apart from the ques‑ tion of whether or not young women had the developmental capacity to

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consent to sexual relations, they sought to divest them of the legal ability to do so outside of the bonds of marriage. Until then, a young woman’s consent, even if competent and freely given—an eventuality that was not discussed—would have no legal effect. In short, by raising the age of consent, sexual intercourse with an underage female would henceforth be classified by statute as rape (hence the term “statutory rape”) without consideration of the possibility that she might have been a willing and eager participant. Accordingly, consensual relations would also henceforth be categorized as a legal impossibility, even if a factual possibility. So viewed, in addition to challenging the right of male access to the adolescent female body, the age‑of‑consent campaign also served to encode prevailing understandings of the importance of female purity into law, thus obscuring the possibility that some sexual encounters may have been consensual. As the law now confirmed, sexual intercourse was something imposed by men on the hapless female body, rather than an act that any young woman might choose to engage in. Correspondingly, virginity was something that men took from women, rather than something that a woman might freely choose to relinquish. This codification of this sexual dynamic is thrown into even sharper relief if one considers the place that young men occupied in the reformers’ discussions about the need for an increased age of consent. First, the domi‑ nant assumption was that only females required the protection of the law. As Representative Holly remarked in response to the suggestion that boys might also benefit from its protection, “Protect them from whom and from what? If boys can be assaulted in the same way, bring in a bill to protect them against us, and let each stand on its own merit. But really, is it neces‑ sary to protect the wolf against the allurement of the lamb?”126 Moreover, although purity reformers stressed the importance of a single standard of morality, a young man’s virginity was not presented as a “priceless treasure,” without which he would be consigned to a life on the margins of society. Accordingly, when it came to young men, the question was not whether the law should divest them of their ability to consent to sex, but whether they should be shielded from the full punitive impact of the criminal rape law on account of their youth. Reinforcing the view that sex was something men imposed on women and virginity something they stole from them, the focus was on the degree of youthful male culpability, rather than on the effectiveness of their consent. Capturing this concern, reformer Helen Gardener expressed regret that an otherwise excellent bill from the state of Montana did not protect boys “under the age of the law from the

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full penalty, in case both are children, and no force is used.” However, she found solace in the fact that “it may be in Montana as in New York; boys under the age of eighteen are, under another law, sent to reform school rather than to the penitentiary when found guilty of crime, in which case also the judge would have discretionary power.”127 Given that the reformers paid considerable attention to issues of class when, as discussed above, focusing on the protective functions of increasing the age of consent, an obvious question is whether these considerations likewise found their way into discussions of the law’s role in safeguard‑ ing female virtue. If one simply considers the statements of the reformers themselves, the answer is no. In contrast to their explicit references to the particular vulnerability of working‑class girls to sexual exploitation, they do not appear to have been concerned that, when compared to their more privileged sisters, these young women might not adhere to the middle‑class code of sexual respectability. Nonetheless, as Odem writes, “[w]here middle‑class reformers saw only danger in the public world of work  .  .  .  working‑class daughters also perceived new opportunities  .  .  .  for romantic relationships and heterosexual pleasures outside of marriage”—opportunities that were in direct conflict with the prevailing “bourgeois conception of girlhood sexual purity and innocence.”128 However, in acknowledging this possibility of interest in opportunities for “heterosexual pleasures outside of marriage,” the reformers would have been forced to consider the prospect of female sexual agency—an idea that was directly at odds with their adherence to the prevailing sexual script. But, as we will see in the following chapter, by the turn of the century, Progressive Era reformers would be forced to confront the cultural dissonance between the dominant vision of female sexual purity and the lived reality of young working women who were chafing against the strictures of Victorian notions of respectable womanhood.

Conclusion Presaging contemporary debates over how the state should respond to the challenges posed by adolescent sexual activity, purity reformers were firm in their belief that the proper function of government was to protect young women from sexual coercion and to prevent them from giving away their greatest treasure. On the one hand, anticipating arguments by mid‑­ twentieth‑century feminists that the legal concept of rape did not encompass

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all acts of coerced sex, in seeking to raise the age of sexual consent, reform‑ ers demanded that the law take the needs of young women into account. As young women were the targeted victims of predatory older men, they boldly insisted the state had a moral obligation to prevent this abuse of power by recognizing that consent was an illusory concept in the context of inherently unequal power relationships, thus firmly situating the issue of female sexual exploitation in the highly masculine public arena. At the same time, by denying the possibility of authentic female sexual agency, the reformers sought to encode a narrow vision of respectability into law. Divesting young women of decisional authority over their own sexuality, consent was rendered a legal impossibility for a greater swath of their lives. If all young women did not necessarily regard their virginity as the “most precious jewel in the crown of their womanhood,” then the reformers’ quest to safeguard female purity can also be recognized as an effort to impose a middle‑class vision of propriety on those who may well have had a divergent understanding of the weight and meaning of female virtue within the context of their own lived realities.

3

Responding to the “Girl Problem” The Emergence of the Female Sexual Delinquent

Introduction As we have seen thus far, over the course of the nineteenth century, two successive waves of female reformers sought to persuade lawmakers of the necessity of revising state criminal codes in order to punish men who engaged in sexual relationships with young women. Critiquing the inherent male bias of the existing legal approach, which they argued pandered to the wily seducer while abandoning his victims to the social condemnation of the double standard of morality, these activists sought to redraw the boundaries of the law by criminalizing seduction and raising the age of sexual consent for the benefit of young women. Marking the youthful female body as a contested site of gendered power relations, these efforts were laced with a powerful and bold condemnation of the implied right of male sexual access to it. At the same time, they also reflected the Victorian code of moral propriety that elided the possibility of an authentic female sexual self. Both generations of nineteenth‑century activists were unequivocal that it was the unruly male body that required state regulation through expanded criminal sanctions for predatory behavior. As passive victims of desire, young women were cast as the intended beneficiaries of the extended reach of the law into the sexual realm, and not as regulatory subjects whose bodies required state surveillance. Although it is certainly conceivable that in seeking to make it legally impossible for young women to consent to sexual activity the purity reformers in particular were quietly aware that young women were not always as innocent of desire as they

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publicly presented them to be, they nonetheless did not link legal reform with the need to manage female sexual desire. However, as the nineteenth century grew to a close, the simplic‑ ity of the seduction narrative began to fray. As the rising generation of mostly middle‑class and frequently well‑educated Progressive Era reformers encountered a new urban reality in which, as Ruth Alexander writes, young working‑class and immigrant women were actively “engaging in social ritu‑ als that celebrated heterosexual romance, the autonomy of youth, and the purchase of fun,”1 it became increasingly difficult to square their experi‑ ences with the Victorian conception of female passionlessness. Giving voice to their growing concerns about this overt flouting of the conventional boundaries of female decorum, progressive reformers turned their attention to what became known as the “girl problem.” As the troubled figure of the “female sexual delinquent” displaced the ruined victim of seduction as a subject of public concern, reformers began to refashion the contours of the regulatory script. Arguing for the first time that state intervention was necessary not simply to control male desire but to redirect the illicit impulses of the sexually nonconforming female delin‑ quents into more normative channels, young women came into their own as distinct regulatory subjects. No longer simply the intended beneficiary of laws designed to manage male passion, their transgressive bodies were identified as an urgent public concern. The “girl problem” did not emerge in a vacuum, but rather unfolded within the context of Progressive Era concerns about the behavior and wel‑ fare of urban youth, most notably those from working‑class and immigrant households. Rooted in shifting understandings of the nature and meaning of childhood as refracted through the lens of race, class, and gender, reformers inaugurated a variety of child‑centered reforms, including compulsory school attendance and child labor laws intended to shelter youth from the burdens of adulthood. Most importantly for present purposes was the establishment of the juvenile court system, which quickly assumed jurisdiction over the female sexual delinquent. Accordingly, before focusing on the reconfigura‑ tion of the relationship between the adolescent girl and the state, we trace the rise of the juvenile court system.

The Juvenile Court Movement In 1899, the nation’s first juvenile court was established in Cook County, Illinois, and within about twenty‑five years, most states had created “either

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separate courts or special sessions of existing courts for the hearing of chil‑ dren’s cases.”2 Reflecting changing conceptions of childhood, in advocating for a new approach to juvenile offending, reformers sought to protect way‑ ward youth from the formalized and punitive rigors of the criminal courts. Although they did not initially evince a particular concern for the youthful female offender, women reformers played a critical role in the juvenile court movement.3 In fact, given that boys vastly outnumbered girls within the criminal justice system, it is probably safe to say that young males were the initially intended subject of reform. That this was indeed the case is suggested by the comment of Julian Mack, one of the first judges to preside over the Cook County Juvenile Court, that the problem with the existing system was that “instead of the state’s training its bad boys so as to make of them decent citizens, it permitted them to become the outlaws and outcasts of society.”4 However, as concerns about the sexually nonconforming behavior of young working women mounted, female reformers increasingly looked to the state to manage their errant behavior. Although male delinquents con‑ tinued to greatly outnumber their female peers, as discussed below, highly gendered understandings of the relative seriousness of their transgressions meant that the female delinquent, whose wrongdoings were almost always cast in sexual terms, was generally considered to pose a greater threat to the social order than her youthful male counterpart. Children within the Adult Criminal Justice System Historically, the fate of children who were charged with committing a crime was typically entrusted to the criminal courts. Although, as briefly noted below, some limited age‑based reforms were introduced during the nineteenth century, the “infancy defense,” was the primary means by which the criminal justice system accommodated youthful immaturity. Cleaving childhood into three distinct phases, this defense operated as a complete bar to the prosecution of children under the age of seven based upon the presumption that they were incapable of forming the requisite criminal intent, and thus should not be held responsible for their wrongful acts. Moving up the age scale, children between the ages of seven and fourteen were governed by a rebuttable presumption of incapacity that could be defeated by proof that a child had “sufficient discernment to distinguish good from evil” and was therefore able to “comprehend the nature of his acts.”5 The force of this presumption diminished in strength as children approached their fourteenth birthday, at which point it vanished completely, thus wholly divesting them of the defense’s protective mantle.

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Once deemed capable of acting with the requisite criminal intent, a child was treated as an “ordinary criminal,” and if found guilty of wrongdo‑ ing, could be sentenced to a state reformatory or penitentiary on the same terms as an adult.6 Although most likely jarring to contemporary sensibilities, this approach to youthful wrongdoing was consistent with the dominant understanding of children as innately sinful and in need of stern correc‑ tion in order to secure their obedience to rightful authority.7 Although, as encapsulated by the classic adage “spare the rod, spoil the child,” this cor‑ rective approach was typically associated with the disciplinary regime of the domestic realm, the courts were poised to step in when parental correction failed to break the will of a particularly recalcitrant child. This approach to juvenile offending also reflects the fact that child‑ hood had not yet been clearly delineated as a uniquely bracketed phase of life. In a primarily agricultural society in which children and adults frequently worked side by side and participated in the same “social and ceremonial activities” without a focused regard, as historian John Demos explains, for “distinctions of age,” children were regarded as different “in scale” rather than “in kind” from adults, with maturity marking a gradual “enlargement” of—rather than a fundamental “change” in—their capaci‑ ties.8 In short, rather than youth being viewed, as it would soon come to be at least from a middle‑class perspective, as a distinct stage of life that was “to be enjoyed and prolonged” based upon the special characteristics and needs of the young, the dominant conception of childhood was that it was a period of preparation for adulthood.9 During the second half of the nineteenth century, the view that children who committed criminal offenses were equally culpable actors who should be treated like adults began to lose its grip as the below‑discussed chang‑ ing conception of childhood began to gain a foothold, especially among the middle class. As a result, states began experimenting with a variety of reforms intended to create some degree of separation between children and adults within the criminal justice system, such as by, for example, the designation of a special children’s session within a court of general criminal jurisdiction and the establishment of juvenile reform schools.10 Although these reforms certainly suggest the gradual erosion of tradi‑ tional understandings of youthful criminal responsibility, they nonetheless were modest in scope. As Herbert H. Lou explains in his 1927 monograph on the history of the juvenile court: “[D]espite the various beneficent efforts in a number of states to save offending children, numberless children in the country as a whole, were indicted, prosecuted, and tried as ordinary criminals and imprisoned in reformatories and penitentiaries.”11 In short, although these changes modulated some of the harsh contours of the existing

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approach to juvenile offending, the transformative vision that a child who broke the law should be “dealt with by the state not as a criminal but as a child needing care, education, and protection” would not be realized until the Progressive Era.12 A Court of Their Own Breaking with the formalized procedures of the criminal courts, which were focused on determining whether an individual had committed a particular crime and then meting out the appropriate punishment, the Progressive Era juvenile courts inaugurated an informal and individualized approach toward the youthful offender.13 Characterizing him/her as an unfortunate child, rather than as a criminal, these proceedings were intended to be protective rather than punitive in nature so as to “check the criminal tendency in its inception, and protect the unformed character in the facile period from improper environment and influences.”14 In the frequently quoted words of Julian Mack, rather than seeking to determine if a child had committed a “specific offense,” a judge was instead to “take him in charge, not so much to punish as to reform, not to degrade but to uplift, not to crush but to develop, not to make him a criminal but a worthy citizen.”15 Grounded in the ancient English equitable doctrine of parens patriae (literally meaning “parent of the country”), which served to vest the Crown with protective authority over the legally incompetent, the juvenile court was premised on the foundational assumption that the state had ultimate responsibility for children who appeared to be heading down the wrong path due to the “unwillingness or inability of [their] natural parents to guide [them] toward good citizenship.”16 Although this approach enabled judges to tailor their results to meet the individual needs of the children appearing before them, who were mostly from lower‑income and immigrant families, it also invested the court with a broad and discretionary supervisory authority over them—an authority that reformers stressed was necessary in order to counteract the negative environmental influences that they believed pervaded the lives of the less fortunate. Reflecting this tension, historians have long debated whether the juvenile court was conceived of as a “benevolent and functional, legal response to a putative increase in juvenile delinquency”17 or was instead intended as a vehicle for imposing “middle‑class, Protestant, and nativist values upon an immigrant‑laden lower class, which was both feared and despised.”18 The individualized and rehabilitative ethos of the juvenile court reflects important shifts in the middle‑class conception of childhood that gradually took hold over the latter half of the nineteenth century. Shaped

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by both the Romantic ideal of “children as symbols of purity, spontaneity, and emotional expressiveness,”19 whose malleable minds were, according to the influential philosopher John Locke, like blank slates awaiting inscrip‑ tion, as well as by their diminished role in the family economy, children gradually came to be seen in increasingly sentimental terms. Displacing older dominant understandings of the productive child who was an integral member of the family economy, “the new normative ideal of the child as an exclusively and affective asset” yielded a protective stance toward what was now increasingly viewed by reformers as a uniquely fragile phase of life.20 Correspondingly, the home was envisioned as a place of nurture within which children were to be sheltered from the responsibilities and the harsh realities of the adult world. Capturing this emerging bourgeois ideal, Viviana A. Zelizer comments that this ethos located “[p]roperly loved children, regardless of social class . . . in a domesticated, nonproductive world of lessons, games, and token money.”21 Not surprisingly, as a more deliberate and emotionally nuanced approach to parenting took hold in middle‑class households that was intended to mold a child’s character and foster the internalization of restraints, mothers were increasingly viewed as naturally more suited to the task of child rearing—a duty that had previously been entrusted to fathers as the ultimate domes‑ tic authority.22 Succinctly capturing the dynamic interplay between these transfigured family roles, Carl Degler writes that “[e]xalting the child went hand in hand with exalting the domestic role of women; each reinforced the other while together they raised domesticity to a new and higher level of respectability.”23 Deeply influenced by this emerging middle‑class conception of child‑ hood, female reformers were at the forefront of the juvenile court move‑ ment.24 Tapping into the newly exalted view of motherhood, many drew upon their own experience as mothers to lobby for legislative reform aimed at the protection of children. As Elizabeth Clapp explains, their activism was based on the view “that women had a duty to extend their female skills and concerns beyond their own homes” in order to ensure that all children and not just theirs were well cared for.25 In seeking to infuse their belief in the distinctiveness of childhood into the institutional fabric of the juvenile court, female reformers increasingly focused on the particular needs of the female sexual delinquent. Believing that men were not up to the task of helping the errant girl to redirect her sexual energy into normative channels, they insisted that “trained women professionals should handle young female sex offenders in order to provide them with the maternal care and guidance they supposedly lacked in their

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own homes.”26 This demand eventually led to the hiring of women into a wide range of professional positions within the juvenile court system, result‑ ing in what is often referred to as a “maternalized” court. However, despite their active involvement in the juvenile court movement, African American women were generally closed out of these professional appointments based on overt patterns of racial discrimination. As discussed by Cheryl D. Hicks, this racially based exclusion also meant that these reformers generally had to rely upon “private, self‑help efforts within their own communities to address the problem of female delinquency” within the African American community.27

The Emergence of the “Girl Problem” As previously noted, in advocating for a specialized juvenile court, reform‑ ers were not initially focused on the wayward girl, as she was vastly out‑ numbered in the criminal justice system by the offending boy. However, as concerns mounted about the behavior of young working women who, as Kathy Peiss writes, were openly experimenting “with new cultural forms that articulated gender in terms of sexual expressiveness and social interac‑ tions with men,”28 reformers looked to the juvenile courts to manage their nonconforming sexuality, which many came to regard as more problematic than the misconduct of their male peers. Beyond Seduction: Rewriting the Sexual Narrative In 1909, the Supreme Court of Oregon upheld the conviction of a Mr. J. D. Dunn for contributing to the delinquency of a child under the state’s juvenile court law based upon evidence that he solicited a fourteen‑year‑old girl named Hallie to have intercourse with him and placed her hand “upon the private parts of him.”29 The court’s explanation as to why the defendant’s actions satisfied the requirements of this statutory offense is an excellent place to begin our discussion of the “girl problem,” as it signals the shifting understanding of youthful female desire that shaped the newly constituted and highly gendered category of the “sexual delinquent.” Included as a specific provision in the newly enacted juvenile court laws of most states, the crime of contributing to the delinquency of a minor was intended to hold adults responsible for conduct that was thought to have a corrupting influence on children. To avoid the thorny problem of having to prove that a defendant’s actions actually caused or exacerbated a minor’s delinquent behavior, most jurisdictions permitted a conviction

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based on proof that the “acts complained of manifestly tend toward such delinquency.”30 As the Oregon Court explained, to “assume that it was intended that the State should await the result of the wrong perpetrated before punishing the offender, would . . . strongly defeat the very purpose of the law in its effort to protect children.”31 Returning to Mr. Dunn, the question that concerns us is what plau‑ sible connection could there be between the sexual overtures that he made toward the fourteen‑year‑old Hallie and the likelihood that she might now become a delinquent child, as the crux of the crime is establishing that adult behavior would “manifestly tend” to lead a young person down the path to delinquency. However, the Court had no difficulty connecting the dots. As it explained, by behaving in a manner that was “calculated to arouse her passions,”32 the defendant’s actions created the risk that Hallie might now be tempted to engage in immoral behavior, which was a “status offense” under most juvenile court laws, meaning that although the offend‑ ing behavior would not constitute a crime if committed by an adult, it could subject a child to the jurisdictional authority of the juvenile court. At first glance, the criminalization of Mr. Dunn’s behavior appears to be a carryover of the nineteenth‑century concern with the evils of seduc‑ tion. However, if one considers the reason why the Court was intent on punishing Mr. Dunn for the sexual overtures he made to Hallie, it is clear that the juvenile law was being used to prevent a very different type of harm—one that signals a shifting understanding of youthful female sexuality. As we have seen, the campaigns to criminalize seduction and to raise the age of sexual consent cast young women as the passionless victims of the predatory male, and thus sought to wrap the law around the male body in order to contain unruly masculine desire. Having discursively constituted young women as innately pure, the reformers did not look to the law to manage female sexual expression as this would have disrupted the coherence of the seduction narrative that they relied upon in their efforts to expand the authority of the criminal law over the errant male. In direct contrast to this exclusive focus on controlling the sexual behavior of men, as the above case clearly demonstrates, the crime of con‑ tributing to the delinquency of a minor directly implicates youthful female desire.33 In this instance, as the Oregon Supreme Court makes clear, the primary harm to be guarded against was not the wrongful taking of a girl’s virginity, but rather the unleashing of her latent passions. No longer simply viewed as the ruined victim of the predatory male, the animating fear here was that once an adolescent girl had been exposed to behavior that was “calculated to arouse her passions,” she might well be induced into leading

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“a dissolute, lewd and immoral life” on account of her unleashed sexuality, in contravention of the juvenile court laws.34 This newly articulated concern that rather than leading to a grievous loss of purity, resulting in the inevitable slide into prostitution due to the foreclosure of all respectable options, the exposure to unbridled male desire might unleash a young woman’s own passions resonates with emerging understandings of female sexuality. In a marked departure from the domi‑ nant Victorian presentation of women as lacking in natural desire, in the opening decade of the twentieth century a number of prominent thinkers, including, perhaps most famously, Sigmund Freud and the renowned English sexologist, Havelock Ellis, began presenting the public with a more active model of female desire.35 In particular, Ellis, who is “recognized by historians as a ‘central figure’ in the emergence of a modern sexual ethos,” together with the similarly eminent child study expert and psychologist G. Stanley Hall, stressed that the awakening of desire was a natural part of puberty in females and males alike, thus situating the adolescent female within a sexually modernizing world.36 Reflecting the growing acceptance of these ideas, psychologist Phyl‑ lis Blanchard stated as a matter of common fact in her 1924 monograph entitled The Adolescent Girl: A Study from the Psychoanalytic View, which included a preface by her mentor Stanley Hall, that as a girl moves into the “sexual phase of her existence,” she becomes subject to “the physical sensations of sex longing,” which Blanchard described as akin to being “swayed hither and thither by sensations and emotions utterly foreign to her previous experiences.”37 Like Hall, who described the first few days of menstruation as a time when a woman “is introverted by strange sensa‑ tions which ideally are not painful, but deliciously and sometimes almost ecstatically charming,”38 Blanchard also linked the flowering of desire to the onset of menstruation, commenting that the “physical sensations of sex longing . . . are usually much intensified just preceding menstruation and again after the third day or so from the beginning of that function,” at times becoming so strong so as to “prove a temptation to masturbation or illicit intercourse.”39 Although there may have been a growing acceptance of the fact, particularly among those schooled in child development, that the awaken‑ ing of sexual feelings was a normal part of adolescent girlhood, this did not translate into an endorsement of early sexual activity (although, as discussed below, attitudes became somewhat more liberal during the 1920s). For example, Hall himself believed that these longings would naturally be “kept in check by the ‘deep‑seated’ female tendency toward ‘anatomical,

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physiological, and psychological modesty.’”40 Accordingly, notwithstanding these emerging ideas, as they gazed out upon the urban landscape, Progres‑ sive Era reformers grew increasingly concerned about the observable changes in patterns of youthful female behavior. The “Appreciable Tendency Toward Deterioration In Moral Tone Among A Great Proportion Of Adolescent Girls In Tenement Districts” As Progressive Era reformers struggled to make sense out of and respond to the complexities of America’s modernizing urban environments, they grew increasingly concerned that the general conditions of working‑class and immigrant life were conspiring to erode the morality of young work‑ ing women, who, as Peiss puts it, were actively “experimenting with new cultural forms that articulated gender in terms of sexual expressiveness and social interaction with men.”41 As it became clear that the classic seduction narrative did not accurately capture the complex and varied realities of their lives, in keeping with the Progressive Era’s spirit of scientific inquiry into social problems, reformers began to engage in “systematic studies of young working‑class women in urban neighborhoods”42 in an effort to explain the marked “deterioration in moral tone among a great proportion of adolescent girls in tenement districts.”43 Although, as Ruth M. Alexander makes clear, “adolescent girls from middle‑class homes did not escape criticism for their rebellious conduct and erotic interests,”44 their behavior did not attract the same degree of attention and documentation as that of girls from the “tenement districts.” Generally less likely than working girls to use the streets as a place to meet “the other sex, to explore nascent sexual feelings, and carry on flirtations”45 and “usually too much a part of mainstream society to be suspected of behavior analogous to that of the ultimate female outsider, the prostitute,”46 as Alexander argues, class privilege generally functioned to insulate girls from “respectable” homes from public scrutiny. Thus, in addition to, as discussed below, being shaped by gendered understandings of wrongful behavior, the definitional boundaries of the category “sexual delinquent,” were also shaped by the class, racial, and ethnic identities of those who lived in the “tenement districts.” In 1913, in an attempt to shed light on the “vital and baffling nature of the problem of the adolescent girl of the tenement house family and the city factory or department store,” Robert A. Woods and Albert J. Ken‑ nedy of the National Federation of Settlements published a seminal study entitled, Young Working Girls, which drew upon information provided by

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more than two thousand settlement workers from across the nation.47 With a foreword by Jane Addams of the Hull House Settlement, this work was praised for providing its readers with a “wealth of materials” and a “sane broad point of view [that] gives a comprehensive understanding of this most difficult of all problems.” The study quickly became an important resource for those in the field “who [had] sought in vain for literature on the girl problem.”48 In keeping with the Progressive Era emphasis on environmental explanations for criminal and deviant behavior, as distinct from the nineteenth‑century tendency to attribute such conduct to inherited characteristics, Woods and Kennedy focused on the perils of urban life. More specifically, they identified three environmental influences as being particularly destructive of female morality, namely: an impoverished home life; youthful employment in morally suspect environments; and the allur‑ ing world of commercial amusements. Far from alone in identifying these sources of peril, other empirical studies on the “girl problem” would repeat‑ edly return to these same contributing factors.49 Woods and Kennedy were particularly concerned about the “material breakdown of the home,” which they identified as “one of the most pow‑ erful causes of the present lowered physical and moral standard so often noticed among working girls.”50 Although noting the overall “dehumanizing effects” of poverty, they were especially attentive to the moral repercussions of overcrowding. As they explained, not only did overcrowding erode “the feeling of privacy,” which they believed resulted in a loss of self‑esteem and modesty, most worrisome was that it made it “almost inevitable that chil‑ dren should come to know the innermost reserves of marriage,” which, in turn, might tempt girls “to surrender their chastity and even to participate in gross immoralities.”51 Echoing these sentiments, in her study of “the conditions surrounding the young girl between fourteen and eighteen” in settlement neighbor‑ hoods in New York, Harriet McDoual Daniels also stressed that “moral degradation” was the most serious consequence of the overcrowding of a family into a single room.52 Reinforcing this link in a more general way, Sophonisba Breckenridge and Edith Abbott concluded in their highly acclaimed study, The Delinquent Child and the Home, in which they sought to assess the impact of a child’s home environment on his or her juvenile tendencies, that when compared to boys who appeared before the court, a disproportionate number of girls came from the lowest strata of society where “degradation and poverty go hand in hand,” resulting in a “a condi‑ tion of peril to [their] virtue.”53

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The concern that poverty and overcrowding might lead an adolescent girl to “surrender her chastity and even to participate in gross immoralities,” relates directly back to the fear that underlay the conviction of Mr. Dunn for contributing to the delinquency of Hallie. Once again reflecting the modernist belief that puberty is a time of sexual awakening, the unifying fear was that once a young girl was introduced to sexuality, whether through inappropriate touching or exposure to, as Woods and Kennedy discreetly put it, the “innermost reserves of marriage,” her natural reserve would be eroded, thus leaving her vulnerable to the temptations of the flesh. In this regard, the risk of exposure would thus be far less for a middle‑class girl who was likely to be spatially removed from the “innermost reserves” of her parents’ marriage. Reinforcing the class anxieties of the reformers, the intact material borders of the more privileged home environment could accordingly be counted upon to serve as a barrier against the surging tides of female adolescent desire. In focusing on a young woman’s domestic surroundings, reformers were not only concerned about the “material breakdown” of the home. Parents, particularly those who were immigrants, were subject to consider‑ able criticism. Although many reformers expressed genuine compassion for the difficulties faced by struggling urban parents and worked hard to alleviate their sufferings, others blamed them for causing the delinquency of their daughters (and sons). In her study entitled “Determinants of Sex Delinquency in Adolescent Girls Based on Intensive Case Studies,” Anne T. Bingham concluded that “[w]e are convinced that such home influences as the standards and customs of other lands, as well as of a lack of pro‑ gressiveness, characteristic of illiterate peasant types, are important factors in the causation of delinquency.”54 Of particular note, she writes that the failure of foreign‑born parents to obtain an education or learn English due to their “indifference or dullness,” produced a sense of superiority on the part of their children, resulting in a “lack of respect for parental opinion on any subject . . . [and an] excessive desire for unrestrained freedom,”55 which, in girls, was believed to be a direct cause of their sexual delinquency. These critiques reflect the reformers’ conviction that the primary prob‑ lem with these tenement families was that they failed to organize their lives in accordance with middle‑class standards, a concern that was particularly salient where mothers were concerned. As Woods and Kennedy explained, rather than being “too busy or too overwrought” as tenement mothers were thought to be to pay close attention to the needs and whereabouts of their adolescent daughters, a mother should be free to “organize the family life in such a way as to promote the rounded growth of the children.”56

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Constituting herself as “a thrifty and capable housewife, in possession of stable moral standards, and with time and energy to give to the needs of her children,” she would thus stand as a protective bulwark against the moral contamination of her daughter.57 This is certainly not to say that immigrant parents were not beset by considerable challenges as they struggled to find their way in an often unforgiving and hostile world, which resulted in protracted conflicts with their children. As Ruth Alexander explains, as these parents fought to “maintain a modicum of stability and social respectability,”58 they often clung to traditional ways that were stifling to their daughters who “found that home life compared poorly with the buoyant mood and youthful com‑ panionship to be found in city streets, dance halls, and amusement parks.”59 In particular, as parents struggled to “situate themselves in an unfamiliar society, to make sense of new commercial and industrial practices, strange cultural values, and xenophobic attitudes,” they often found themselves unable to cope with their daughters’ rebelliousness as the rising generation sought to carve out a realm of female autonomy that was markedly dif‑ ferent from the more cloistered world of their mothers, which resulted in considerable intergenerational conflict.60 In a similar manner, as Cheryl D. Hicks explains, as working‑class black families sought to uphold “conven‑ tional standards of morality and respectability,” in a racially hostile world, it was not uncommon for conflicts to erupt over what the older generation “defined as the transgressive behavior of their female relatives.”61 Consequently, as both Odem and Hicks document, it is important to recognize that once the infrastructure was in place, parents themselves not uncommonly turned to the juvenile courts for help in controlling their errant daughters as they rebelled against strict household rules.62 Accord‑ ingly, although reformers certainly sought to impress the importance of middle‑class norms on struggling tenement households, the fact that parents also looked to the state to “help strengthen their flagging authority over the social and sexual activities of their teenage daughters,” makes it clear that state intervention was not simply a “top‑down model of class control,” but that it also was a sought‑after parental solution to the complex and fragile nature of intrafamilial conflicts.63 Reflecting the increasing middle‑class emphasis on childhood as an extended period of time during which children were to be sheltered from the burdens of the adult world, working‑class parents also came under increas‑ ing criticism for exploiting their children for pecuniary ends by sending them out to work. Not only was this practice regarded as contrary to “the new normative ideal of the child as an exclusively emotional and affective

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asset,” which, as Viviana A. Zelizer explains, was increasingly regarded as “radically incompatible” with participation in the cash economy,64 parents were also sharply criticized for their lack of concern about the moral dan‑ gers of the workplace. Although fears about the dangers of the workplace were certainly far from groundless as young women frequently had to contend with exploit‑ ative conditions, which often included sexual coercion, the concern of reformers that the workplace was a primary contributing cause of female delinquency also reflected a normative judgment that employers did “not provide the kind of supervision that was deemed necessary for adolescent girls.”65 As a consequence, as Woods and Kennedy cautioned, working girls were “inevitably exposed to moral temptation under many forms,”66 including an easy familiarity with men and a close association with older girls of “loose . . . or even bad morals.”67 While reformers warned of the potential moral risks associated with domestic service and factory work, they regarded the department store where the shop girl would be exposed to a “lavish and beautiful display of goods” that she could not afford to purchase on her own, with particular alarm. Most worrisome was that as a result of being exposed to desirable merchandise she could not afford, the shop girl might be tempted to trade sexual favors, possibly with the traveling men who apparently frequented these stores, looking for “easy victims of their lust,” in exchange for gifts of finery that were otherwise beyond her pecuniary means.68 Last on the list of particularly worrisome environmental influences were places of commercial entertainment, such as dance halls, movie theaters, and amusement parks, which Woods and Kennedy cautioned laid the work‑ ing girl “open to temptations which she is ill‑fitted to meet.”69 Thus, for example, they warned readers of their report about the “dangerously preva‑ lent indecent dances” that had become increasingly popular in the public dance halls as well as about the “danger of undue familiarity made possible by the dim lights” of the movie theater—a risk that was compounded by the “likelihood that the . . . easy conversational relations among spectators [would] lead to improvised and clandestine relations with men.”70 Again, young women were, of course, not immune from the very real risks of sexual coercion as they became active participants in the largely unsupervised world of work and commercial amusement. One particular concern was the practice of “treating,” which involved the offer of sexual favors in exchange for a night out on the town or other gifts. While this practice may well have been a deliberate choice on the part of some young women who realized their sexuality was a marketable commodity, others

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negotiated these encounters with little understanding of gendered power dynamics or knowledge about the risks of pregnancy and venereal disease, thus leaving them open to exploitation by men who simply wanted cheap sexual thrills.71 At the same time, however, the focus on the environment in which these young women lived, worked, and played also reflected a fear that their “flamboyant assertion” of a highly stylized self, which played with “notions of respectability, allure, independence, and status,”72 was indicative of a moral laxity that was commonly associated with prostitutes. Of particular concern to middle‑class reformers was that the wall which Victorian cul‑ ture had carefully erected between the virtuous and the fallen woman was at risk of being dismantled, thus blurring the boundaries between female respectability and promiscuity. In addition to these corrosive environmental influences, reformers also looked to race and feeblemindedness as explanations for the “appreciable tendency toward deterioration in moral tone among a great proportion of adolescent girls in tenement districts.” Regarded as less malleable and thus potentially far more serious than the environmental causes of female sexual delinquency, these considerations provoked considerable anxiety about the intractability of the problem of rampant female immorality. First, when it came to race, although both black and white reformers agreed that environmental factors were an important cause of delinquent behavior in young black women, as Cheryl D. Hicks explains, many white reformers also viewed their behavior through a highly racialized lens. Focus‑ ing on the combined influence of their “African ancestry [and] the legacy of slavery,” they had trouble believing that, in contrast to other female delinquents, these young women actually possessed an internal “moral compass.”73 Consequently, while white working girls, including those from immigrant families, were thought to possess, as Woods and Kennedy put it, an “instinctive rectitude,”74 black working girls were regarded as innately promiscuous due to their combined genetic and historic inheritance. Reflect‑ ing the intersection of this racial ideology with the gendered identity of the sexual delinquent, Jane Addams declared that, unlike immigrant girls who “had the capacity to ‘be assimilated into civilization” due to their European culture, young black women did not have the “same capacity for cultural improvement,” due to their “lack of inherited control.”75 Reformers were thus far less hopeful about the reform potential of young working black women, marked as they believed them to be by an indelible stain of innate promiscuity, as compared to their white counterparts, including those from immigrant households.

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Many also believed that “feeblemindedness,” which was considered to be an inherited characteristic, was a primary cause of female promiscu‑ ity. As Michael A. Rembis documents: “Experts, interested readers, and social reformers alike linked a perceived lack of intelligence to sexual delinquency and argued that ‘feebleminded’ women were more apt than their ‘normal‑minded’ counterparts to commit moral offenses,”76 a belief that, as discussed below, contributed to the view that female delinquency was a more serious social problem than male delinquency. Capturing the believed association between mental “defectiveness” and immoral proclivities, Jean Walker concluded, in her 1925 study entitled “Factors Contributing to the Delinquency of Defective Girls,” that because the “instinctive sex impulses and interests are subject to fewer inhibitions than is the case with the intelligent individual” and their “emotional reactions . . . cruder, more primitive and direct,” the feebleminded were more likely to succumb to temptation, and again be far less capable of being turned toward a life of moral rectitude.77 Renegotiating the Boundaries of their Lives In seeking an explanation for their tendency toward “immorality” Progres‑ sive Era reformers generally did not consider the possibility that young working women were not simply victims of their unquestionably difficult life circumstances, but may also have actively been engaged in the project of challenging the normative assumptions that had constrained the lives of their mothers and grandmothers. Coming of age at a time when, as Alex‑ ander writes, women “across the socioeconomic spectrum self‑consciously rejected the behavioral conventions and moral values of the nineteenth century,”78 conduct that was read as a slide into immorality may instead have represented the efforts of young women to redraw the boundaries of their lives in the context of an increasingly modern urban culture in which “[d]emands for purity and for submission to family claims held them more lightly than in the generations past.”79 Suggesting that this may well have been the case, when June Pur‑ cell‑Guild published the results of her study of 131 delinquent girls who were committed to the Juvenile Detention Home in Chicago while she was superintendent, in which she sought to understand the “general reactions of the girls to their own problems,” she concluded that the vast majority of the girls she interviewed did not feel “any real regret or shame for their wrongdoing,” which in one instance consisted of the writing of “indescribably obscene letters to various soldiers.”80 Describing her subjects as “pitifully

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bitter and defiant” and deeming their “attitude of indifference” toward their sexual indiscretions to be one of the most “discouraging facts met in the course of this study,” Purcell‑Guild was unable to conceive of the “casual attitude many girls exhibited towards sex” in anything but a negative light.81 Of particular note, when discussing “the very large number of girls who had only had relations with one or two men,” Purcell‑Guild found that rather than attempting to “defend themselves on the ground of ignorance or innocence” these girls felt justified in their behavior if the man was their “steady.” Noting their steadfast refusal to charcterize their behavior as wrong or dangerous, she decried the fact that most of the girls who were committed to the juvenile home for sexual offenses “seemed to have slipped naturally into immorality without stopping to consider the matter at all.”82 Closed to the possibility that her subjects might have been provid‑ ing her with a genuine assessment of their behavior based upon changing sexual norms which had opened up new possibilities for them, Purcell‑Guild concluded that the “connection between the hardships of their lives and their delinquencies seems no less obvious, because so few of the girls them‑ selves consciously realized it.”83 Eliding the possibility of agency, she buried the potentially subversive reading of their claim that they did not feel “regret or shame” about their sexual experiences in her assertion that “[m] oral disintegration naturally accompanies unconscious as well as conscious discontent with overcrowded homes, uninteresting and poorly paid work, demoralizing recreation, insufficient and unattractive clothes, and so forth.”84 Although Purcell‑Guild’s subjects undoubtedly had to contend with the difficult environmental conditions that she describes, including over‑ crowded homes and uninteresting and poorly paid work, tracking Woods and Kennedy, the inexorable causal connection that she drew between these conditions and their “moral disintegration” obscures any other pos‑ sible reading of their behavior. As a result of this tendency on the part of reformers to regard young women’s sexual behavior as inherently problematic, female delinquency came to be defined almost exclusively in moral terms, thus infusing a highly gendered conception of youthful wrongdoing into the juvenile justice system.

Engendering Juvenile Justice In 1915, noted sex educator Dr. Mabel Ulrich, cautioned her Manhattan audience that “(t)he great menace of the American City life today was not the man who was going about trying to lure young people into horrible

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lives, but was the young girl . . . who was perfectly free to roam the streets morning, noon and night, who apparently had no moral outlook at all and who was constantly corrupting the young men and boys of large cities.”85 Vividly capturing the anxiety that Progressive Era reformers felt toward what they regarded as unbridled youthful female sexual energy (although, unlike Ulrich, most were not concerned with the corruption of young men and boys), this striking reversal of the seduction narrative that the nineteenth‑century reformers had relied upon to persuade legislators of the necessity of bringing the unruly male body under the supervisory authority of the state set the stage for the dramatic reconfiguration of the relationship between the state and young working women. Becoming a Regulatory Subject Having discarded the mantle of female sexual innocence, reformers looked to the juvenile court to manage the behavior of the sexually nonconforming girl. Consequently, rather than, as had previously been the case, casting the adolescent female as the designed beneficiary of laws that were intended to regulate illicit male behavior, in their effort to manage her sexuality, Progressive Era reformers effectively recast her as the intended subject of state regulation. As they sought to wrap the regulatory authority of the state around her unruly body, the identity of the female delinquent was commonly conflated with the sexual delinquent. Capturing the gendered collapsing of these categories, Kate Burr Johnson, the Commissioner of the State Board of Charities and Public Welfare of North Carolina, thus remarked that when “we speak of the delinquent girl we usually have in mind the sex offender” whereas “we do not think of the problem of the delinquent boy as primarily related to sex as we do in the case of girls.” Driving home this gendered dichotomy, she reaffirmed that “when we speak of the delinquent girl we mean one thing, and when we speak of a delinquent boy we mean another.”86 Tracking this gendered construction of delinquency, adolescent males and females were generally brought into the juvenile court for different cat‑ egories of wrongdoing. Based on their comprehensive study of the juvenile proceedings during the first decade of the Cook County Juvenile Court, Breckenridge and Abbott concluded that “more than 80 percent of the delinquent girls [were] brought to court because their virtue [was] in peril, if it [had] not already been lost.”87 In sharp contrast, they reported that “the offenses of more than half of the delinquent boys who were brought into court during the decade were violations of property rights,” while fewer than 2 percent were charged with actually engaging in “immoral” conduct.88

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Reinforcing this pattern, Breckinridge and Abbot also made clear that when a girl was charged with “being incorrigible or disorderly,” the underly‑ ing conduct usually involved sexual impropriety.89 However, when boys were similarly charged with being incorrigible or disorderly, the allegations took on “an entirely different meaning.”90 Divested of the gendered association with immorality, the complained‑of conduct typically involved activities such as “loitering about the streets and using vulgar language, receiving money embezzled by another boy and running away with it . . . going upon the roof of a building and throwing stones at passers‑by, refusing to obey parents, and staying away from home.”91 The rather elastic boundaries of these status offenses enabled the juvenile justice system to cast a rather wide net around a girl’s body in order to regulate her sexual conduct. Accordingly, as Steven Schlossman and Stephanie Wallach argue in their classic work on the subject, a young woman “only had to show ‘signs’ in her appearance, conversation and bearing that she had probably had intercourse in the past or might do so in the near future” in order to suggest a need for state intervention.92 As a practical matter, the signs that a girl might be heading down the wrong path included, as they document, a wide range of conduct, such as: “staying away from home, associating with persons of dubious character, going to dance houses . . . riding at night in automobiles without a chaperone [and] strutting about in a lascivious manner,”93 or, as Purcell‑Guild revealed in her study of delinquent girls, the writing of “indescribably obscene letters to various soldiers.”94 This conflation of female delinquency with sexual immorality did not, of course, mean that young urban men were chaste, but rather that their sexual conduct was not deemed sufficiently problematic so as to subject their bodies to the supervisory authority of the state. Astutely capturing the gendering of what was considered delinquent behavior, sex educator and author Winifred Richmond noted that if boys were brought to book for sex delinquencies as girls are, their preponderant offenses would be found to lie in the same sphere also. But the boy who indulges in sex relations is sel‑ dom apprehended for that reason alone; the girl, if discovered, immediately comes under the social ban.95 The fact that the young man who “indulged in sexual relations” was not regarded as a delinquent, while a young woman who likewise indulged might well find herself committed to a juvenile facility due to her “immoral” proclivities, makes clear that the historic double standard of morality

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permeated the Progressive Era approach to juvenile justice. As a result, while young men continued to escape the badge of disapproval, behavior that once branded a girl as ruined now marked her as delinquent, which in the Progressive Era carried with it legal as well as social consequences.

Rehabilitating the Sexual Delinquent Not only was the concept of delinquency itself highly gendered, reformers also tended to regard the sexual infractions of young women as being of a “more serious nature” than the misdeeds of their male peers.96 In turn, this assessment embodied another set of gendered assumptions regarding the potential implications of youthful wrongdoing for both the juvenile offender him or herself and for society as a whole and the closely entwined issue of a young person’s rehabilitative potential. A More Serious Wrong/ A Less Hopeful Future The not uncommon view that the problem of the “girl as a sex offender” was “more dramatic and more important”97 than the problem of the male juvenile offender reflects the reformers’ concern that while her immoral conduct put her “whole future life” in jeopardy,98 his misdeeds could well be understood as a rather unremarkable expression of youthful indiscretion that a boy was likely to outgrow as he matured into adulthood. As Breckinridge and Abbott rather poetically put it: “If a boy’s will is the wind’s will, and the period of willful adventure must have its gusty way, it is quite as true that the wind often quiets, and the young worker comes meekly under the family yoke.”99 Embracing the view that “boys will be boys,” many reform‑ ers thus assumed that a degree of mischievous and socially nonconforming behavior was a simply a normal part of growing up. This differentially gendered weighting of youthful transgressions arguably also reflected the commonly held Progressive Era belief that, as Jeffrey Moran writes, “individual sexual behavior was inextricably linked with public issues.”100 Tapping into broader middle‑class fears about the “breakdown of a sexual code that had been central to Victorian respect‑ ability,”101 the sexual delinquent was discursively constituted as a destabi‑ lizing force at a time when the nation was deeply preoccupied with the harms of prostitution and eugenics. Social anxieties about these issues were mapped onto her body, thus magnifying the disruptive potential of her delinquent conduct.

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As Ruth Rosen describes, fueled by anti‑immigration sentiments and anxiety about the changing roles of women, anti‑prostitution efforts were at their peak during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Linking the prostitute to “every imaginable form of individual and public corruption,” a broad cross section of activists mobilized in a coordinated national campaign to bring about an end to the trade in women’s bodies.102 To aid in the effort, vice commissions were established in most major cities to investigate the problem in an “organized and systematic” manner in the hope that once the “evil was made public and exposed, ‘society’ would spring to eliminate it.”103 According to Marc Connelly, these commissions were particularly concerned about the behavior of young working women who they feared might be “clandestine prostitutes simply because they behaved in nontra‑ ditional ways.”104 Equally worrisome was the possibility that they were also freely granting sexual favors “in return only for the pleasure given or the company of the men with whom they respond,” based upon, as the Newark Vice Commission put it their lack of “ethical standards” coupled with their mistaken belief that they have as good a right as it is generally supposed that men have, to lead a double life; that they have a right to the plea‑ sure they can gain from their bodies if they can do so without exposure.105 So viewed, the young working woman was no longer clearly distinguishable from the prostitute who had come to embody the “discontent and anxiety about changes that were corrupting and invading traditional American society.”106 As a result, the sexualized body of the female delinquent doubled as a potent symbol of social and domestic dislocation. Compounding the threat that the female delinquent was thought to pose to the social order, as previously noted, her behavior was often linked with “feeblemindedness,” which was regarded as a highly undesirable hereditary flaw. Accordingly, as American eugenicists fought to “better” the human race by preventing those believed to be defective from reproducing through measures such as involuntary sterilization and eugenic commitment laws, the unmanaged sexual behavior of young women was viewed with particular alarm based upon the fear that any resulting pregnancies would further weaken the gene pool. Invested with consequences that were deemed to be “of supreme important to the race, both socially and biologically,”107 their transgressions assumed a particularly ominous weight that was not likewise associated with male delinquency.

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Although the arguably more serious nature of a young woman’s sexual transgressions made the need for state intervention more urgent, in the eyes of the reformers it also made the task more difficult, and they were far less sanguine about the rehabilitative potential of the female sexual delinquent. In contrast to the wayward boy who, according to Breckinridge and Abbott, was frequently “only a troublesome nuisance,” and who, “as the probation officer so often says, is ‘really not a bad boy’ and ‘with a little watching . . . is sure to come out right,”108 reformers cautioned that “it was not so easy for the girl who has been immoral to be helped back to a normal place in society.“109 In light of her tarnished reputation, one study thus dismally concluded that the “girl who has once become delinquent finds it 1000 times more difficult to straighten herself than the boy.”110 Consequently, many leading reformers recommended that rather than being placed on supervisory probation and allowed to return home, which was generally the preferred approach in this era for boys, girls were to be removed from their families and placed in a juvenile reformatory where they would be insulated from temptation and could also benefit from educational and rehabilitative services.111 As Breckinridge and Abbott explain, “For the girl whose whole future life is imperiled, the only hope is to remove her entirely from influences that threaten destruction and to place her in an institution until the critical years are passed.”112 Echoing these senti‑ ments, Martha Falconer, a leading advocate of the rehabilitative approach to juvenile offending similarly commented that it is much more difficult to help the girl with probation than the boy. The very freedom which the girl seeks is often hard to give her without having her abuse that privilege. . . . If a girl has commenced to lead an immoral life it is usually better to give her a period of training and then try probation, rather than to give her the freedom which she would abuse.113 Reflecting the gendered dynamics we have been discussing, stricter corrective measures were thus deemed necessary in order to guard against the risk of temptation that might again place a young woman in a perilous situation that threatened “the ruin of her whole life.”114 Although less sanguine about the rehabilitative potential of the female delinquent as compared to the male, as Hicks documents, reformers were even less optimistic about the rehabilitative prospects of African Ameri‑ can sexual delinquents. Grounded, as discussed above, in the belief that black women lacked “moral capacity as a result of their African ancestry

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as well as the legacy of slavery,” their bodies were stamped with a more indelible mark of immorality that suggested they “lacked the same capacity for cultural improvement,”115 which was the lodestar of the rehabilitative ideal. As a consequence of the stereotype “that black women were inher‑ ently criminal”116 coupled with the fact that “the support mechanisms that encouraged preventative rehabilitation rather than punitive incarceration were less available” to them, young African American women were com‑ monly denied the same opportunities as other sexual delinquents to rebuild their lives.117 Replacing the Old Standards with New Hoping to repair the damaging impact of a promiscuous lifestyle, once sent to a reformatory, “a central goal of rehabilitation was to train girls to become good housewives and mothers” and to “channel their misguided sexual energy into marriage and motherhood.”118 In order to “replace the old standards with new,” girls who were sent to facilities that ascribed to the era’s rehabilitative ethos typically devoted a considerable portion of their time to domestic pursuits in the hope that “the practical instruction in household arts, sewing, handcraft and farming” would have a “salutary effect on the mode of life and the type of home” that they would eventu‑ ally choose for themselves.119 A study by sociologist Mabel Agnes Elliott, which sought to track how well sexual delinquents who had been committed to Sleighton Farms, “a fore‑runner in intelligent and humane methods of reform education,”120 had adjusted to society eight to ten years after their release, illuminates with particular clarity the central place that these domestic ideals occupied in the rehabilitative culture of the Progressive Era. In a mirror reversal of the relationship between sexual nonconformity and female delinquency, a young woman was deemed to have made a “completely successful adjustment” if, since her release from Sleighton Farms, her behavior had fully conformed to “accepted social and sex mores.”121 Those who had stumbled along the way, but were presently “conforming to the social code” were characterized as “seemingly stable,” while former residents who had “consistently refused to conform to social standards,” meaning that they were still engaged in promiscuous behavior, were “designated as ‘failed.’”122 Of the 110 subjects, 26 were deemed to have made a completely successful adjustment, 58 were considered to be “seemingly stable,” and 26 were classified as failed.123 The primary indicia of a former sexual delinquent’s successful con‑ formity to “accepted social and sex mores” was that she was married to

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a “reliable” man who was earning a “sufficient or comfortable income” coupled with evidence that she was now a “good housekeeper,” who kept an “attractive” and “well‑maintained” home.124 Although both marriage and domestic competence were regarded as important determinants of a successful adjustment to society, with the findings indicating that the better‑adjusted girls had adopted the “neat, orderly habits” that had been so “laboriously established” at Sleighton Farms,125 the study nonetheless indicated that when it came to “clear[ing] away previous difficulties,” the rehabilitative power of marriage itself trumped the transformative power of good housekeeping.126 Heralding marriage as the “socially recognized basis for [the] sex expe‑ rience,” Elliott, in a telling phrase that deftly weaves together many of the themes of this chapter, concluded that “the solution to anti‑social conduct is not the repression of sex, but rather its expression in conformity to social sanc‑ tion.”127 Although clearly embracing the modernist recognition of a female sexual self, the veneration of marriage as the rehabilitative ideal underscores the anxiety that the sexual delinquent’s nonconforming behavior aroused in Progressive Era reformers. As discussed, fears about the risks of moral danger and decline interfered with their ability to recognize that many young working women were seeking to reconfigure the normative boundar‑ ies of their lives against the backdrop of a modernizing urban culture in which, as previously noted “the demands for purity and the submission to family claims held them more lightly than in the generations past.”128 As a result, their behavior was often read as requiring the intervention of the state in order to redirect misguided lives, rather than being understood as a possible quest for a more autonomous and sexually self‑directed female self.

Conclusion By the 1920s, the line separating the good girl from the delinquent one had begun to blur as white middle‑class daughters were increasingly drawn into “sexualized youth cultures” and the world of commercial amusements, thus provoking, according to Ruth Alexander, rising parental concerns about their “exhibitionist tastes in clothes, verbal facility with regard to sexual matters, and enthusiasm for unchaperoned dating.”129 Although “the unsettling behavior on the part of the middle‑class girl” increasingly brought her under “the gaze of the social commentator and the social scientist,” as documented by Crista DeLuzio, she was “far less likely to receive public punishment or be subjected to state intervention than her working‑class or immigrant sister because of her privileged status”; instead, she “became the

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catalyst for the psychological conceptualization of a normal modern female adolescence” by professionals within the emerging field of mental hygiene.130 As these new professionals endorsed a more modern vision of female adolescence, which regarded sexual curiosity and the struggle for autonomy as normal stages of development rather than as an expression of delinquency, the moral anxiety about the “girl problem” gradually waned. It is also likely that the general discrediting of eugenics as a deeply flawed approach to solving social problems and a sense of optimism that the evils of prostitu‑ tion had been brought under control through measures such as the closing of red light districts and the enactment of stricter criminal controls further contributed to the de‑escalation of social anxiety about the disruptive power of young working women’s sexuality.131 However, as these fears abated, it was clear that there had been a profound reworking of the narrative of sexual danger. No longer simply positioned as the passive victims of lustful men, young women’s unrestrained desires had been tapped as a precipitant of moral decline, resulting in a radical reconfiguration of the relationship between young working women and the state. No longer simply the intended beneficiary of laws aimed at taming the unruly male body, she had been constituted as a legal subject in her own right based upon concerns about her transgressive behavior. Having eclipsed the tragic victim of the seduction narrative, the sexual delinquent, whose nonconforming behavior was characterized as the “most difficult of all problems,”132 would herself, as discussed in the next chapter, be displaced several decades later by the pregnant teen, whose uncontrolled fertility would similarly be characterized as “one of the most serious and complex problems facing the nation.”133

4

Our Daughters Are Having Babies The Fashioning of a Public Response to the Teen Pregnancy “Epidemic”

Introduction As we have seen, by the mid‑1920s, the anxiety about the sexual delinquent began to fade as professionals increasingly accepted that sexual curiosity and the struggle for autonomy were hallmarks of normal female adolescent development rather than worrisome indicators of immorality that signaled the need for state intervention. Moreover, as the eugenics and the anti‑vice movements, which had both regarded the sexually active female adolescent as a socially disruptive force, ran out of steam, her body lost its symbolic force as a source of danger that was to be managed for the social good. Accordingly, by the time the nation moved toward the Great Depres‑ sion and then into World War II, the public imagination was no longer gripped by the “girl problem.” Of course, this does not mean that young women stopped having sex, or that families and professionals stopped worrying about their behavior; however, fears about the disruptive force of their sexuality paled beside these far greater threats to national stability and security. In the postwar years, however, emerging fears about the potential destabilizing impact of uncontrolled population growth, both globally and in the nation’s urban centers, set the stage for a renewed preoccupation with the sexual conduct of young women. Initially concerned about the differential fertility rates between devel‑ oped and undeveloped nations, population experts in the United States soon turned a worried eye homeward, and began sounding the alarm about the

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“excess” fertility of poor inner city women. As birth control became more available and the adult fertility rate declined, policymakers shifted their gaze in the direction of young women, warning that the nation appeared to be experiencing an “epidemic” of adolescent pregnancies. Capturing this sense of growing apprehension, Maris Vinovskis, member of the House Select Committee on Population, noted: Almost everyone in Washington believed that the problem of adolescent pregnancy constituted a very serious social and health crisis that necessitated an immediate response. . . . Many mem‑ bers of the Carter administration and the 95th Congress assumed that Americans faced a new and growing crisis and that drastic steps . . . needed to be initiated at once.1 As lawmakers began considering various proposals to tackle what Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Joseph A. Califano characterized as “one of the most serious and complex problems facing the nation,”2 the pregnant teen was discursively constituted as a distinct legislative subject with categorical age‑based needs. This emerging sense of urgency would be easier to understand if, in fact, the teen pregnancy rate had been on the rise. However, when Congress took up the issue in earnest in the mid‑1970s, the rate had actually fallen 45 percent from its peak in 1957 and was at a twenty‑year low.3 Accordingly, as discussed in this chapter, the reality behind this perceived social crisis is more complex and nuanced than it first appears. Laying the groundwork for an examination of the rekindled public preoccupation with the sexually active young woman (although the focus on teen pregnancy initially served to obscure the fact that she was indeed having sex), this chapter begins with the emergence of the population control movement in the years following World War II, and then traces the entry of the federal government into the family planning arena. Turning then to the teen pregnancy “epidemic,” it looks at both the construction of and the legislative response to this crisis.

The Private as Public Policy: The Federal Government Enters the Family Planning Arena As the nation entered a period of relative stability and prosperity in the years following World War II, fears began to mount about the potentially

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destabilizing risks of global population growth. Pointing to the fertility dif‑ ferential between the wealthy and the poorer nations of the world, “neo‑Mal‑ thusians” predicted that the “impending population explosion . . . would inevitably create the conditions for global political, social, and economic instability.”4 Leading to heightened fears in the highly charged atmosphere of the Cold War, population activists such as businessman Thomas Everett Moore, author of the widely distributed 1954 pamphlet The Population Bomb, warned that rampant population growth would provide a fertile ground for the spread of communism, as Marxists would eagerly seek to take advantage of human suffering in order to advance their nefarious agenda.5 Seeking to contain this potential threat to world order, a “loosely linked population movement” emerged during the 1950s. In the hopes of enlisting the federal government as an active partner in this effort, strategists lobbied Congress to develop a coordinated international family planning program.6 However, giving voice to the long‑standing association between birth control and sexual immorality, President Eisenhower roundly rejected this idea, stating, “I cannot imagine anything more emphatically a subject that is not a proper political or governmental activity or func‑ tion or responsibility. . . .  This government will not . . . as long as I am here . . . have a positive political doctrine in its program that has to do with this problem of birth control. That’s not our business.”7 The Changing Business of Government Despite his firm expression of opposition, Eisenhower inadvertently set the process of change in motion when he established a committee to determine how U.S. military assistance could best be employed to further the twin goals of advancing “national security and foreign policy interests,” and promoting the “economic betterment and growth of the free world.”8 The committee (known as the Draper Committee after its chair, General Wil‑ liam H. Draper) concluded that uncontrolled population growth was the “greatest bar to our whole economic aid program and to the progress of the world,”9 and in its final report, the committee became the first governmental advisory body to officially recommend that the federal government enter the family planning arena. Acting on this recommendation, in 1965 Congress appropriated funds to the Agency for International Development for what would soon become an ambitious overseas population control program.10 By the early 1960s, many of the population experts who had expressed concerns about the fertility differential between wealthy and poor nations began voicing similar fears about domestic patterns of reproduction. Laced

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with racialized assumptions about the “excess” fertility of black women, some policymakers drew a direct line between “overpopulation” in the black community and social chaos, warning that uncontrolled growth would “greatly increase the magnitude of juvenile delinquency, exacerbate already dangerous race tensions . . . greatly increase traffic accidents and fatalities, augment urban congestion, and further subvert the traditional American governmental system.”11 Not surprisingly then, when President Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1964, managing the excess fertility of low‑income women, particularly those who were black, was quickly identified as an important weapon in the battle against urban poverty.12 Concerned, however, about angering both Roman Catholic voters, who generally supported his ambi‑ tious antipoverty agenda as well as black (mostly male) nationalists whom he feared might regard the entry of the government into the family plan‑ ning arena as a eugenically inspired plan to reduce their numbers, Johnson elected to proceed with caution. In this regard, it should be noted that although cognizant of the ways in which birth control had historically been promoted to control the growth of “undesirable” segments of the population, the majority of black women activists nonetheless argued that expanded access to reliable contraceptives was, in the words of Toni Cade, a way to ensure that the black woman had “control over at least some of the major events in her life,” thus giving her the freedom and time to “fight for liberation in . . . other areas.”13 Accordingly, aware that he was stepping into a potential minefield, rather than calling for new federal programs, the president instead chose to channel funds into existing local programs that were already providing family planning services to low‑income women. Highlighting the tentative nature of these early efforts, guidelines specified that federal monies could only be used to provide family planning services to married women who already had children and were living with their husbands. Congress, however, proved to be far less cautious than the administra‑ tion. In 1967, it amended the Social Security Act to require that 6 percent of all federal funds appropriated for maternal and child health services be earmarked for family planning services and that such services be made avail‑ able on a voluntary basis to all welfare recipients. Three short years later, bolstered by President Nixon’s bold declaration that no American woman should ever be “denied access to family planning because of her economic condition,”14 Congress enacted Title X of the Public Health Services Act, which established the first comprehensive federal program devoted entirely

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to family planning services. Enjoying broad bipartisan support, the law made “voluntary family planning services readily available to all persons desiring such services,” with priority to be given to “the furnishing of such services to persons from low‑income families.”15 Although this prioritization was closely linked to the instrumental goal of eliminating poverty, liberal members of Congress were also influenced by the growing feminist concern that poor women had been left out of what Kristen Luker refers to as “the contraceptive revolution.”16 Accordingly, governmentally funded family planning was also conceived of as a strategy for equalizing access to reliable birth control methods in order to provide poor women with the same degree of control over their fertility that more privileged women already enjoyed.17 Birth Control as a Private Right: The Changing Social and Legal Environment Given the longstanding association of birth control with illicit behavior, which only a decade earlier had led President Eisenhower to declare emphati‑ cally that it was not an appropriate subject of governmental concern or activity, one might well assume that the entry of the federal government into the domestic family planning arena would have generated considerable controversy. However, Title X was enacted with relatively little fanfare. In part, this reflects the fact that as it entered the public domain, birth control was carefully linked with instrumental rather than sensual ends. Cast as a weapon against poverty, Congress assiduously avoided the obvi‑ ous—namely that by providing family planning services, it was implicitly accepting the uncoupling of sex from procreation. Accordingly, rather than being heralded as a vehicle of sexual liberation, the distribution of governmentally funded contraceptives was framed as a morally neutral social necessity. The general lack of outcry also reflects the fact that by 1970, birth control had lost much of its historic stigma due to the impact of the feminist movement, which insisted that women had a right to control their own bod‑ ies, as well as the not unrelated landmark Griswold v. Connecticut decision in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that Connecticut’s criminal ban on the use of contraceptives by married couples was unconstitutional.18 Although the Court focused on rights of marital privacy rather than on a woman’s right to her own body, the Griswold decision nonetheless reinforced the view that the birth control decision belonged in the realm of personal conscience rather than in the domain of morality politics.

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Originally enacted in 1879, the Connecticut law that the Court invalidated was modeled after the infamous 1873 Act for the Suppression of Trade In and Circulation of Obscene Literature and Articles for Immoral Use. Better known as the Comstock Law, this repressive federal measure was the handiwork of Anthony J. Comstock, a fanatical moral crusader who successfully persuaded Congress to make it a crime to import or to send obscene materials, which was defined to include any article intended “for the prevention of conception or the procuring of abortion,” through the U.S. mail.19 Inspired by this federal initiative, by the end of the nineteenth century, about half of the states had enacted mini‑Comstock laws to restrict the flow of obscene materials, including contraceptives, within their borders. Although these repressive measures had lost much of their force by the time the Supreme Court rendered its decision in Griswold, due in large part to the tireless activism of birth control advocates such as Margaret Sanger and Mary Dennett, contraceptive access remained hampered by a complex patchwork of criminal restrictions, including physician‑only distribution rules and prohibitions against their distribution to unmarried women.20 Moreover, beyond these express limits, given the presumptive authority of the state to control nonprocreative sexual activity, birth control was certainly not conceptualized as a personal right. Declaring that the marital relationship lay within a constitutionally protected “zone of privacy,” the Griswold Court concluded that states lacked the power to interfere with this intimate relationship by proscribing birth control—an intrusion it condemned as being designed “to achieve its goals by means having a maximum destructive impact upon that relationship.”21 Critically, in sweeping away the remaining strictures on the right of married persons to freely obtain and use contraceptives, the Court shifted the locus of decisional authority from the state to the married couple. Having put to rest the historically sanctioned view that states possess the moral and legal authority to direct the sexual energy of their married couples into procreative channels, the Griswold decision dramatically altered the stage upon which future debates about birth control (and eventually abortion) would play out. Signaling the weakening of support for the right of states to criminalize intimate conduct based upon moral considerations, the decision helped divest birth control of its longstanding association with sexual impropriety, which, as discussed below, helped to pave the way for the acceptance of an individual’s right, separate and apart from the protected rights of the marital unit, to control her fertility.

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“One Million Teens”: The “Epidemic” of Teen Pregnancies Tracking the statutory intent of Title X, comprehensive family planning services were to be made available to “all persons” who desired them; how‑ ever, low‑income women were identified as a distinct priority population. Although teens were certainly included within the broad “all persons” eligibility standard, they were not initially a targeted population. The right of access that teens initially had to Title X services was thus essentially an incidental outcome of the law’s inclusive mandate, rather than the result of a deliberate legislative strategy aimed at assisting young women to man‑ age their fertility more effectively.22 In short, their reproductive behavior had not yet been identified as a matter of public concern that required a legislative solution. Reflecting the prevailing sense of unease about tailoring programs to meet the needs of young women as young women, in 1972 President Nixon rejected the rather radical recommendation of his own Commis‑ sion on Population Growth and the American Future that “states adopt affirmative legislation which will permit minors to receive contraceptive and prophylactic information and services in appropriate settings sensitive to their needs and concerns.”23 Reminiscent of President Eisenhower’s declaration a little more than a decade earlier that birth control was not the business of government, Nixon, despite having recently declared that no American woman should “be denied access to family planning because of her economic condition,”24 nonetheless was unequivocal that this com‑ mitment did not extend to teens: “I . . . want to make clear that I do not support the unrestricted distribution of planning services to minors. Such measures would do nothing to preserve and strengthen close family relations.”25 By mid‑decade, however, in the wake of declining adult fertility rates, the sexually active teen came into her own as a distinct object of concern, thus inaugurating a renewed cycle of reform activity, which this time was aimed at helping her to avoid the difficulties of early motherhood. As public anxiety mounted over what policymakers characterized as an “epidemic” of teen pregnancies, the Carter administration and members of the 95th Congress pointed to early childbearing as “one of the most serious and complex social problems facing our nation.”26 Identifying young women as a distinct subgroup of sexually active women, much the way poor women had been viewed in 1970, Congress began to explore legislative strategies to address the needs of young women as young women, rather than as poor

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women who only incidentally also happened to be teens. Largely ignored, however, in the emerging policy discussion, was the fact that this sense of impeding crisis took hold at a time when the teen pregnancy rate was at its lowest point in twenty years. Seeking to make sense of this apparent paradox of timing, we begin with the construction of the crisis itself. The Emergence of the Pregnant Teen as an Object of Public Concern As the fertility rate for adult women across the economic spectrum declined, with a significant reported drop in unwanted pregnancies,27 family planning and population experts began paying closer attention to the behavioral patterns of young women. Made more visible by their growing presence in Title X family planning clinics, it appeared that, like poor women before them, young women had not reaped the benefits of the “contraceptive revolution,” and were thus continuing to experience a stubbornly high rate of unintended pregnancies. Capturing this shift in focus from “excess” to “early” childbearing, Kristen Luker writes: “[I]f in the early 1960s the image of the typical woman needing family planning was that of a woman on welfare surrounded by a gaggle of unkempt kids, by the mid‑1970s it had become the image of a bewildered adolescent.”28 As the “bewildered adolescent” displaced the welfare recipient as the subject of public concern, pregnancy displaced urban poverty as the salient problem that appeared to require an immediate policy response. Emerging research identified three interrelated trends that policymak‑ ers found particularly troublesome. First, it was clear that more teens were having sex. According to an influential national report, the rate of sexual activity among young women between the ages of fifteen and nineteen rose 30 percent between 1970 and 1975. It was thus becoming evident that the “sexual revolution” was not simply a revolution in candor, as some had previously believed (or, perhaps better, had hoped), but rather signaled actual changes in behavioral patterns.29 Second, it appeared that the teen pregnancy rate was spiraling out of control. According to what would become a frequently referenced report by the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI) entitled 11 Million Teenagers: What Can Be Done about the Epidemic of Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States, more than one million teens between the ages of fifteen and nineteen were considered to be at risk of becoming pregnant each year.30 Suggested by the use of the word epidemic that pregnancy was a contagious disease, the worrisome “one million” figure was repeated over and over again at legisla‑ tive hearings, serving as seemingly irrefutable proof that the situation was spiraling out of control.

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Third, as experts emphasized during the course of legislative hear‑ ings on various teen‑focused bills, there was a mounting body of evidence pointing to the serious negative health, social, and economic consequences of early maternity. Encapsulating these concerns, the Senate Report that accompanied the below‑discussed Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act, recounted: The young mother, particularly those under fifteen years of age, may face grave risks to her health in bearing a child. The infant of an adolescent mother faces a marked, increased risk of mental retardation, developmental disabilities, and other handicapping conditions. With respect to education, pregnancy is the major contributing reason for young women not completing their high school educations. Since educational attainment has a direct cor‑ relation to employment prospects . . . it is not surprising to learn that the teenage mother has often turned to welfare dependency.31 Dramatically underscoring the sense of mounting apprehension about the seriousness of the problem, HEW Secretary Joseph A. Califano character‑ ized early motherhood as a “form of bondage for the child‑mother and for the mother’s child.”32 As had been the case with the female sexual delinquent, experts were not only concerned about the negative impact of early maternity on the individual teen mother and her child, they also focused on the broader negative repercussions of her reproductive behavior. Of particular concern in this regard was the high “cost of adolescent childbearing to society.”33 Citing an influential study, which found that in 1975 “the Federal Government disbursed nearly half ($4.65 billion) of the total AFDC appropriations to households with women who were teenagers when they first gave birth,” the House Select Committee on Population cautioned that teenage childbearing was “a major tax burden on the entire population.”34 Once again cutting to the chase, HEW Secretary Califano reminded lawmakers that the nation’s taxpayers were in “revolt,” and that Congress accordingly had an obligation to be “as efficient as it is compassionate,” in crafting a solution that would “help reduce the welfare costs, health‑care costs, [and] the costs of dependency and unemployment that so often are the aftermath of adolescent pregnancies.”35 The Paradox of Timing Certainly, many policymakers were genuinely concerned about the well‑being of young women. Frequently lacking both a clear understanding of their

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bodies’ rhythms and access to reliable contraceptives, sexually active teens faced significant challenges, particularly when confronted with the real‑ ity of an unplanned pregnancy. However, given the declining adolescent pregnancy rate, it is important to consider the somewhat baffling question of why the issue provoked such public anxiety at that particular moment in time. Moreover, it also appears that as with the sexual delinquent, once the pregnant teen had been cast in a particular light, experts tended to avoid, or elide altogether, alternative ways of thinking about her situation. Accordingly, before turning to the paradox of timing, it is worth consider‑ ing whether some of the anxiety might have been eased had the discursive framework been broadened a bit to allow for other ways of thinking about the issue of teen pregnancy. Although clearly attuned to the difficulties faced by most teen mothers, a number of scholars have challenged the narrative of doom that dominated the legislative hearings regarding their capacity to become “productive, independent contributors to family and community life.”36 Perhaps most significantly, they have questioned the causal relationship between early maternity and poverty that was the lynchpin of public concern. Thus, for instance, flipping the causal paradigm that dominated the policy discourse, Kristen Luker instead argues that early maternity is more likely to be the result rather than the cause of poverty. As she explains, “At every step of the process, people who are poor are at more risk of early pregnancy and childbearing.”37 Accordingly, she concludes that although “Americans have every right to be concerned with early childbearing and to place the issue high on the national agenda . . . they should think of it as a measure, not a cause of poverty and other social ills . . . early childbearing may make a bad situation worse . . . the real causes of poverty lie elsewhere.”38 However, rather than considering that early childbearing might be the result of a complex interplay of economic, racial, and gender inequalities, the legislative record followed a singular causal narrative that tethered a young woman’s bleak future to the fact of early childbearing. Moreover, little or no attention was paid to the fact that when considered within the context of her own life circumstances, early child‑ bearing might not be always such a bad option for a young woman. Thus, for example in her article aptly entitled “Constructing Failure, Narrating Success: Rethinking the Problem of Teen Pregnancy,” Katherine Schultz argues for the importance of formulating “policies and practices that account for youths’ complex understandings of the consequences of having a child during their high school years,” rather than automatically assuming that

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“teen pregnancy brings with it the foregone conclusion of dropping out of school, poverty, and failure.”39 Complicating the standard picture, based on a series of interviews that she conducted with low‑income black teens in an urban school setting, Schultz concludes that for some teens, the “pres‑ ence of children in their lives motivates them to stay in school and work toward a career in order to support their children. 40 Similarly raising ques‑ tions about the presumed adverse consequences of early maternity, Luker argues that for a variety of reasons, including, for example, a greater ability to “claim . . . the attention and resources of her extended family,” early childbearing may have certain advantages for low‑income teens, particularly in light of the fact that in comparison to other industrialized nations, the United States is “remarkably stingy in its support of those who ‘fail’”41 Secondly, as policymakers considered how best to tackle the teen pregnancy problem, there was a deafening silence about abortion as a realistic option that a young woman might consider upon learning she was pregnant—an omission that, as discussed below, found its way into the resulting legislation. The failure to identify abortion as an essential component of a comprehensive family planning program is particularly striking in light of the fact that not only had the Supreme Court recently held in its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that women have a con‑ stitutional right to abortion, it had subsequently ruled that teens likewise have a constitutionally protected right to abortion, subject to, as discussed below, a permissible adult involvement requirement.42 Despite the Court’s dramatic reconfiguration of the abortion right, which incorporated a recognition of the “serious detriment that the State would impose on the pregnant woman by denying her this choice”43—a detriment that it subsequently recognized is likely to be particularly acute in the case of young women, in light of their “probable education, employ‑ ment skills, financial resources, and emotional maturity,”44—the legislative discourse was conducted as if abortion were still a crime. It is thus worth pausing for a moment to consider how this deafening silence was possible given the high Court’s recent recognition of abortion as a protected com‑ ponent of the constitutionally protected right of privacy. One possibility is that as they headed into unchartered and potentially dangerous waters, lawmakers simply did not want to consider the thorny ques‑ tion of whether pregnant teens should be treated as fully competent decision makers who were in charge of their own reproductive destiny. Instead, by naturalizing childbirth as the inevitable outcome of pregnancy, the pregnant teen could be constructed as a girl who was in need of supportive services,

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rather than as a rights‑bearing individual whose reproductive choices were entitled to deference and respect, which, as discussed in the next chapter, is a highly contested conception of youth. It is also possible that this omission represents an implicit value judg‑ ment that, between the two alternatives, the termination of a potential life was a worse outcome than teen motherhood. That this may well have been the case is strongly suggested by the Supreme Court’s 1981 decision in H.L. v. Matheson, in which it upheld a parental involvement law despite evidence that this requirement might “inhibit some minors from seeking abortions.”45 In a highly ironic twist, in justifying this limitation on the abortion right, the Court concluded that laws that encourage “childbirth except in the most urgent circumstances” are “rationally related to the legitimate governmental objective of protecting potential life.”46 In short, although the entire thrust of the public debate was on how to discourage teens from having babies, it may well have been that when compared to the evil of abortion, the safeguarding of potential life was deemed to be a greater social good than providing young women with a full array of reproductive options. Returning now to the teen pregnancy epidemic, we need to consider why the issue took on such an urgency given the demographic reality, which, as the House Select Committee on Population makes clear, actually pointed in the opposite direction: Contrary to the popular belief, the rate of teenage fertility has actually declined over the past twenty years. Historically, the rate of teenage childbearing increased sharply after World War II and peaked at 97.3 births per 1,000 women of ages 15–19 in 1957. Since then, the rate of teenage fertility [has] declined by 45 percent to reach a low of 53.5 births per 1,000 women ages 15–19 in 1976.47 Capturing this seeming paradox, Maris Vinovskis, himself a member of this Select Committee, wryly observed that if the resulting legislative solutions were “truly a response to the demographic trends among adolescents, [they] should have been launched during the Eisenhower rather than the Carter administration.”48 How do we explain the growing sense of anxiety about spiraling rates of teen pregnancy given that the rate had actually been significantly higher twenty years earlier? What accounts for this paradox in timing? Although it is impossible to pinpoint a single definitive answer, as developed in the following section, several mutually reinforcing social and legal developments

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may well have worked together to propel the pregnant teen into the limelight. A MORE VISIBLE PRESENCE

Perhaps the most straightforward strand in this rather complex picture is that the combined weight of several demographic shifts simply served to make the pregnant teen more visible than she had previously been. To begin with, as the offspring of the postwar baby boomers came of age during the 1960s and ’70s, there were simply more teenagers in the population. As Constance A. Nathanson explains, “Larger numbers of teen girls  .  .  .  resulted in more births to adolescents, even at declining rates.”49 Magnifying this effect, although “the fertility rate for teenagers ages 15–19 decreased by 40.0 percent between 1960 and 1976,” this decline was notably less than the decline in the adult fertility rate over the same time period.50 Accord‑ ingly, although an individual teenager was significantly less likely to give birth in 1977 than she would have been in 1960, “births to teens actually accounted for a higher proportion of total births than in the past—up from 13.9 percent in 1960 to 18.0 percent in 1976.”51 Consequently, by focusing on the actual number of pregnant teens, as represented by the ominous‑sounding “one million” figure, rather than on the declining fertility rate, and on the increasing percentage of children born to teens as compared to adults, commentators were able to represent the problem of premature fertility as a growing one. Once characterized in this manner, it thus appeared that teen girls were in urgent need of legis‑ lative intervention in order to prevent the derailing of their young lives. A further consideration may have been the fact that the fertility decline was not evenly distributed over the entire teen population, but was concentrated among eighteen- and nineteen‑year‑olds, who are generally considered to be at less risk than younger teens for the negative outcomes associated with early pregnancy and childbearing. In contrast, although continuing to represent only a small fraction of the births to women under the age of twenty, the pregnancy rate had actually been on the rise for girls between the ages of ten and fourteen, thus heightening the visibility of the most vulnerable subset of young women.52 THE “GIRL NEXT DOOR”

Although these broad demographic shifts may have increased the visibility of the pregnant teen, they do not tell the whole story. Yet undiscussed is

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the identity of this more visible teen. It is here that we begin to unravel the paradox of timing, as a closer look reveals that by the mid‑1970s, the unmarried black mother, whose behavior had long been linked with inherent hypersexuality and a cultural acceptance of immorality, had been reconstituted as a middle‑class white teen, who, when refracted through the lens of concerned policymakers and academics, turned out to be none other than, as Wanda S. Pillow puts it, “the girl next door.”53 This devel‑ opment suggests that, although presented as a nonracialized crisis of “too many too soon,” the true change undergirding the pregnancy “epidemic” was that behavioral patterns long associated with a morally suspect “other” had begun to infiltrate white suburban culture. By the mid‑1970s, it had become increasingly apparent that a growing number of young women were opting out of the traditional gender script that had long prescribed marriage as the only socially acceptable location for sexual activity. No longer committed to the classic view of virginity as a gift to be bestowed on a loving husband following the symbolic white‑clad walk down the wedding aisle, or even to the more modern acceptance of premarital sex as an actual prelude to marriage, young women were increas‑ ingly having sex with men they had no intention of marrying.54 Of critical importance in this regard was the fact that, although the rate of sexual activity increased during the early 1970s for both white and black teens, the change was most marked for white teens. Accordingly, even though they were still less likely to be sexually experienced than black teens, between 1971 and 1976 the proportionate change in the number of teens who reported having had sexual intercourse was “two times greater overall for whites than for blacks.”55 In turn, this shift was accompanied by a significant change in how young white women in particular were managing their fertility. If an unmarried white teenager became pregnant in the 1950s, she typically followed one of two paths. The first was marriage to the father before the child was born,56 which effectively served to erase her moral transgression. Saved from ruin, an erring young woman could put the past behind her and reconstruct her life in accordance with prevailing cultural norms, which located female sexuality and motherhood within marriage. The other socially sanctioned option was for her to surrender her child for adoption, usually following a period of sequestration in a maternity home or the home of her parents or trusted relatives.57 It should be noted that relinquishment of a child for adoption was actually a relatively new solution to a classic problem, which, until the post–World War II era, had typically been dealt with by keeping the morally

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tainted mother and child dyad together in a marginalized existence. Accord‑ ing to Ricki Solinger, this shift in approach reflected the relocation of “the site of the problem afflicting the typical white unwed mother . . . from her body to her mind.”58 With her pregnancy increasingly characterized as the result of mental illness, in contrast to the past, when the biological substrate was thought to mark both mother and child with an indelible taint of sin, the good news was that this underlying psychological cause was thought to be treatable.59 However, the price for another chance at a normal life was relin‑ quishment of the child, and tremendous pressure was brought to bear upon young white women to surrender their babies. As Ann Fessler explains, once having effectively erased her wrongdoing, a young woman could then “expect to go back to a normal life, as if it had never happened. Without her illegitimate child holding her back, she would be able to marry a decent man and have other children.”60 In short, as with marriage to the father, relinquishment of the “illegitimate” child effectively served to erase a young woman’s moral transgression. Reality, however, was markedly different for pregnant black teens who were far more likely than white teens to keep their children. In part, this difference may reflect the fact that they were less likely than their white counterparts to be shunned by their families and communities, thus making single motherhood a more attractive option than a shotgun wedding.61 However, it also reflects the highly racialized adoption practices that actively deterred young black women from relinquishing their children. Few maternity homes would accept them, and many courts refused to approve adoption surrenders from black teens based on the belief that “the girl should be made to support her children and should be punished by keeping them.”62 Still viewing them as naturally hypersexual and morally deficient, professionals saw little reason to offer black teens the second chance at a “normal” life that they routinely offered white teens. Unlike neurosis, which was deemed curable, the flaws of black teens were regarded as racially inscribed, and thus indelible.63 Solinger makes the important point that this differential treatment was also driven by the demand for adoptable white infants, and that pregnant white teens “represented the largest single source of adoptable infants and served a useful social function by enabling childless couples to have a family.”64 By the mid‑1970s, however, it had become increasingly apparent that the pregnant white teen could no longer be counted on to “manage her fertility” in a way that concealed her illicit sexual activity from pub‑ lic view. Coming of age at a time of rapidly changing roles for women, with a marked deemphasis on marriage as the high‑water mark of female

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accomplishment and a greater acceptance of single parenthood as a legiti‑ mate way of life, she was far less likely to agree to a shotgun marriage or to the surrender of her child for adoption than her mother would have been. Rejecting solutions designed to reinforce normative female behavior, young women were increasingly choosing to keep their children or to terminate their pregnancies65—an option that, by highlighting the separation of sex and procreation, was also viewed by many as a highly problematic choice. Effectively disrupting the existing racialized gender script that associated “illegitimacy” with poor black women, these shifts challenged the prevailing view that “good” girls did not have sex outside of marriage. Looping back to the “paradox of timing,” it is clear that the pregnancy epidemic was constituted at a time when the sexuality of young white women had become more visible due to their unwillingness to participate in gender scripts that had previously served to keep their moral transgressions from public view. Reflecting the changing social landscape, in which premarital virginity loss and unwed motherhood no longer relegated young women to the margins of a normative female existence, the “girl next door” was increasingly making sexual and reproductive choices that symbolized the eroding boundaries between female respectability and promiscuity. With teen pregnancy no longer the province of a morally suspect “other,” the problem demanded a solution. Responding to the mounting pressure on lawmakers to do something, Congressman Tony Beilenson (D-CA) urged that society could no longer afford to neglect the “tragic consequences of adolescent pregnancy” by pretending “that it does not exist or that it could not happen to our own children.”66 Making clear that the issue had crossed the proverbial tracks, the president of the influential Alan Guttmacher Institute likewise testified before Congress that the harms of unintended pregnancies were not confined to “poor and minority groups,” but were also affecting “our young women.” He commented that if he had a daughter, he would speak to her, as well as to “their” daughters, about these matters.67 Similarly emphasizing the “universal” nature of the problem, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) reported that teen pregnancy “is not an urban or a rural problem. It is not a problem of the rich or poor. It is a problem across the country. The pregnant daughter of a corporate executive faces many of the same problems as the pregnant child of a welfare recipient.”68 Rendered visible as the possible “girl next door,” as Jessica Mittlestadt observes, the fear of the disrupted future that now lay ahead for the middle‑class teen and her baby helped to garner “sympathy, attention, and initially funding for issues related to teenage pregnancy among the mostly middle-and upper‑class White Congress that might otherwise have been lacking.”69

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Managing the Consequences of Teen Sexual Behavior: Congress Responds to the “Epidemic” of Teen Pregnancies By 1978, Congress was ready to act. Paralleling the casting of the problem as one of early pregnancy and childbearing, the proposed solutions, namely the enactment of the Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention Act (AHSPPA) and the amending of Title X to expressly include teens, were crafted to address the consequences of sexual activity. Much as the initial framing of Title X as a poverty‑fighting measure helped to insulate Congress from the criticism that it was promoting sexual immorality, once again, this instrumental focus served to shield it from the criticism that it was now in the business of endorsing illicit sexual activity among teens. However, as focused on in the following chapter, the concern that the federal government was endorsing teen promiscuity proved to be a time bomb waiting to go off. A Two‑Pronged Strategy Although our main focus is on Title X, as it is the more significant of the two acts with respect to its longevity, impact, and role in generating a conservative backlash, which, as discussed in the next chapter, shaped the abstinence‑only approach to sexual education, we begin with a brief discussion of the short‑lived Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention Act.70 Enacted as a “secondary prevention” measure, AHSPPA was designed to provide those teens who were already pregnant or parent‑ ing with a coordinated network of comprehensive community‑based sup‑ port services, including maternity counseling, pre- and postnatal care, and referrals to appropriate educational and vocational programs in order to ease the transition into motherhood. Although appropriations were quite limited, it was hoped that with “special guidance and help,” teen mothers could avoid sliding into welfare dependency and instead become “produc‑ tive, independent contributor[s] to family and community life.”71 Paralleling the complete elision of abortion during the above‑discussed legislative hearings, in seeking to help young women become productive adults, AHSPPA was firmly tilted toward motherhood. Originally proposed by the Carter administration as an integral component of its “Alternatives to Abortion Program,” this bias was no accident, but rather reflected Carter’s firm belief that public funds should not be used for abortion.72 Consequently, the act contained a strict funding ban, which meant that a pregnant teen would be promised assistance if she chose to carry her pregnancy to term, but not if she instead wished to terminate her pregnancy. In short, the

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skewed funding scheme made it clear that in choosing between abortion and teen motherhood, the latter was the lesser of two possible evils. Further reflecting the deep‑seated antipathy toward abortion, as initially proposed, teens who were seeking services under the act were not even to be provided with information regarding “methods of disposition of pregnancy” during the statutorily required “maternity” counseling session.73 However, to ensure passage of the law, abortion opponents and pro‑choice forces who believed that abortion was an essential component of “any realistic family planning program” compromised on an options counseling provision that would at least include mention of abortion as a possible pregnancy outcome74 In contrast to AHSPPA’s focus on improving the future prospects of pregnant and parenting teens, Title X was focused on “primary” prevention— namely, helping young women to avoid becoming pregnant in the first place. Although, as we have seen, teens had been able to access Title X services from the start based on the law’s broad service mandate, unlike poor women, they had not been identified as a priority population with distinct family planning needs. However, as public anxiety shifted from the problem of “excess” fertility to that of early fertility, experts urged Congress to prioritize the provision of “comprehensive family planning services to sexually active adolescents who desire such services in order to avoid unwanted pregnancies.”75 As teens came into congressional view as an identifiable population with specific age‑based needs, in addition to the existing focus on the burdens of early maternity, there was a growing awareness of the age‑related access barriers that interfered with the ability of teens to make full use of the existing family planning services. Perhaps most significantly in this regard was the recognition that many young women lacked relevant information about their bodies, and were thus not fully aware of the potential risks of engaging in unprotected intercourse. As testified to by the Reverend Rodney Shaw, president of the Population Institute: In spite of the fact that our society  .  .  .  is much more open about sexual matters, there is a surprising lack of solid information that is transmitted. For example, many independent studies have shown that the majority of teenagers cannot accurately identify the safe and risky periods of the menstrual cycle to know when pregnancy can occur. In general, teenagers’ own perceptions that they cannot get pregnant—for timing considerations and others—is the primary reason for not using contraceptives. They think, for example, that they are too young or are not engaging [in] sex frequently enough to conceive.76

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Compounding this knowledge gap, there was an awareness that most doc‑ tors were not in the habit of initiating conversations with their adolescent patients about “the need for contraceptive services,” thus depriving them of a potentially vital source of information that was typically available to adult women.77 Also of concern was the recognition of the fact that a disproportionate percentage of teens were simply “unaware of where they [could] obtain family planning services.”78 Agreeing that age‑appropriate services should be made available to help young women “bear children when they want to and when they are prepared to take on the responsibilities of motherhood,”79 Congress amended Title X to make it clear that federally funded clinics were obligated to provide family planning services to adolescents.80 Underscoring this commitment to helping young women avoid unplanned pregnancies, a portion of the funding increase that Congress also approved for Title X was specifically designated for expanded adolescent services.81 To ensure that a minor’s access to these services would not be compromised by the fear that her parents would be notified of her clinic visit, lawmakers rejected a proposed amendment that would have required Title X–funded clinics to inform parents before providing “any prescription drug or device used for birth control purpose to an unemancipated minor under the age of 16.”82 As a practical matter, the defeat of this amendment simply meant that teens would continue to be protected by the statute’s strict confidentiality requirements as they had been since 1970; however, on a symbolic level, it signaled that many legislators were aware of the fact that in many instances there was a critical link between the promise of confidentiality and teen access to family planning services.83 As services for young women were expanded, the focus remained tightly on pregnancy prevention. Effectively disassociated from the under‑ lying sexual activity, the goal of helping young women avoid unplanned pregnancies was framed as a self‑contained social good. As Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder (D‑CO) put it, by “emphasizing family planning for adolescents” Title X was responding to the teen pregnancy epidemic in a “responsible manner.”84 In short, responsibility was equated with preventing unplanned pregnancies, and not with, as conservatives would soon argue, gaining mastery over one’s sexual impulses. At the time, the growing emphasis on providing federally funded fam‑ ily planning services to teens was not particularly controversial. The initial lack of outcry over what was a rather bold initiative most likely reflects the confluence of several considerations. First, as we have seen, teens had been able to access federally funded family planning services since the Title X’s

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inception in 1970. Accordingly, although they were now constituted as a priority population, their underlying right to services had been in place since 1970. Secondly, as had been the case with poor women, expanded access to birth control was carefully linked to the instrumental goal of helping teens to avoid unplanned pregnancies. Framed as a social good that would enable young women to realize their full potential unimpeded by mother‑ hood, the conversation about the need for expanded access to birth control was uncoupled from any discussion about the underlying sexual activity. Additionally, as was the case in 1970 when Title X was enacted into law, it is likely that the changing social and, perhaps more importantly, the changing legal environment helped pave the way for a legislative focus on young women as a distinctive subgroup of family planning clients with an age‑based claim to services. Significantly in this regard, in a line of cases reaching back to the 1967 In re Gault decision, the Supreme Court had made clear that although not the legal equivalent of adults, teens were rights‑bearing individuals who were protected by the Constitution. Prior to the landmark Gault decision, minors were not generally thought of as juridical persons with legally cognizable rights. Effectively enfolded into the organic unity of the nuclear family, their dependent and subordinate status in the domestic realm was thought to be incompatible with the claim of an autonomous legal self. In effect, the relationship of a child to the state was mediated through his/her parents (which, historically, typically meant the father), thus effectively making them the keepers of a minor’s legal identity. However, in the 1960s, inspired by the civil rights struggles of other disenfranchised groups, a children’s rights movement took hold. Drawing parallels between the voicelessness of minors and the legal subordination of women and African Americans, activists argued that that young people were entitled to legal recognition as autonomous individuals separate and apart from their families: Historically, the law justified treating people of color and white women as property. . . . [O]ur perception of children’s inferior‑ ity likewise permits us to ignore children’s legal claims. . . . By denying children legal personhood and standing we refuse to entertain and hear their claims. We thus continue to exclude children from redress for injustice just as historically we excluded white women and people of color.85 Turning to the courts to advance their cause, advocates argued that the failure to regard children as constitutional beings divested them of meaningful

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control and decisional authority over important dimensions of their lives, thus relegating them to an inferior and unequal social position without regard for their right to self‑determination. These concerns were reflected in the Supreme Court’s 1967 In Re Gault decision, which in turn helped to advance the children’s rights agenda. The case involved a fifteen‑year‑old boy who had been committed to a juvenile facility until his twenty‑first birthday for making lewd phone calls to a neighbor—a significantly longer sentence than he would have received had he been tried as an adult. Troubled that the informal approach of the juvenile court system, which, as discussed in the previous chapter, had initially been intended to provide minors with “careful, compassion‑ ate, individualized treatment,” had resulted in a system that lacked “fair, efficient, and effective procedures,” the Court held that the “fundamental fairness” requirement of the due process clause applies to juvenile, as well as to adult, proceedings. In so holding, the Court explicitly stated for the first time that “neither the Fourteenth Amendment nor the Bill of Rights is for adults alone.”86 Two years later, in the case of Tinker v. Des Moines, in ruling that students could not be expelled from school for wearing armbands to protest the Vietnam War without specific proof that their actions were disruptive or interfered with the rights of other students, the Court again recognized minors as rights‑bearing individuals whose identities are not wholly sub‑ sumed within the family unit. Acknowledging their legal identities, the Court made clear that “students . . . are ‘persons’ under our Constitution. They are possessed of fundamental rights which the state must respect.”87 Closer to home, as Congress was shifting its focus to the pregnant teen, the Supreme Court was simultaneously extending its recognition of teens as juridical persons into the reproductive rights arena. Accordingly, in the 1976 case of Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, the Court relied on both Gault and Tinker to invalidate a Missouri statute that required minors to obtain parental consent before having an abortion. In concluding that the statute vested parents with impermissible veto authority over their daughter’s abortion decision in contravention of Roe v. Wade, the Court reiterated that “Constitutional rights do not mature and come magically into being only when one attains the state‑defined age of major‑ ity. Minors, as well as adults, are protected by the Constitution and possess constitutional rights.”88 A year later, in Carey v. Population Services, the Supreme Court invalidated a New York statute banning the distribution of nonprescription contraceptives to persons under the age of sixteen. Rejecting the state’s argument that the law was “constitutionally permissible as a regulation of

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the morality of minors, in furtherance of the State’s policy against promiscu‑ ous sexual intercourse among the young,” the Court, now citing Danforth in addition to Gault and Tinker, confirmed that “the right of privacy in connection with decisions affecting procreation extends to minors as well as adults.”89 However, as its 1979 decision in the case of Bellotti v. Baird made clear, the Court was not willing to fully equate the rights of teens with those of adults. Accordingly, although the Bellotti decision confirmed the holding in Danforth that a minor cannot be compelled to seek the permission of her parents before having an abortion, it concluded that the imposition of a parental involvement requirement would be constitutionally accept‑ able so long as the law also contained an alternative confidential consent procedure, such as a court hearing, that enabled a young woman to obtain authorization for an abortion without the knowledge of her parents. Referencing the “the peculiar vulnerability of children; their inabil‑ ity to make critical decisions in an informed, mature manner; and the importance of the parental role in childrearing,” the Bellotti Court made clear that states have more regulatory latitude when the rights of minors, as distinct from those of adults, are at issue.90 Nonetheless, it was equally clear that teens are rights‑bearing individuals with an unmediated claim to constitutional protection. Most importantly for present purposes, by 1978, the Court had clearly extended this juridical construct to the reproductive rights arena, which likely helped to ease the way for a statutory scheme that recognized teens as a distinct population with age‑specific family plan‑ ning needs, including the ability to obtain services on a confidential basis. Sowing the Seeds of Dissension Although the formal recognition of teens as a distinct subgroup of family planning clients with a categorical right to services did not generate much controversy, the 1978 solidification of their entitlement to Title X–funded services contained the seeds of what would soon blossom into a major cultural battle over the sexualized female teen body. Tapping into two interconnected rivers of concern, these fault lines were written into the very structure of Title X, thus making it the natural target of conservative politicians who were aligned with the rising power of the New Christian Right. Although we will take up the conservative challenge to Title X in the next chapter, we briefly consider these embedded vulnerabilities here. First, although the dominant trope in the political discourse about the pregnant teen was the negative consequences of early maternity, the

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legislative record reveals glimpses of the inescapable truth, namely, that the pregnant teen is, of course, a sexual being. More importantly, it also reveals that for some witnesses before Congress, the root problem was not that teens were getting pregnant, it was that they were having sex. Presaging the arguments that would rise to the surface following the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, Frances French, who testified before Congress on behalf of the U.S. Coalition for Life, decried the “highly arousing films” shown by Planned Parenthood in order to educate teens about birth control, and instead argued that family planning agencies should stress the importance of “premarital chastity,” rather than telling teens that there are “all these great things” they can use to prevent pregnancy.91 In a similar anticipa‑ tory vein, Senator Samuel I. Hayakawa (R‑Hawaii), rebuked his colleagues for approving legislation that implicitly sanctioned immoral behavior92—a refrain that would become increasingly trenchant during the Reagan years. Secondly, auguring what has become one of the most bitter and enduring points of contention in the contemporary debates over the regu‑ lation of adolescent sexuality, concerned lawmakers raised the specter of family disintegration. Following the rejection of his proposed amendment that would have required Title X clinics to inform parents before provid‑ ing “any prescription drug or device used for birth control purpose to an unemancipated minor under the age of 16,” Congressman Harold Volkmer (R‑Missouri) warned that the rights of parents were being “invaded” by the family planning establishment.93 In fact, these concerns were not groundless. By facilitating the ability of teens to obtain family planning services on a confidential basis, Congress was indeed implicitly recognizing young women as autonomous individuals who were entitled to make their own sexual and reproductive decisions. As we will see in the next chapter, this construct of teens as distinct persons with the right to make moral choices that did not necessarily correspond with the belief structures of their parents soon provoked the ire of conservative lawmakers who committed themselves to getting the federal government out of the business of promoting adolescent promiscuity and concurrently restoring the rightful authority of parents over their adolescent children.

Conclusion As we have seen, by the mid 1970s, despite that fact that the teen fertility rate was at a twenty‑year low, the pregnant teen had moved into the pubic spotlight in response to growing concerns about the adverse consequences

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of early childbearing. As policymakers came to recognize her as the “girl next door,” the risk of pregnancy could no longer be solely identified with a racialized other, and Congress soon responded to the pregnancy “epidemic” by enacting laws designed both to support pregnant and parenting teens and to provide teens with confidential family planning services. Although this chapter has certainly raised a number of critical con‑ cerns about the timing of the public focus on teen pregnancy, it is also important to recognize that Title X clinics provided young women with invaluable services. Not only did they offer them the knowledge and tools with which to manage their fertility on a fully confidential basis, although certainly not a stated goal, the availability of contraceptives also gave young women the ability to exercise far greater control over the own sexuality, which was clearly a radical break from the previous reformist efforts to use the law to both protect and manage their maturing bodies. Moreover, by allowing teens to consent to their own reproductive health care, Title X also implicitly privileged their sexual and reproductive needs over the historic rights of parents to make decisions for their children. In keeping with central themes of both the women’s rights and the chil‑ dren’s rights movements, this act thus helped to consolidate the authority of young women over their own bodies. As a result, however, Title X also served as a red flag for conservative politicians who, following the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, committed themselves to purifying the nation and restoring parents to their place of rightful authority over their children.

5

Our Daughters Are Having Sex The Conservative Pushback against Teen “Promiscuity”

Introduction As we saw in chapter 4, by the mid‑1970s, in the wake of the declining adult fertility rate, the pregnant teen moved into the spotlight. Against a backdrop of changing sexual and reproductive norms, teen pregnancy was characterized as an epidemic that threatened the well‑being of young women from all walks of life. Constructed as a problem of “children having children,” congressional efforts were directed at helping young women to better manage their fertility. This instrumental focus on the consequences of youthful pregnancy served to divert attention away from the underlying fact that the pregnant teen was also a sexually active one. However, following the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan to the office of president, lawmakers associated with the New Right sought to reframe the legislative discourse about the pregnant teenager. Taking particular aim at Title X, which became a hated symbol of government gone wrong, conservatives argued that by providing teens with confidential family planning services, the federal government was both encouraging teen promiscuity and intruding into the sacred realm of the family, thus exacerbating the problems that Title X was intended to address in the first place. Grounded in this critique, they called for a fresh approach to the teen pregnancy problem—one that would promote self‑discipline and parental authority over immorality and family disintegration. This chapter focuses on this pivotal shift in the public response to the pregnant teen. Following a brief look at the rise of the New Right, it

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foregrounds the emerging conservative assault on Title X, and then turns to a critical examination of the corresponding counterproposal—namely that, rather than promoting promiscuity by providing teens with free birth control, the government should instead be persuading them to remain chaste until marriage. Although not aimed exclusively at young women, as we will see, this chastity agenda advances a gendered understanding of the importance of virginity. Moreover, given that same‑sex marriage is still not yet a legal option in the majority of states, it also denies the existence of gay youth, thus promoting a distinctly heteronormative understanding of human sexuality.

Tracking the National Mood: The Shift to the Right Shortly after assuming office, President Reagan announced his “new federal‑ ism” plan that was aimed at devolving power from the federal government to state and local authorities. As part of this initiative, the administration proposed ending Title X as a categorical federal program in favor of con‑ solidating the funds into block grants that states could then administer in accordance with their own priorities. Needless to say, these priorities were not necessarily likely to include providing teens with access to confidential family planning services.1 Although this block grant proposal was ultimately defeated, conser‑ vative lawmakers seized the opportunity presented by the possible end of Title X as a categorical program to launch a concerted attack on the federal government’s involvement in the provision of family planning services. Directing most of their antipathy toward the recent focus on teen pregnancy prevention, they vehemently argued that the government should not be in the business of promoting immorality and undermining traditional family values. This pushback against the instrumental approach to the problem of teen pregnancy did not occur in a vacuum, but rather tracked the grow‑ ing influence of the New Right’s “pro‑family” agenda. Accordingly, before looking more closely at the emerging call for a new approach to the teen pregnancy crisis, we consider the broader social and political context within which this conservative reframing of the issue took root. The Rise of the New Right Although the 1960s are generally associated with progressive social move‑ ments, the origins of the New Right as an influential political force can also be traced back to this decade. Galvanized by the effort to draft right‑wing

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icon Barry Goldwater to run for president in 1964, conservatives across the country initially came together within the framework of the Republican Party. However, within a decade or so, leading activists had become disil‑ lusioned by the party’s apparent willingness to compromise with liberals and moderates on social issues in order to win elections. Although they briefly flirted with the idea of forming a third party, they instead opted to constitute themselves as an independent force without any formal party affiliation. Explaining the “new style of non‑party conservatism,” Richard Viguerie, a leading architect of the New Right, writes: [C]onservatism had broken lose and was spilling out over the old party boundaries.  .  .  .  The Republican Party was no longer a “reservation” where conservative concerns could be conveniently segregated. Pro‑lifers, gun owners, religious groups: each of these now developed its own base. No Republican “Uncle Tom” could quiet them down to suit the liberals who owned the plantation.2 Having broken free of the established party structure, the New Right soon developed into “an institutionalized, disciplined, well‑organized and well‑financed movement of loosely knit affiliates.”3 Linked by a common belief that the nation was being destroyed by the “social engineering” of a liberal elite which was attempting to discredit “traditional values and parental authority” in favor of imposing a radically new “ideology and morality,” on an unsuspecting nation, conservatives slowly cohered into a powerful oppositional force.4 Particularly relevant for present purposes, New Right leaders were successful in their effort to mobilize Evangelical Christians into a cohesive political force. Although this constituency had recently become active on a variety of single “pro‑family” issues, Evangelicals had mostly existed on “the fringes of American religious and political life” since the early part of the twentieth century when their fierce belief in the inerrancy of the Bible marginalized them within mainline Protestant denominations, which had increasingly adopted the liberal theological view that the Bible was a historical text rather than the literal word of God.5 Although they may have been marginalized, Evangelicals did not vanish. Heeding the advice of their leaders that they “come out and be separate,” they regrouped during the 1930s and ’40s and began, as Harvey Cox writes, “to form a nationwide religious counterculture made up of thou‑ sands of independent churches, Bible institutes, summer camps, conference centers, radio ministries and revival services.”6 This retreat into a “religious

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subculture” also reflected the growing Evangelical belief that the world was beyond human repair. Accordingly, rather than dissipating energy trying to salvage a sinking ship, leaders encouraged the faithful to instead dedicate themselves to saving as many souls as possible. According to Duane M. Oldfield, the wall separating the “evangelical subculture” from the larger culture began to crumble in the early 1960s following the Supreme Court’s decision to ban school prayer. Further threatening their way of life, this attack on a cherished practice was soon followed by other equally unwelcome intrusions by a remote and seemingly hostile federal authority, including court‑mandated school desegregation and the decriminalization of abortion.7 This sense of assault was further compounded by broader cultural challenges to the primacy of the patriar‑ chal household—an institution that, according to David Watt, had become increasingly important to Evangelicals as a source of “comfort and hope” following World War II when their “hopes for the Second Advent became hazier and less concrete.”8 As feminists and gay rights activists advocated for a more inclusive definition of family that would embrace a variety of domestic arrangements, such as single‑mother households and same‑sex partnerships, the cherished bedrock of the Evangelical community that had sheltered them from a world which seemed to be “careening wildly out of control”9 suddenly seemed far less stable. Spurred by “its growing inability to insulate itself from disturbing trends in the broader culture,” the Evangelical Christian community began mobiliz‑ ing to defend its way of life.10 By the mid 1960s, activists had launched a number of single‑issue campaigns against what they believed were particularly pernicious outside influences, including sex education and the use of morally offensive textbooks in the public schools, which they argued inculcated their children with an “atheistic and relativistic view of morality.”11 Key targets also included the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, which Evangelicals reviled for its sex‑neutral approach, and the “homosexual agenda,” which they generally perceived as a major threat to their children, and following the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, Evangelical Christians quickly became a powerful force in the “pro‑life” movement. Particularly relevant was the pervasive fear that these external intru‑ sions into the culturally sacred realms of family, church, and school might ultimately alienate Evangelical children from their biblically grounded lives. Hoping to shelter their children from the insidious influence of the morally dissolute dominate culture in order to ensure, as Duane Oldfield explains, the orderly transmission of “subcultural values” from one generation to the next, Evangelical activists struggled to reinforce the crumbling wall that had previously served to keep these unwelcome influences at bay.12

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It was not, however, until 1979 when New Right leaders convinced Evangelical Christian minister Jerry Falwell that his followers were crucial to the effort to reclaim the nation from dissolute liberals, that Evangelicals became an organized political force in the electoral process. Abandoning his position that politics was not a suitable activity for the devout, Fal‑ well founded the “Moral Majority” in order to shepherd his flock into the political arena. Loosely linked with other newly established conservative religious groups, such as the Christian Voice and the Religious Roundtable, the “New Christian Right,” became a powerful force within the conserva‑ tive movement. The incorporation of Evangelicals into the movement to reclaim the nation from the Godless Left was an important strategic victory for the New Right. Not only did Evangelicals made up about 20 percent of the U.S. population, they also “provided a potentially powerful set of organizational resources,” including large congregations and television networks that they had quietly built up during the years of cultural isolation from mainstream American life, which could now be pressed into service in order to “promote and protect subcultural values.”13 As they moved into the electoral arena, New Right activists, including their recently mobilized Evangelical colleagues, staked out an uncompro‑ mising stance on a range of social matters that they believed were of vital importance to the survival of the nation. Although issues such as busing, gun control, and school prayer were certainly integral to the conservative nation‑saving agenda, as Rosalind Petchesky writes, “[i]f there [was] any‑ thing genuinely ‘new’ about the current right wing in the United States, it [was] its tendency to locate sexual, reproductive and family issues at the center of its political program.”14 Given this tendency, it is not surprising that Title X came to symbolize a world that was spinning wildly out of control. Convinced that governmentally funded family planning services posed a direct threat to cherished sexual and family values, it was a logical target of conservative anger.

The Conservative Attack on Title X One and a half billion dollars in the hands of terrorists could not have inflicted the long‑term harm to our society that Title X has. —Senator Jesse Helms (1984)

In March 1981, in the wake of the administration’s proposal to end Title X as a categorical federal program, Senator Orrin Hatch (R‑UT), a darling of

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the New Right and the chair of the Senate committee with formal oversight authority over Title X, convened the first of what would become a series of hearings to review the track record of the federal government in providing family planning services to teens. Although purportedly prompted by the desire to provide guidance to the states in the event the administration’s block grant proposal was successful, Senator Hatch’s opening expression of “deep concern” about a program that he declared supported “birth preven‑ tion” rather than “family planning” immediately suggested that the inquiry into Title X was unlikely to be an objective one.15 Hatch’s appointment of his “good friend” Senator Jeremiah Denton (R‑AL) to preside over this initial hearing resolved any possible doubt about the direction it would take. An equally impassioned conservative who had just been elected to office with the active support of New Right loyalists, in his opening remarks as chair Denton promptly decried the fact that Title X’s original goal of helping poor women to plan the “size of their families and the spacing of their children” had been subverted by the program’s recent “misguided and ill‑conceived” focus on teen pregnancy prevention. Although claiming he would welcome evidence showing that Title X remained dedicated to “planning families or preparing teens for this responsibility,” this momentary suggestion of impartiality was immediately annulled when, in the next breath Denton declared that he already knew that this was “not the truth.” Conversely, he instead argued that Title X was responsible for “sowing . . . seeds of confusion” among the nation’s youth by promulgating a version of morality that was at odds with the belief structures of most “parents and pastors.”16 Dominated by Denton, this series of oversight hearings marks the start of the conservative effort to reframe the problem facing young women as one involving the damaging nature of early sexual activity rather than the devastating consequences of teen motherhood. Revealing the “clash of two totally incompatible philosophies,”17 with respect to the moral acceptability of premarital sexual activity and the sanctity of the nuclear family, they offer a rich insight into the reemergence of a “pro‑virginity” discourse as a public strategy for managing unruly young bodies and protecting young women from harm. The Problem Is Not That Young Women Are Getting Pregnant— It Is That They Are Having Sex The foundational objection raised by critics to the inclusion of teens in Title X’s federal family planning program was that it was premised upon and in turn promoted the false and morally corrupt assumption that “sexual

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activity among children is acceptable and inevitable”—a view that, as noted above, they asserted was directly at odds with the values of most “parents and pastors.”18 Lambasting family planning counselors for encour‑ aging teens to liberate “themselves from outmoded parental and religious structures . . . and ‘accept’ their sexuality,”19 they denounced the fact that teens were being told that “masturbation is normal, acceptable, and even desirable” and that “homosexual relationships are as valid and natural as heterosexual relationships and . . . should not be questioned or criticized but only accepted.”20 Claiming that the nation’s youth had been duped into believing that it was fine for them to engage in premarital sex so long as they took steps to avoid the risk of pregnancy and disease, opponents of Title X blamed the federal government for fostering an “atmosphere in which teen promiscuity is viewed as normal and acceptable conduct.”21 Although, as previously discussed, proponents of providing teens with confidential family planning services did not stake out a “pro‑sex” stance to support their position, it is probably safe to assume that they did not view the underlying sexual activity with moral alarm, but instead regarded it as an expectable aspect of growing up in the modern world. Recognizing that many adolescents would become sexually active during their teen years, supporters emphasized that Title X was intended to meet young people where they lived by helping them to realize that if they made this choice they had an “obligation to be responsible . . . and provide themselves with contraception if they [were] not prepared to provide a good home for a child.”22 Reflecting this lived reality, Dr. James Breen, the president of the American College of Obstetrics, commented in his testimony that he “would like that the folkways and mores of society could change and go back to the way they were; but I live in the real world.”23 Helping to contextualize this divide, in discussing the similarly polarized viewpoints about the acceptability of adolescent premarital sexual activity in the context of debates over sex education, Kristen Luker writes: It’s not reproduction that separates the liberals from the conser‑ vatives, it’s sex. To be more precise, it’s about whether any kind of sex beside heterosexual married sex should be socially and morally acceptable . . . for conservatives, sex is sacred, while for liberals it is natural, and sacred sex demands formal structures to protect it, namely marriage, while natural sex does not.24 Likewise, in his work on the history of sexual education in the United States, Jeffrey Moran reiterates the view that conservatives generally believe that sexual activity belongs within the “sanctified institution” of marriage

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for the primary purpose of “procreation and marital duty,” and that sexual desire is accordingly an impulse that needs to be “controlled and repressed.” In contrast, he explains that liberals typically view sexual expression as an integral and natural part of what it means to be fully human, thus endorsing the “right of all humans to exercise personal sexual choice.”25 By constructing the problem facing young women as one of unintended pregnancy rather than as one of immoral behavior, Title X clearly trespassed on the conservative belief that sex is sacred. Seeking to reconstruct the narrative of harm, opponents of the program accordingly hoped to displace the pregnant teen with the sexually promiscuous one as the appropriate subject of public concern, much as the pregnant teen had previously replaced the “woman on welfare surrounded by a gaggle of unkempt kids”26 as the socially problematic subject. Fighting the desacrilization of the sexual bond, they warned of the dangers that would inevitably flow from the loosening of tight moral strictures on the rising generation. Not all the harms associated with adolescent sexual activity were specifically linked to the errant female body, as had been the case when the focus was on teen pregnancy. Thus, for example, Senator Denton warned of the general threat that a “free‑sex lifestyle” posed to the very continuation of civilization. Employing a historical lens, he argued that the recurring problem of sexual immorality had “delayed the dawn of civilization for millions of years and caused its fall every time it’s been tried as something new.” Elaborating on this link, he explained that “the more sexually permis‑ sive a society becomes, the less creative energy it exhibits and the slower its movement toward rationality, philosophical speculation, and advanced civilization.”27 In a similar catastrophic vein, Dr. James H. Ford, a member of the Academy of Family Physicians, warned that the new morality, with its antiauthoritarian emphasis, would alienate young people “from God, from their parents, and from society at large,” and result in the demise of “the family and ultimately . . . the national soul.”28 However, when zeroing in on the costs to the individual of a promiscu‑ ous lifestyle, a number of key legislative witnesses employed a distinctively gendered lens, thus reinforcing the conventional view that premarital sexual activity is intrinsically more damaging to young women than it is to their male partners. In a reversal of the Title X paradigm, rather than connoting responsible behavior, some witnesses testified that the use of birth control was an inherently risky activity that posed a direct threat to future dreams of motherhood. Although it is certainly true that the use of many contra‑ ceptives is not without some risk, the dire predictions of harm were clearly infused with the witnesses’ value judgments about the wrongful nature of

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the underlying sexual activity. Nowhere is this infusion of values clearer than in the testimony of Dr. Herbert Ratner, the editor of the Child and Family Quarterly, who warned that the “sterilizing complications” of “the pill, IUD, abortion, and vene‑ real disease,” were nature’s way of avenging a sexually dissolute lifestyle. Asserting his belief that nature had no choice but to “strike back and exact retribution,” when its precept against “early promiscuous sex and multiple partners” was violated, he cautioned that young women who disregarded the command to remain chaste risked destroying their fertility—which, he proclaimed, was their greatest treasure. Asserting that many “sexually active women [had discovered] the flaws of a care‑free life” he stressed the importance of making sure that young girls understood that they “only have one body; that it is not a rehearsal body which can be turned in for a new one after the fun is over. That it is a body that has to last a life time.”29 Also raising the specter of infertility, Dr. John Hillabrand, a practic‑ ing obstetrician and gynecologist, testified that the use of birth control was neuterizing girls and converting them into “sexual playthings for the entertainment of young males.” Proclaiming that “the ruination of mothers, babies, and families [was] at the root core of our evils of society today,” he cautioned young women against engaging in sexual activity that might damage their procreative potential, thereby depriving themselves of the opportunity to enjoy the “indispensible” mother‑baby relationship in the future.30 Fertility loss was not the only future harm that lay in wait to snare the unsuspecting girl who had strayed. Having been “pawed over,” she now, according to Dr. Ray Short, a sociology professor and author of “Sex, Love, or Infatuation: How Can I Really Know?” was damaged goods who was less desirable as a wife than the woman who had remained pure. Moreover, even if a non‑virgin was lucky enough to find a man who wanted to marry her, he warned that her marriage was likely to fail due to the apparent fact that she was slightly more than “twice as likely” to cheat on her husband than was the virgin bride.31 Apart from risking her future, some witnesses spoke of the harmful emotional costs of engaging in a promiscuous lifestyle. According to Denise Cocciolone, the Executive Director of Birthright, the antinatalist ethos of the family planning establishment which encouraged girls to “do whatever they choose, so long as they do not get pregnant,” was responsible for the exploitation of women “in the name of so‑called freedom,” resulting in a decline in their dignity.32 Dr. Short advised that girls were also far more likely than boys to be plagued by sex‑induced guilt due to their breach of

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societal expectations. As he explained: “[E]very time they have premarital sex, they are probably going to . . . experience guilt feelings because they know their society, particularly their parents and their religion, is against it. They have sex, they have guilt—sometimes a real guilt trip.”33 Responding to a followup question from Senator Denton about research findings sug‑ gesting that only about 25 percent of young women “report guilty feelings,” Short responded that the rest most certainly experienced subconscious guilt, stating that “I doubt if there are many females in America that have premarital sex without feeling guilty.”34 Having discursively constituted the sexually active, as distinct from the pregnant, young woman as the true problematic subject, critics blamed Title X for exacerbating the problems it was attempting to address. Accordingly, rather than continuing to throw fuel on the raging fire, Denton argued that the time had come for Congress and the family planning community to join together to “send the factual message to our children that early sexual involvement creates risks, problems and unhappiness that cannot be avoided by a pill.”35 Parents not the Government Are Responsible for Imparting Moral Values to Children Closely entwined with their critique that Title X encouraged promiscuous behavior, opponents also charged that by providing teens with access to confidential family planning services, the government was intruding into the sacred realm of the family. Lambasting the exclusion of parents—a practice that Dr. Ratner referred to as a “parentectomy,”36 they argued that this unwelcome interference undermined the rightful and natural authority of parents to control the upbringing of their children. As suggested by Denton’s comment that “my hurting point is when the little girl is at the point of decision, she is being advised by one side; the parents are not permitted into it. That seems to me a hideous development in this Government,” this alienation of children from their parents appears to have been as upsetting to critics as Title X’s overall approach to teen sexuality.37 Supporters of Title X sought to allay concerns that family planning clinics did not value the importance of parental involvement in the lives of their adolescent children. For instance, Faye Wattleton, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, testified that “the parents of most teens know that they are attending a birth control clinic” and that “most programs make every effort to encourage their young patients to talk to their parents.”38 However, given her firm commitment to ensuring that

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services remained available to teens who could not confide in their parents, these assurances would hardly have been particularly comforting to critics. Vividly capturing this divide, while Denton referred to the exclusion of parents as “hideous,” Wattleton remarked that she would personally welcome the involvement of a community agency in the event her daughter could not “discuss her concerns and her questions about her sexuality” with her, stressing that where parental consultation is not possible, the family plan‑ ning community did not “deem it ethical or moral for a young person to be faced with the prospect of being an unwilling parent.”39 For Denton and his allies, however, this was hardly the point. Having identified the originating sexual act as the socially problematic behavior, their focus was not on preventing unplanned pregnancies, but on controlling sexuality. Accordingly, from their perspective, if a young woman was not able to discuss the issue of birth control with her parents, presumably because they would not approve, the government had no right to insinuate itself into the domestic realm and encourage her to violate their moral precepts. Insisting that teens needed to be protected from “exploitation by these meddlesome adults” who wrongly believed that they had a “more sacred right to establish a relationship with a child, than the parents,” Title X opponents stressed the inviolability of the traditional family unit.40 Her‑ alded as an essential counterweight to the false message of moral relativity promulgated by family planning clinics, they invoked the enduring strength of the parent‑child bond as the rightful source of moral teaching: For generations, parents taught their children moral responsibil‑ ity and gave them the foundation on which to build their own families. The system was not perfect, but it produced infinitely better results than the current programs. It gave children reasons for preserving the chastity [sic] and it supported them in doing so until they were mature enough to make responsible decisions about their sexual faculties.  .  .  .  [I]f parents are to be effective in giving their children the moral training they so desperately need, they will have to be supported not undermined by government polices and the medical profession.41 Accordingly, as viewed by critics, rather than offering a solution to the problem of unintended motherhood, the promise of confidential family plan‑ ning services simply served to fan the flames of a promiscuous teen culture by weakening the traditional moral authority of parents over their children.

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The Liberal/Conservative Divide: The Confluence of Sexual and Family Values In writing about the controversy over sex education in the public schools, Kristen Luker highlights the ways in which the sexual and family values of the participants combined to shape their polarized positions on the issue. Mutually reinforcing one another, this dynamic interplay contributed to two deeply divergent perspectives on the appropriateness of and need for public school instruction on sexuality. As developed in this section, Luker’s insights into this value‑driven conflict provide a useful lens through which to view the similarly polarized debate over Title X—a divide that, as we will see, was further reinforced by a corresponding divergence in perspec‑ tives regarding the juridical status of teens. As Luker explains, based on their belief that “there can be sexual pleasure outside the bonds of heterosexual marriage,” and that “moral sex is sex that does not harm the person involved or his or her partner,” the liberal parents she met with were not particularly invested in the orderly intergenerational transmission of a fixed moral code.42 Generally accepting of the idea that their children would eventually make their own decisions about when and with whom to become sexually active, these parents rec‑ ognized that their children would benefit from access to reliable sources of information so that they would be better prepared to “make intelligent choices and sound decisions—based upon progressive acceptance of moral responsibility for their own sexual conduct as it affects themselves and others.”43 Although aware that the exposure to multiple, and perhaps con‑ flicting, sources of information would likely result in the diminution of a parent’s authority over his or her child, they did not view this prospect with alarm. Rather, in these “more egalitarian families” the gradual devolution of authority from parent to child was regarded as a natural phase in the developmental process.44 However, from the perspective of sexually conservative parents, this liberal approach failed to comprehend the importance of maintaining fixed boundaries between parent and child as well as between the holistic family unit and the external world. Grounded in notions of deference and author‑ ity, they regarded themselves as the appropriate guardians of their children’s sexuality. Believing, as Luker puts it, that “free will means only the capac‑ ity to move away from God’s will, not toward it,” they saw themselves as responsible for transmitting a strict moral code to their offspring that brooked no deviations from the conviction that sexual intimacy belongs within the sacred bonds of heterosexual marriage.45 Seeking to impress upon

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their children that there is a nonpermeable wall between right and wrong, maturity was equated with learning how to master temptation, rather than with learning how to manage it in a responsible manner.46 Consequently, in contrast to their liberal counterparts, conservative parents were not interested in gradually devolving responsibility to their children so they would eventually be able to make their own sexual deci‑ sions in accordance with an emerging value system. Regarding themselves as “gatekeepers” who were responsible for protecting their offspring from exposure to ideas that might lead them astray, they recoiled at the thought of schools teaching their children there was a menu of acceptable sexual options for them to choose from, so long as they acted in a responsible manner.47 As Luker explains, for these parents, “by its very nature” sex education was an unwelcome intrusion into the private realm of the well‑ordered family. Disrupting natural hierarchies upon which the transmission of absolute moral values depends, it was thus viewed as a frontal assault on the rights of parents to control the moral upbringing of their children in accordance with their beliefs.48 Looping back to the Title X context, it is readily apparent that the divide on the issue similarly tracks the polarized views of sexual liberals and conservatives with respect to sexual education. As in the sex ed con‑ text, it appears that the competing perspectives on the ultimate question of whether it is appropriate for the government to provide teens with confidential access to Title X family planning services were shaped by the congruence of deeply held sexual and family values. Staking out the liberal position in the oversight hearings, supporters of Title X took as their starting point the fact that many young people would become sexually active during their teen years, even if their parents might wish otherwise. Grounded in their awareness of the unlikely deter‑ rent effect of parental disapproval, they stressed the importance of making contraceptives available to those teens who would otherwise “continue to have sexual intercourse [without] the services needed to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.”49 Suggesting to Denton that not all families are bound into a harmonious whole by a single moral truth, Faye Wattleton implored him to recognize that “what we are pleading for is a recognition that no matter what our worlds are, there is always another world. We are simply trying to . . . be responsible to the many worlds of the people that seek our services.”50 Stressing that children should not have to “wander through their community in ignorance, fear, and misunderstanding,”51 Wattleton thus linked governmental involvement in the family planning arena with helping teens to take responsibility for their behavior in a diverse

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and complex world, rather than with the promotion of immorality or the rupture of sacred family bonds. In contrast, those lining up on the sexually conservative side made clear through their testimony that governmental involvement in the family planning arena was a usurpation of the natural rights of parents to direct the upbringing of their children in accordance with the values that structured their households. They blamed Title X for fracturing the organic unity of the family by instilling in adolescents a “revolutionary self‑determination in moral values and behavior”52 that promoted the belief, according to Denton, that,“decisions can legitimately be made solely on the basis of self‑gratification—that flesh is all and spirit is nothing.”53 Paralleling the conservative critique of sexual education, by suggesting to teens that they were in charge of their own sexual and reproductive decisions, the govern‑ mental involvement in the family planning arena was accordingly blamed for reworking the natural boundaries between parent and child. Freed from moral constraints on their behavior, critics thus feared that teens would lack the self‑discipline and control necessary to appreciate the “sacral and spiritual qualities” of their sexuality.54 Reinforcing this polarity, although Title X opponents tended to frame their objections in moralistic terms, and very little was said directly about the act’s implicit acceptance of teens as autonomous persons with rights to make confidential decisions about their sexual and reproductive lives, a brief but pointed exchange between Senator Denton and Faye Wattleton suggests that a parallel split regarding the juridical status of teens also ran beneath the liberal/conservative divide. Turning to this exchange, in response to Ms. Wattleton’s comment that she would personally welcome the involvement of a community agency in the event her daughter could not “discuss her concerns and her questions about her sexuality” with her, Denton replied that he and many others were not “particularly comfortable” with the idea of an agency working with “unemancipated teenagers,” who, as recognized by the Supreme Court are first and foremost “connected with [their] parents.”55 Continuing on, he expressed his discomfort with the fact that the determination of a teen’s eligibility for free or low cost Title X services was based upon her income without consideration of the financial resources of her parents, thus reinforcing the troubling liberal casting of adolescents as autonomous individuals with an identity separate and apart from their families.56 Significantly, Ms. Wattleton made no attempt to refute Denton’s pro‑ testation that Title X clinics viewed teens who came in for family planning services as individuals with legally cognizable rights to privacy, but instead,

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stressed the centrality of this understanding of adolescent personhood in the reproductive health context—an understanding which, she pointed out, and as discussed in the previous chapter, had been expressly recognized by the courts. Speaking specifically about Planned Parenthood, she accordingly remarked that the organization was “dedicated to the rights of each individual to make his or her decision about their life’s destiny . . . consistent with the Constitutional guarantees of privacy.”57 Making clear that this promise embraced young people, she accordingly explained that when a young woman walks into a clinic for care, she was “treated as an individual with her own medical and sexual history [and] her own needs and circumstances.”58

Demonstrating Purity: The Adolescent Family Life Act In 1981, in an effort to encourage teens to embrace a sexually pure lifestyle, Senators Hatch and Denton successfully shepherded the Adolescent Fam‑ ily Life Act (AFLA) through Congress.59 To avoid the criticism that they were launching “another massive federal domestic program” at a time when “President Reagan and other conservatives were in the midst of a major effort to reduce or eliminate many existing programs,” AFLA was structured to provide small grants for demonstration and research projects that could then “be adopted and funded by states and local areas.”60 However, by successfully deploying the authority of federal law to help reshape adolescent sexual behavior in accordance with “a moral agenda that call[ed] for a return to traditional values regarding gender and sexuality,” AFLA was an important victory for right‑wing morality politics, which, in turn, helped to set the stage for the development of a far more robust national abstinence policy.61 A Family‑Centered Approach to Purity By actively engaging the federal government in a program of moral regen‑ eration, Denton and Hatch hoped to repair the damage done by, as Denton put it, Title X’s “push them into it and then give [them] the money to pay for the contraceptives and the abortions” approach.62 Seeking to empower teens to avoid the “disillusionment, depression, and guilt,” which, according to the accompanying Senate Report, typically resulted from engagement in early sexual activity, AFLA was conceived of as a moral counterweight to Title X’s “essentially dehumanizing” approach.63 Extolling the benefits of this paradigm shift, Dr. Mildred F. Jefferson, president of the National Right to Life, pronounced AFLA a much‑welcomed response to the pernicious

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“secular‑humanist tradition” with its “avowed objective of displacing the influence of the mystical religions in our national life, its customs and its laws”64—delighted with this praise, Denton responded that he wished Jef‑ ferson’s remarks could be broadcast on national prime time television on a daily basis.65 Closely tracking the above‑discussed mutually reinforcing relationship between sexual and family values, AFLA sought to impose order on the unruly teen body by resurrecting parents as the gatekeepers of their chil‑ dren’s moral well‑being. Although not supported by any cited research, the legislative findings stressed the close relationship between “family values” and sexual restraint: [P]revention of adolescent sexual activity and adolescent preg‑ nancy depends primarily upon developing strong family values and close family ties and since the family is the basic social unit in which the values and attitudes of adolescents concern‑ ing sexuality and pregnancy are formed, programs designed to deal with issues of sexuality and pregnancy will be successful to the extent that such programs encourage and sustain the role of the family. . . .66 Repudiating the adolescent‑centered approach of Title X, AFLA’s mission was thus tightly linked to the reenfolding of the sexually tempted adolescent back into the family. To ensure that AFLA funded grant recipients faithfully advanced the statutory goal of promoting “self‑discipline and other prudent approaches to the problem of adolescent premarital sexual relations,” the law mandated that they include religious and charitable organizations in their family‑centered abstinence projects.67 In keeping with the sexually conservative arc of the act, it is thus not surprising that early grants “went almost exclusively to “far‑right and religious groups” whose curricular materials were often infused with religious messages about sexuality.68 Although the Supreme Court ulti‑ mately ruled based upon the First Amendment’s stricture on governmental support for religion that AFLA funds could not be used to underwrite overtly religious teachings, the Court was seemingly unconcerned about the close alignment of AFLA’s pro‑chastity message with the Christian view of sex as a divine gift to be shared between a husband and a wife. In fact, in com‑ menting on the law, the justices remarked it was actually “quite sensible for Congress to recognize that religious organizations can influence values and can have some influence on family life, including parents’ relations with their adolescent children.”69

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In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, many groups simply expunged the references to God in their AFLA‑funded sex education materi‑ als while leaving the underlying message intact. For example, one educator, explained that rather than saying, “Sexual intercourse belongs in marriage, what [sic] God intended it to be,” as she would in the Catholic school context, in a public school setting she would now simply tell students to “[p]lace sexual intercourse in marriage where it belongs,” noting that the message was the same, but she just “didn’t say God.”70 Encapsulating this interplay between secular and sectarian values, a Christian youth outreach worker subsequently explained to a special Senate panel on abstinence education that “although abstinence is a ‘godly principle,’ one can practice it without God as these principles work for everyone.”71 Sexual Liberalism Reversed Although AFLA did not displace Title X as Denton had hoped, it none‑ theless was a powerful rejoinder to the act’s liberality. By reframing the paradigmatic problem facing young women as premature sexual behavior rather than early childbearing and then offering a family‑centered solution, it enabled conservative lawmakers to take credit for protecting youth from Title X’s “dehumanizing” approach to sexuality and for restoring the dam‑ aged family to its rightful place in the social order.”72 In direct contrast to Title X’s emphasis on the importance of adolescents taking responsibility for their sexual choices, AFLA sought to graft a single behavioral standard onto their youthful bodies. Embodying the conservative belief that sex is “sacred,” it stood as a firm repudiation of what Denton referred to as “pagan values.”73 By realigning the nation’s moral code along the axis of self‑discipline, in keeping with, as Denton explained, the vision of our Founding Fathers and the “principles upon which the Nation has based its entire legal, and judicial system,”74 AFLA held out the promise of redemption from a governmentally sanctioned culture of promiscuity, which, as discussed above, critics of Title X believed was particularly devastating to young women. AFLA was also designed to strengthen the family by limiting the autonomy of adolescents in favor of restoring to parents “the privilege of exercising their inalienable right and obligation to be properly involved in federally supported sex education and adolescent pregnancy programs that service their children.”75 Making good on this promise, the act contained a parental notification requirement for most grant‑funded services and activities, and rather than relying upon a teen’s income for determining her eligibility for free or low‑cost services, it based this determination

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upon parental income, thus firmly locating adolescents within the domestic economy.76 Highlighting the significance of this effort to reenfold the sexu‑ ally active teen into the family unit, Dr. Terrence D. Olson, professor of family sciences at Brigham Young University, praised the act for honoring “the historical and legal tradition of limiting adolescents . . . from access to all the rights granted adult citizens and protecting them from bearing full adult responsibility for their behavior.”77 Although, as discussed below, AFLA would eventually be overshadowed by the far more robust 1996 abstinence education law, as the embodiment of the domestic ideals of the New Right it was a powerful moral victory over the “free‑sex/anti‑parent” ideology of Title X. Reversing this much‑reviled liberal paradigm, AFLA offered a new legal framework for the management of adolescent sexual behavior—one that would no longer countenance the idea that young women were entitled to make their own decisions about their reproductive and sexual selves.

Mandating Abstinence until Marriage As we have seen, AFLA sought to promote “self‑discipline and other pru‑ dent approaches to the problem of adolescent premarital sexual relations.”78 Crafted by Denton as a counterweight to Title X, AFLA did not expressly focus on marriage as the only acceptable site of sexual activity. Instead, by helping adolescents to inculcate the habits of self‑control within the care‑ fully bounded realm of the family, it was hoped that they would develop the necessary strength to resist the siren call of a sex‑drenched culture until they were ready to wed. Over time, however, some conservative lawmakers grew increasingly concerned that AFLA was not strict enough. In particular, some felt misled by the fact that funds could potentially be used to support programs that were not exclusively abstinence focused.79 Seeking to tighten the federal reins, they called for a stricter approach that would present teens with the “single, unambiguous message that sex outside marriage is wrong and harm‑ ful to their physical and mental health.”80 Responding to this call, in 1996, with the active support of “a small group of core, social conservatives,”81 Congress approved a major new federal initiative promising $50 million annually to the states for the implementation of an abstinence‑until‑marriage education program. Expanding the potential reach of this new national morality policy, states were required to match every four dollars of federal abstinence funds they received with three dollars of their own.

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Codified as section 510 of Title V of the Social Security Act (Title V), this new centerpiece of the federal abstinence policy was grafted onto the final version of the sweeping overhaul of the nation’s welfare law—a stage of the legislative process that is usually “reserved for corrections and technical revisions”82 rather than for major substantive additions. Gaining approval without “a Congressional floor debate or a separate vote [or] any open public debate,”83 conservative lawmakers succeeded in their use of what Alesha E. Doan and Jeanne Calterone Williams refer to as “stealth tactics” in order to translate their moral agenda into a well‑funded and robust national policy.84 According to Ron Haskins and Carol Statuto Bevan, two congressional staff members who helped draft the new law, in approving this measure Congress was seeking to align itself “with the social tradition . . . that sex should be confined to married couples.”85 Aware that this aspirational goal was at odds with the “practices and standards in many communities across the country,” they explained that as with “civil rights and smoking,” the legislative intent was to alter “both behavior and community standards for the good of the country.”86 In short, this cultural dissonance was to serve as the springboard for the moral reconstruction of the nation’s youth. To ensure that the intended “forcefulness of a pure abstinence message” would not be “captured or watered down” by liberals who believed that in addition to the abstinence message, teens also needed to learn about safe‑sex practices in the event they did choose to become sexually active, the new statute included a strict eight‑point legal definition of what a program was required to teach in order to be eligible for Title V funding.87 Advancing the intended statutory goal of building a nonpermeable wall between the sexually liberal and conservative approaches to adolescent sexuality, the first legally mandated eligibility requirement was that a program must have as its “exclusive purpose” the teaching of the “social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity.”88 Reinforcing this moral vision, the remaining definitional points sought to firmly locate all sexual activity within the presumptively heterosexual marital unit by requiring that federally funded programs:

• Teach that abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage is the expected standard for all school‑age children;



• Teach that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out‑of‑wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems;

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• Teach that a mutually faithful, monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of sexual activity;



• Teach that sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects;



• Teach that bearing children out of wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society;



• Teach young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual advances;



• Teach the importance of attaining self‑sufficiency before engag‑ ing in sexual activity.89

Although channeling sexual activity into marriage had certainly been integral to AFLA’s moral renewal agenda, as we have seen, it was directed at upending Title X’s endorsement of teen promiscuity and the accompa‑ nying decline of parental authority. With this new law, however, we see an explicit statutory designation of marriage as the only acceptable site of sexual activity across the life span.90 In this regard, it should be noted that since 1996 a growing number of states have legalized same‑sex marriage. Arguably, then, the act could be read as endorsing same‑sex intimacy so long as it takes place within the boundaries of marriage. However, given the value structure of the law and the fact that marriage between gay men or lesbians was not legal in any state at the time of its enactment, it is unlikely that the abstinence message will be read to embrace the sexuality of married same‑sex couples.

Engendering the Abstinence Message As we have seen, starting with the mid‑nineteenth‑century campaign to criminalize seduction, successive waves of reformers have looked to the state to enact laws to both protect young women from exploitation and to contain their desire. More recently, rooted in concerns about the problems associated with early childbearing, Congress enacted Title X in order to reshape the reproductive destinies of young women by providing them with confidential access to free (or low‑cost) family planning services. Although this statute clearly employed gender‑neutral language—speaking in terms

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of “all persons” rather than “all women”—the act was inextricably linked to the pregnant female body.91 However, the picture is somewhat different when it comes to the absti‑ nence laws discussed in this chapter.92 Written in gender‑neutral language, they do not expressly privilege female purity over male purity as would be the case if, for example, federally funded programs were required to teach that “abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage is the expected standard for all school‑age girls,” rather than for “all school age children,” or that “sexual activity outside the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects on girls.” Moreover, unlike in the Title X context where reproductive physiology necessarily imports gendered meaning into facially neutral language, when it comes to abstinence, clearly both the male and the female body can remain chaste. However, it is also possible that the surface neutrality of these laws actually masks a distinctly gendered reality. In considering this possibility, it may be useful to borrow the “disparate impact” theory of discrimination from the employment law arena. In brief, rather than simply looking at whether a law expressly treats one group differently from another, such as by banning women from certain jobs thought to be inappropriate based on, for example, the strength required for the position, this approach focuses on whether a law that appears “fair in form,” such as one that requires all potential employees to meet a minimum height and weight requirement, turns out to be “discriminatory in its operation,” because it effectively serves to exclude a disproportionate number of otherwise qualified female applicants from consideration. Applying this concept in the present context, the salient question thus becomes whether, despite being “fair in form,” as implemented, the federal abstinence mandate has a disparate impact on young women by holding them to a higher standard of sexual accountability.93 As argued, based upon the originating impulse of this mandate coupled with its cultural expression as embodied in the abstinence literature, the answer appears to be a resounding yes. Beneath the Surface: The Legislative Context A logical place to begin our inquiry into the question of whether the fed‑ eral abstinence mandate has a disparate impact on young women is with a brief return to the Title X oversight hearings, which set the stage for this morality‑based approach to adolescent sexuality. As we saw, in seeking to shift the locus of concern from the pregnant teen to the sexualized one, witnesses looked at the harms of a “care‑free” lifestyle through a gendered

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lens. Warning that the costs of promiscuity were disproportionately borne by young women, who, as a result of their indulgence, risked a future marred by guilt, sterility, and marriage instability, they argued for redemption from these harms through the regulation of desire. In short, although the result‑ ing abstinence laws employed gender‑neutral language, they were rooted in concerns about female sexual behavior, which conservative lawmakers believed had been distorted by the federal government’s endorsement of promiscuity through the provision of contraceptives. Of course, these gendered preoccupations are not surprising given that, as we have seen throughout this book, the value of virginity has been inextricably connected to the female body. As Hanne Blank writes in her monograph on the subject: “The male body has never commonly been labeled as virginal even when it is, but rather as ‘continent’ or ‘celibate’ . . . vir‑ gins are, and always have been, almost uniformly female.”94 Although male sexual continence may have been praised by the social purity reformers as a sign of masculine strength and power, virginity, as Blank notes, has never “mattered in regard to the way men are valued, or whether they were considered fit to marry or, indeed, to be permitted to survive,” as has so often been the case for women.95 Steeped in these traditional understand‑ ings, it is clear why conservatives viewed Title X, which implicitly honors the right of young women to make their own decisions about the value of their virginity, as a frontal assault upon deeply cherished values—a view that, as we will see, has directly shaped the gendered actualization of the federal abstinence mandate in curricular material. In addition, the fact that the 1996 abstinence‑only‑until‑marriage law was passed as part of a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s welfare law is also revealing of a deeply gendered legislative subtext. Aptly titled the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reform Act (PRWORA),” this law was conceived of as a much‑needed solution to the rise in “illegitimate” births in accordance with the “value position that sex outside marriage is wrong and the consequences severe for mother, child, and society.”96 Laced with racialized assumptions about the sexual behavior of young black women in particular, PRWORA sought to channel young women into marriage by eliminating the “perverse incentives . . . that produc[ed] undesirable behavior.” For example, based on the belief that some women had additional children for the purpose of increasing their welfare payments, states would now be permitted to withhold additional benefits to women who had more children while receiving welfare.97 Highlighting how the intersection of race and gender shaped the symbiotic relationship between welfare reform and abstinence education,

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a 1995 Heritage Foundation report, aptly entitled “Combating Illegitimacy and Counseling Teen Abstinence: A Key Component of Welfare Reform,” stressed that “personal virtue is the key to responsible adulthood,” and that the “American culture must provide the concepts of virtue toward which adolescents can strive.”98 By embedding the “concept of virtue” in the Title V’s marriage standard, the promotion of abstinence education as “a centerpiece in the war against welfare” is thus closely linked, as Chris Mayo writes, to the broader cultural project of fashioning an “ideal female sexual subject whose demonized opposite was the . . . black pregnant teen on welfare.”99 In seeking to persuade the irresponsible procreator to take “personal responsibility” for her sexual behavior, conservatives thus hoped to harness the moral power of abstinence‑only education to do the work of welfare reform. Shifting our focus from the concerns about sexual behavior to the conservative belief that Title X disrupted the sanctity of the parent‑child bond, it is also worth considering whether gendered considerations played a role in the effort to restore the decisional authority of parents. Given the fact that virtually all users of Title X family planning services were (and continue to be) female, as a practical matter the statutory right of sexual self‑determination was primarily vested in young women, thus effectively disrupting the parent‑daughter, as distinct from the parent‑son, relation‑ ship. Considered in this light, Denton’s earlier referenced comment about it being a “hideous development” in government policy that when a “little girl is at the point of decision, she is being advised by one side [and her] parents are not permitted into it”100 suggests that there may well have been something particularly disturbing about the fact that Title X was effectively freeing young women from parental oversight of their sexual lives. Although fathers in this country clearly no longer have a legally cognizable property interest in their daughters’ virginity, two contemporary cultural practices suggest that at least on a symbolic level, they have retained some vestigial authority over their sexuality. The most visible expression of this continued acceptance of paternal surveillance is the purity ball. Discussed in greater detail below, these formal prom‑like, or some would say wedding‑like events, provide fathers with the opportunity to help their daughters “realize the truth that they are infinitely valuable princesses who are ‘worth waiting for.’”101 Of central importance to the mission of persuad‑ ing their daughters to remain chaste, fathers sign a pledge promising to be the guardians of their daughters’ virginity, and at some balls, the daughters sign a reciprocal pledge committing their virginity to their fathers until their wedding day.

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The other practice is the still‑vibrant custom of a father “giving away” his daughter in marriage. As a figurative foreshadowing of the wedding night, after the bride’s father walks her down the aisle and delivers her to the waiting groom and they exchange vows, her husband is told he may lift her veil and kiss the bride, signifying that he now has a lawful right of access to her body, which he did not possess prior to the symbolic transfer of the bride from father to husband. Outwardly manifesting her new sexual status, at this point, the bride customarily sheds her paternally bestowed “maiden” name for her husband’s thus completing the symbolic transition from virginal girl to soon to be post‑virginal wife. Similar to the way in which the federal encoding of the abstinence mandate reflected a heightened concern about young women’s sexuality, it is thus also possible that the focus on the restoration of the moral authority of parents over their children was likewise prompted by gendered consid‑ erations. Seeking to reverse the “hideous” situation of “little girls” making sexual and reproductive decisions on their own, it is arguably daughters’ bodies that conservatives were hoping to protect through the resurrection of parental authority over their adolescent children. Beneath the Surface: “What We Are, and What a Difference!” Infused with an anxiety about an unconstrained female sexuality, this genera‑ tive reality clearly ruffles the surface neutrality of the federal abstinence‑only laws. An examination of two cultural sites, namely, Sex Respect, a popular abstinence curriculum102 and the growing purity ball phenomenon, allows us to see how this apprehension has shaped the actualization of the absti‑ nence mandate on the ground. This analysis is not intended to suggest that the purity message is not also aimed at young men, but rather that its cumulative weight reinforces the longstanding association of virginity as a signifier of virtue with the female body, thus holding young women to a higher standard of moral accountability. Sex Respect: Teaching Students about the “Gift of Gender” Despite the neutral encoding of the abstinence message that sexual activity is to be deferred until marriage, it is not uncommon for gender stereotypes to be deployed in abstinence curricula in order to get this message across in the classroom. Based on their content analysis of four leading abstinence texts, Doan and Williams concluded that to varying degrees these texts generally “underscore[d] rather than question[ed] traditional gender norms,”

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which they defined to include “the notions that men’s and women’s biologi‑ cal differences translate to significant differences in temperament, capacity for emotion, views and experiences related to sexuality, and life choices and abilities.”103 Similarly, a report prepared for Representative Henry A. Waxman (D‑CA), concluded that many abstinence‑only curricula present “stereotypes,” such as that “girls care less about achievement and their futures than do boys,” as “scientific fact.”104 The comprehensive review of popular abstinence curricula conducted by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) likewise reveals the extent to which many rely upon gender stereotypes in their effort to persuade teens to remain chaste. For example, the review concluded that Choosing the Best Way, which is a very popular curricular series, presents the “stereotypical view that men desire casual sexual activity from any and all women while women only agree to sexual activity to get love.” In a blatant use of sexual stereotypes to get the abstinence message across, the WAIT (Why Am I Tempted) curriculum teaches students that women need affection while men need sexual fulfillment; women need conversation while men need recreational companionship; women need honesty and openness while men need physical attractiveness; women need financial support while men need admiration, and women need family commitment while men need domestic support.105 Although perhaps more blatant than other curricula, this passage clearly grounds the abstinence message in traditional gender scripts that serve to divest young women of a naturalized sexual desire. By way of further illustrating how essentialized understandings of male and female sexuality are woven into the very fabric of federally funded absti‑ nence curricula as a dominant strategy for managing unruly young bodies, we now take a close look at Sex Respect, a leading abstinence‑only text, which, according to its author Dr. Colleen Kelly Mast, has been “taught in over 3,000 school districts in the U.S. and in 23 foreign countries,” thus making it, in her words, the “world’s leading abstinence program.”106 Sex Respect was also the first curriculum to be developed with AFLA funds, and its publication embodies the dynamic link between the attack on Title X and the emergence of the pro‑chastity approach for managing adolescent desire. As Connaught C. Marshner, a contributing editor for Conservative Digest, explains:

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[T]he Adolescent Family Life Act was written expressly for the purpose of diverting [federal] money that would otherwise go to Planned Parenthood into groups with traditional values. That noble purpose has certainly been fulfilled here. And, if it hadn’t been for the seed money provided by the government, Sex Respect might just be an idea sitting in a graduate student’s thesis.107 Having grown from a small “several‑school pilot program” into “of the most widely used sex education curricula in the United States,”108 Marshner goes on to praise Sex Respect as a “genuine success story for conservatives, for the American people, and for the Reagan Administration.”109 A review of Sex Respect’s lessons for teens enables us to see firsthand how the federal abstinence mandate serves to hold young women to a greater degree of responsibility for advancing the purity agenda based on assumptions about their naturalized lack of desire. However, before taking a closer look at this curriculum, it should be noted that feminist scholars have certainly written about the “missing discourse of desire” in the sexual narratives of young women. Yet, in direct contrast to Sex Respect and other abstinence texts, their work does not present us with an essentialized pas‑ sionless body. Rather than relying on traditional sexual scripts that naturalize desire in the adolescent male body while denying it in the female, these works recognize the myriad of ways in which external factors shape the sexual self. As Deborah Tolman writes, it is only by identifying “how the culture has become anchored in the interior of women’s lives—an interior that is birthed through living in the exterior of material conditions and relationships,” that we can understand the pressure that many young women feel, particularly in the context of intimate heterosexual relationships, to “silence their desire [and] to disassociate from those bodies in which they inescapably live.”110 Eschewing biological determinates, feminist scholars have focused on the ways in which growing up in a world “that objectifies and commodi‑ fies women in sexual or reproductive terms” constrains the development of an empowered sexual subjectivity that would permit young women to feel in control of their bodies.111 Thus, for example, in her classic work on statutory rape laws, Michelle Oberman notes that through the media construction of young women as “legitimate targets of male sexual desire,” they come to “see and value themselves through the eyes of the other,” which contributes to their “conscription . . . into a passive role in sexual encounters.”112 Tolman also identifies ways in which “tactics of silencing and denigrating women’s sexual desire are deeply entrenched” in our social

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order, such as, for instance, through systems of surveillance, and the perni‑ cious messaging of the “Madonna/whore dichotomy,”113 while Michelle Fine and Sara I. McClelland point to how the constant positioning of girls as “potential victims of male sexual aggression”114 constrains the development of a healthy female sexual self—a self that is then further constricted by the “explicit pairing of law and religious ideology,” which effectively “censures young women for their sexual behavior.”115 In other words, rather than essentializing the “missing discourse of female desire,” this body of feminist literature seeks to problematize it. Although its abstinence‑until‑marriage message is unquestionably geared to all teens, by locating passion in the male body, Sex Respect presents young women as naturally lacking in desire, thus making clear that they bear a special responsibility for ensuring that this hallowed goal does not falter on the shoals of adolescent male lust.116 Establishing the biological template for this classic allocation of sexual accountability, chapter 1 of the Student Workbook, which is aptly entitled “Sex: What We Are, and What a Difference,” informs students that the “gift of . . . gender” is assigned to them before their “heart starts beating.”117 Fusing gender with biological sex, they learn that their masculine or feminine design is irrevocably inscribed upon their prenatal selves. The world into which these essentialized bodies are then born is cleaved into dichotomous realms of experience. Marked by global differences with respect to how they “communicate . . . think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love need and appreciate,” it is therefore not surprising to learn that males and females “almost seem to be from different planets” where they speak “different languages and [need] differ‑ ent nourishment.”118 According to Sex Respect, this gendered reality presents teens with two crucial developmental tasks. First, they must work at “accepting, under‑ standing and acting with character” in accordance with their “masculine or feminine design.”119 As an all‑encompassing reality, strict conformity with this binary model of human existence is equated with maturity. Accordingly, as it is explained: “Just as we can’t run away from ourselves, neither can we escape the sexual traits of our personality, even if we wanted to. We need to face our understanding of our sex, sexuality and gender identity and learn to grow so we can mature!”120 Implicitly represented as an act of immaturity that impedes the developmental process, there is thus clearly no room on the abstinence bus for teens who are questioning their sexuality. Secondly, teens must learn to extend this acceptance to the inhabitants of the other planet. This means that rather than judging the “opposite sex” in accordance with their respective masculine or feminine design, teens are

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instead advised to rely upon the behavioral code that is dictated by the other’s “chromosomes and hormones” in order to assess their behavior—only then will genuine respect for “gender roles, needs and drives” flourish.121 Firmly grounded in this gender binary with its totalizing construction of masculine and feminine identities, students are then introduced to the all‑important theme of “male‑female sexual differences.” Presented in a chatty and relaxed interview format featuring Dr. Specter, who is identified as a psychologist and teen guidance counselor, girls are advised that with the onset of puberty they “must start acting as well‑mannered ladies, instead of uncontrolled children, since they are capable of having a child and need to protect this potential gift by respecting the power to help give life to a child.”122 Reminiscent of the view articulated by many nineteenth‑century experts that the “maternal instinct was the female analogue to the male sex instinct,”123 Sex Respect likewise directly links a girl’s emerging sexual capacity to her future reproductive role, rather than to the possibility of desire and pleasure. In direct contrast to the maternalized sexuality of “normal” young women, Dr. Specter explains that although the urge may be stronger in some boys than in others, all young men experience a “natural desire for sex” due to the testosterone surging through their bodies. Although linked to what Specter refers to as the “mating instinct,” the awakening of male desire is presented as having an independent life force. In sharp contrast to the adolescent female in whom the sexual body is merged with the procreative body, adolescent males are characterized as naturally sexual beings in whom desire is triggered by ordinary life events, such as looking at a girl or “thinking about or getting ready for a date.”124 Dr. Specter acknowledges that some young women do, in fact, express an interest in sex. However, in contrast to the embodied nature of male desire, their desire is represented as noncorporeal in origin. Rather than being read as an expression of the authentic female self, it instead suggests that something has gone awry. Reminiscent of the concerns of Progressive Era reformers, as represented by Specter the problem is that some girls have allowed popular culture, with its lifting of the “stigma from non‑virgins” and its veneration of “provocative women,” to override “their natural instincts,” thus reconstructing their libidos along male lines.125 In a subsequent chap‑ ter, the “liberation movement” is also identified as a corrupting influence which produces “aggressive girls” who, in a reversal of roles, are likely to pressure their boyfriends into having sex, without regard for the fact that this “threat to a guy’s masculinity is a very sensitive blow.”126

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In addition to refashioning girls into sexual aggressors, we also learn that external influences, as distinct from genuine bodily desire, make it more likely that a girl will capitulate to her boyfriend’s sexual advances. This is not, of course, intended to suggest that sexual coercion is not a genuine problem for young women; rather, the point here is that this representation reinforces the idea that because they have little natural interest in sex, any expression of desire must be read as inauthentic. Of particular importance, Dr. Specter cautions that girls who lack “male affection in their home” may try and satisfy this “unmeet need” through indiscriminate sexual encounters,127 a concern that, as discussed below, has fueled the purity ball phenomenon. Highlighting this danger, a subsequent chapter introduces us to a lonely teen named LaWanda. Abandoned by her father following her par‑ ents’ divorce, and also aware that she is not particularly pretty, LaWanda is pursued by Calvin, a popular ladies man, who is “everything she imagined her father to be.” Believing herself to be in love with him, LaWanda gives into Calvin’s pressure to have sex with him in order not to lose him. She also admits that she would not mind having a baby with him. Of course, after she has given in to his overtures, Calvin decides it is time to move on, leaving LaWanda “torn apart by the pain of being left alone by the men in her life.”128 In addition to reinforcing the central message of Sex Respect that sexual desire in women is inauthentic and noncorporeal in nature, the story also raises troubling racial stereotypes. As the SIECUS analysis of this curriculum points out, given that “most other stories in Sex Respect feature young people with names like Ron, Erica, Cindy, and Joe,” it is likely that the name LaWanda was chosen to indicate that this story involves African American teens. However, as is pointed out, rather than suggesting an evenhanded inclusivity, this story “is replete with stereotypes about the African‑American community that represent young men as players, young women as wanting to have babies, and all families as living without fathers.”129 The story is also problematic because LaWanda is one of the only young women presented in the Workbook who actually gives in to the pressure to have sex. This, of course, raises the troubling specter of the hypersexual black teen who has little control over her libido, thus implicitly suggesting that abstinence education may be particularly important for teens of color whose transgressive bodies are coded as particularly disruptive of the purity ideal—an ideal that has long been associated with middle‑class whiteness.130 These anomalous situations aside, the Student Workbook makes clear that because young women are “less impulsive and more level‑headed about

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sex,” they are responsible for keeping male passion in check. As sexual gatekeepers, it is their job to slow their boyfriends down and help them to “learn balance in a relationship through sexual abstinence.”131 To assist them with this crucial task, the Workbook is sprinkled with advice about how best to manage male passion. Of critical importance, young women are taught to appreciate the fact that although they are “are turned on by their hearts,” guys are “turned on by their senses.”132 Accordingly, it is their responsibility to carefully manage their appearance so as to not incite male lust. To be avoided are “plunging necklines and short skirts,” which, they learn, are likely to distract even the most decent young men who are trying hard to “respect girls” by keeping a lid on their lust. Reflected in the catchy line, “If you show them some skin, the hormones rush in,” the Workbook makes clear that young men cannot help their behavior. Rather, the message is that fault lies with young women for failing to recognize that their appearance is responsible for triggering male lust, since, after all, unlike hormonal surges, sexy clothing is easily avoidable.133 Young women are also given tips on how to prevent matters from getting out of hand. As sexual gatekeepers, they are entrusted with the task of helping the young men in their lives to appreciate that “sex is not a test of love,” and that healthy relationships entail “getting to know each other’s hearts and minds” rather than one another’s bodies. If a boyfriend will not take “‘no’ for an answer,” a young woman is instructed to accept the fact that he does not respect her, and she is advised to “let him find someone else” who presumably will not turn him down134—a message that, of course, implicitly distinguishes between those girls who deserve “sex respect” and those who do not. It is also instructive to consider one of the Workbook’s few reverse scenarios, in which a seemingly “normal” young woman is trying to pres‑ sure her boyfriend into having sex with her. Set in a gym, Brandon, who has a black belt in karate, confides in Tyler during a karate lesson that his girlfriend really wants to have sex with him. His masculinity having clearly been established by the setting and the reference to his athletic prowess, Brandon reveals that it is getting “harder to resist, cause it could be fun,” but that he also feels “pressured and a little guilty just thinking about giving in.” Using the self‑discipline of karate as a metaphor, in talking to Tyler, Brandon comes to appreciate that “freedom is not always gained by following your pleasures,” but that desire must be disciplined, so it can ultimately be perfected in marriage. Distinctly recalling the view of nineteenth‑century male purity reformers that sexual activity drained men

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of their vital energy, he further remarks: “Now that I think about it, the guys I know who are sexually involved with girls seem like their emotional energy is being drained away from them sometimes,” and he accordingly suggests that they turn their attention back to their sport.135 As presented here, male passion is something to be tamed. Unlike with women for whom abstinence is passively linked with innate virtue, for young men, abstinence instead requires the active control of one’s unruly body. Again recalling the nineteenth‑century purity ideal in which male continence “implied strength, not weakness” and was heralded as the “grand secret of power,”136 the Workbook, in addition to linking self‑control with perfectibility, conjoins it with masculine “courage and maturity.”137 Reinforc‑ ing this gendered messaging, we learn from the Teacher’s Manual that the reason Brandon was most likely feeling pressured and a bit guilty at the thought of giving in was not because he treasured his virginity, but because he recognized that his girlfriend was likely to “expect an emotional commit‑ ment to go with the physical sex” and he was not ready for this “emotional tangle.”138 Deepening the gendered messaging, in contrast to Brandon who thinks it would be “fun” to have sex, the lesson is that, like LaWanda, his girlfriend was looking to physical intimacy as a way to secure her emotional connection with her boyfriend, while he was thinking it might simply be fun.

Purity Balls: Taking Abstinence beyond the Classroom In this section, we consider an emerging cultural trend within the abstinence movement—namely, the father‑daughter purity balls that have cropped up across the country over the past fifteen or so years. Although these balls are not typically paid for with federal abstinence funds, these performative celebrations, which, as the Abstinence Clearinghouse explains, are designed to “reinforce the truth that young women are beautiful, that their virginity is a gift, and that they are worth waiting for,” highlight the inexorable link between virginity and the female body within the abstinence community.139 This homage to female virtue thus situates the gendered teachings of Sex Respect and other similar texts in the world beyond the physical boundaries of the abstinence classroom. “Because We Cherish Our Daughters as Regal Princesses” The first purity ball was held in 1998 in Colorado Springs—a vital hub of Evangelical Christian activism. The proud creation of Randy Wilson, the

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founder of the Generations of Light Ministry and father of five daughters, these celebrations are now held across the country. Although most purity balls are expressly faith‑based, there is no requirement that they invoke God; in fact, the Abstinence Clearinghouse’s Purity Ball Planner does not identify prayer or a devotional ritual as one of the essential components of the evening’s activities. Purity balls are, typically, formal events that include a sit‑down dinner, which may feature an elaborate wedding‑like cake for dessert, and dancing to a live band, concluding perhaps with a father‑daughter waltz. Describing the Generations of Light’s now annual purity ball, one reporter writes: “For months the girls and young women have been trying on gowns and agoniz‑ ing over footwear choices . . . now, the girls are filling the Lake Terrace Ballroom in a gust of silk and taffeta, many of them resplendent in white gloves, and about a third of them crowned with rhinestone‑studded tiaras.” Accompanied by their fathers in formal wear, the event “has the look of a prom, a wedding and a debutante ball rolled into one.”140 The creation of an atmosphere that is both elegant and feminine is essential to the overall purpose of the purity ball. As Randy Wilson explains: What we wanted to do was create an event where they could walk into everything that their femininity is about, their beauty, their dress, their makeup and give them a place to dwell on all of that. . . . We want to create a place in this culture where purity is exalted and valued.141 However, purity balls are not simply designed to provide young women with an opportunity to joyously dwell upon their femininity. Rather, they are a culturally constructed space within which fathers are expected to treat their daughters “as royalty” for the evening in order to demonstrate that, as the Generations of Light’s Web site proclaims, “they cherish them as regal princesses.”142 Describing the critical role of fathers in the formation of a confident female self, one father recounts the experience of attending the Generations of Light Purity Ball as follows: It is impossible to convey what I have seen in their sweet spirits, their delicate, forming souls, as their daddy takes them out for their first, big dance. Their whole being absorbs my loving atten‑ tion, resulting in a radiant sense of self‑worth and identity.143

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Turning then to describe how his daughters’ sense of “self‑worth and identity” flowed directly from their absorption of his “loving attention,” he recounts what the event must have been like through their eyes: My daddy thinks I’m beautiful in my own unique way. My daddy is treating me with respect and honor. My daddy has taken time to be silly, and even made a fool of himself, learning how to dance. My daddy really loves me!144 It is in this “father love” that the overarching purpose of the purity ball— namely the protection of a daughter’s virginity—is firmly anchored. It is in this consideration of the critical role of fathers that we reengage with the core gendered trope of Sex Respect—namely that while sexual desire is normal in young men, when expressed by young women it is a signal that something has gone awry. Most importantly, purity balls are based on the assumption, as communicated by LaWanda’s story, that girls who lack positive paternal attention are likely to be led astray by boys who promise them love in exchange for sexual favors. Reflecting her father’s belief that “the identity of our daughters is tied to the father’s heart,” one of Randy Wilson’s daughters explains that “[s]omething I need from dad is affirmation, being told I’m beautiful. .  .  .  If we don’t get it from home, we will go out to the culture and get it from them.”145 It is to prevent this straying into the wider culture of temptation that the purity ball was thus born. As Randy Wilson’s wife Lisa succinctly put it: “If girls feel beautiful and cherished by their fathers, they don’t go looking for love from random guys.”146 In short, by “showing her how a man treats a woman . . . [through] opening the door, shopping with her and fussing over her dress and fussing over her,” a father can prevent his daughter from straying into the wider culture of temptation, thus empowering her to remain abstinent until marriage.147 However, it is clear that paternal affection may not be enough to protect girls from the toxic influence of the broader culture, which, as we have seen, Sex Respect teaches may corrupt their naturally pure instincts. To protect against this, Wilson also encourages fathers to become purity warriors who are ready and able to wage “war” to protect the purity of their daughters. Identifying this as a paternal duty, he explains that their daughters are “desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.”148 Standing as a concrete manifestation of the animating belief that the “purity of the daughter rests on the shoulders of the fathers,” the

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highlight of the evening is the pledge ceremony in which fathers promise to cover their daughters as their “authority and protection in the area of purity.”149 At some balls, a girl is simply expected to bear silent witness to her father’s pledge, while at others, she also signs a pledge promising her father that she will remain pure until she is ready to give herself “as a wedding gift to [her] husband.”150 But What About Boys? Before leaving this topic of purity balls, it is instructive to consider the question that appears on the Generation of Light Web site, namely: “What about Boys?” The fact that this question is posed serves to underscore the obvious, namely, that purity balls are for girls. However, Wilson suggests that fathers also fashion a coming‑of‑age ritual for their sons in order to honor their entry into manhood. Although these “knighthood” ceremonies, as they are often referred to, have not caught on in the way the purity balls have, and appear to be mostly individually organized events within the Evangeli‑ cal community, a brief comparison between these two celebratory rites of passage further illuminates the gendered nature of the abstinence message. In stark contrast to the purity ball’s exclusive focus on sexual purity, the ceremonies for boys serve to mark their passage into the multidimen‑ sional world of manhood. Although manhood is frequently identified with the assumption of a warrior‑like identity, and boys may be presented with a sword as a symbol of their readiness to “stand courageously as mighty Warriors of God,” these events typically also stress the importance of other “masculine” traits, such as endurance, character, and courageous leadership.151 The manhood ceremony typically also involves a commitment to remaining pure. However, in marked distinction to the purity ball, not only is this avowal just one dimension of the celebrant’s emerging adult identity; his commitment to purity is likely to be framed in terms of his duty to protect female virtue. Like his father, as a young man, he too is now considered ready to step into the role of “purity warrior” who will eventu‑ ally be responsible for “defend[ing] his family from the Enemy’s ploys.”152 Preservation of virginity is thus not regarded as the measure of a young man’s intrinsic worth, but rather, represents his ability to master his passions in order to protect the young woman he hopes to marry from defilement. Perhaps most significantly, in crossing over the threshold from boyhood to manhood, young men become the keepers of their persons, including their own sexuality. Charged with the responsibility of controlling their desire, it is now their manly obligation to master their impulses. Their bodies are

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not given over to their fathers for management, but rather are their own to rule over. This, of course, stands in stark contrast to the purity ball, at which a daughter effectively relinquishes her body to her father for safe‑ keeping until such time as she is ready to relinquish her virginity to her husband. Thus, in stark contrast to the knighthood ceremony, rather than signifying her transition into adulthood where she is now entrusted with responsibility for managing her own desires, participation in a purity ball provides a participant with the assurance that her father is now responsible for protecting her from the murky waters of temptation. In keeping with the traditional adage that a picture is worth a thousand words, a photograph on the Generations of Light Web site speaks volumes about the essential differences in these two rites of passage. On the page dedicated to explaining the manhood ceremony, a boy is standing side by side with a man who presumably is his father. Dressed in identical suits, each is standing with his legs astride, his hands in his pockets, and his gaze focused directly at the camera. Off to the side is a picture of a father and daughter at a purity ball. She is wearing a frilly pink prom dress and is being tenderly carried by her father much as one would carry a young child, or perhaps more unsettling, much as a groom might carry his new bride across the threshold. Her arms wrapped around his neck, we do not see her face.

Conclusion Although on the surface federal abstinence laws appear to hold young men and women to the same standard of sexual behavior, as implemented in the classroom, traditional understandings of female sexual purity are invoked in order to accomplish the statutory goal of keeping teens chaste until marriage. There is little room in the abstinence narrative for an authentic expression of female desire; rather, it is read as a signal that something has gone astray, that the naturally innocent body has been corrupted by external forces. In contrast, and again in keeping with long‑standing representations, male desire is presented as a naturally embodied instinct. This approach to sexuality education reinforces the familiar stereotypes that good girls are innately pure, while boys must work hard to suppress their passions. Accordingly, unlike for young women, for whom virginity is regarded as a natural expression of their embodied selves, for young men it is seen as an accomplishment that they can be proud of; moreover, in contrast to their female peers, its loss does not mark them as failed or corrupted by

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modernity. Rooted in these essentialized understandings of youthful sexuality, the underlying abstinence message is that young women are responsible for helping to keep male desire in check. They must monitor what they wear in order to avoid enflaming passions and to ensure that their boyfriends recognize that relationships are not just about sex. These considerations take on added meaning in light of the well‑doc‑ umented ineffectiveness of the abstinence message. For example, one major governmentally supported evaluation study concluded that teens who had participated in a federally funded abstinence‑only program had “similar rates of sexual abstinence” as the control group youth and that the “average age for first sexual intercourse and the number of sexual partners were almost identical for program and control youth.”153 Similarly, a study conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies, concluded that “there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence, or reduces the number of sexual partners,”154 while a third study focusing on virginity pledging concluded that pledging teens are no “less sexually active than closely matched adolescents who do not take pledges.”155 These finding are particularly sobering with respect to their poten‑ tially disproportionate impact on the sexual and reproductive well‑being of young women. First, in light of the fact that federally funded absti‑ nence‑only education programs are prohibited from instructing students on the availability and use of contraceptives, and may actually provide them with “false or misleading information that misstates the effectiveness of various contraceptive methods,”156 teens may well be dissuaded from using condoms or other contraceptives, which puts young women at a greater risk for becoming pregnant—a risk that clearly is not similarly shared by their male partners.157 Secondly, by “lodging sexuality education in fear and shame [and] firmly burying discussions of desire and pleasure”158 the abstinence‑only approach may make it more difficult for young women to communicate their needs and concerns to their partner. Given that many teens already struggle with effective communication, with one study finding that almost 20 percent of young women “perceived that they never have the right to refuse to have sexual intercourse, to ask their partner if he has been examined for STDs or to say when their partner is being too rough,”159 the abstinence approach does not empower young women to manage their sexuality in accordance with their own needs and desires, unless, of course, that choice is to remain abstinent.160 Moreover, given that the study found that this lack of assertiveness was more pronounced in young women of

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color, the abstinence‑only approach may be particularly damaging to their sexual well‑being. The conservative drive for a strict morality‑based approach to sexual education is the book’s final illustration of the ways in which reformers have turned to the law to manage sexual desire during times of height‑ ened anxiety about the sexualized youthful female body. Dating back to the mid‑nineteenth‑century campaign by female moral reformers to make seduction a crime, as we have seen, these efforts have frequently attempted to encode assumptions about the embodied nature of female passionlessness into law. Complicating the picture, however, rather than simply turning to the state to manage or protect the bodies of young women, many activ‑ ists also hoped that the desired reforms would offer adolescent females a degree of control over their physical selves. This push and pull reveals the complexity of the state’s relationship to the sexualized youthful female body as these dualistic impulses have often been contained within a singular statutory scheme. For example, the campaign to raise the age of sexual consent clearly reflected the social purity reformers’ fear that in a rapidly changing world, a young woman might be induced to relinquish her greatest treasure to a designing older man, thus ruining her chances for a stable and happy future. Rooted in the sexual ethos of the time, rather than questioning the assumption that a girl’s future lay in the intact nature of her hymen, they instead asserted that the state had a duty to step in and declare young women legally incapable of consenting to sexual activity. Saturated with prevailing conceptions of female sexual passivity, their campaign elided the possibility that some heterosexual encounters may well have been consensual, thus further reifying the purity ideal. At the same time, however, their turn to the state was a direct chal‑ lenge to the masculinist tilt of a legal code that they argued privileged male desire over the rights of young women to negotiate the path to adulthood free from the unwanted intrusions of designing older men. By insisting that the law redefine sexual overreaching as criminal misconduct, they sought to make the youthful female body off‑limits to the predatory male, thus giving young women greater control over their own bodies at a time when even married women lacked cognizable rights to corporeal integrity due to the law’s refusal to recognize the crime of marital rape or to take spousal abuse seriously except perhaps in the most egregious of circumstances. Similarly reflecting dualistic impulses, as we have seen, the legislative response to the teen pregnancy crisis in the 1970s was animated by the concern that young middle‑class white women were rejecting traditional

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scripts that located sexual intimacy solely within the bounds of heterosexual marriage. Tinged by racialized fears that behavioral patterns long associated with an immoral “other” were no longer safely containable, the urgent call for action sought to restore order in a time of rapid change in sexual and reproductive mores. At the same time, however, the resulting decision to make teens a priority population within the federally funded family plan‑ ning program and to provide them with confidential services offered young women a safe space within which they could make self‑directed decisions regarding their sexual and reproductive bodies. However, when it comes to the federal abstinence mandate, this duality is lacking. Inspired by the belief that the government had no busi‑ ness providing teens with access to confidential family planning services, abstinence‑only proponents sought to upend a legal approach that privileged the need of young women to control their fertility over the historic rights of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. Shorn of any of the liberal or feminist impulses that to varying degrees have influenced the other reforms discussed in this book, proponents of the abstinence‑only approach sought to press the trope of female passionlessness into service in order to restore moral order and reinvest parents with authority over their daughters’ sexual and reproductive decision making. Although the proponents of the abstinence‑only approach have suc‑ cessfully relied upon a particular model of female sexuality to advance their legislative agenda of a strict morals‑based approach to sexual education, this model has begun to fall out of favor in the wake of, as noted above, the growing body of research challenging its effectiveness. Not only have an increasing number of states begun to reject federal abstinence funds, in 2010 Congress approved a new stream of funding for comprehensive sexual education, known as the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PERP). In direct contrast to the strict moral mandate of the federal abstinence policy, PERP‑funded programs must teach about both abstinence and con‑ traception in order to educate students about the prevention of pregnancy and STIs, including HIV/AIDS.161 Although, like Title X, this new legislative approach does not openly embrace youthful sexuality, nonetheless, by recognizing the importance of teaching teens about contraceptives, it implicitly repudiates the ideal of innate female purity that can be harnessed in order to ensure that young people remain chaste until marriage. In PERP we thus see the emergence of a liberal counter‑counternarrative, which, rather than imposing a single standard of morality on teens, seeks to encourage them to take “personal

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responsibility” for their own sexual and reproductive choices. As we turn our gaze to the future, it is clear, as evidenced by these two competing federal approaches to sexual education, that the sexualized youthful female body will remain a contested site of regulatory activity.

Notes

Introduction  1. J. Shoshanna Ehrlich, Who Decides?: The Abortion Rights of Teens (Westport: Praeger, 2006).   2.  Bellotti v. Baird, 443 U.S. 622, 634, and 610 (1979).   3.  This impression was further enhanced by the in‑depth interviews that I conducted with twenty‑six teens in Massachusetts who had successfully obtained court consent for an abortion. For detail, see: Ehrlich, Who Decides?, ch. 4–6.   4.  H. L. v. Matheson, 450 U.S. 398, 413 (1981). This pro‑natalist theme first emerged in the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in the context of decisions upholding the banning of public funds for abortion on the grounds that it was not impermissible for the government to “protect the potential life of the fetus” by injecting skewed financial incentives into the decision‑making process. See, Maher v. Roe, 432 U.S. 464, 479–480 (1977).   5.  Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 900–901 (1992). In Casey, the Supreme Court extended the reach of this pro‑natalist tilt into its general abortion jurisprudence. Although it affirmed its prior decision in Roe v. Wade that women have a constitutionally protected right to abortion, the Court nonetheless concluded that states may enact laws that are designed to promote their interest in potential life from the outset of pregnancy so long as they do not impose an undue burden on the abortion right. Casey, 505 U.S. at 873–79.   6.  Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 497 U.S. 502, 521 (1990).   7.  Christopher Trenholm et al., Final Report, Impacts of Four Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education Programs, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., April 2007, Executive Summary, 60.  8. In addition to Who Decides?, the book Girls on the Stand: How Courts Fail Pregnant Teens (New York: New York University Press, 2009), by Helena Silverstein, also focuses on the abortion rights of young women, with a particular emphasis on the shortcomings of the court bypass process.

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Chapter 1. Predatory Men and Virtuous Maidens   1.  For a detailed discussion of this campaign, including an analysis of why the AFMRS may have chosen this particular historical moment to inaugurate their petition drive, see: Daniel S. Wright, “The First of Causes to our Sex:” The Female Moral Reform Movement in the Antebellum Northeast, 1834–1848 (New York: Routledge, 2006), ch. 6.  Historians disagree about the extent to which the female moral reform movement contributed to the birth of the nineteenth‑century woman’s rights movement. Some historians, such as Ellen Dubois, locate the origins of the woman’s movement in abolitionism, which she credits with giving reformers “a way to escape clerical authority, an egalitarian ideology, and a theory of social change, all of which permitted the leaders to transform the insights into the oppression of women which they shared with many of their contemporaries into the beginnings of the women’s rights movement.” Ellen Carol Dubois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1969 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 32.  Other historians, including Carroll Smith‑Rosenberg and Barbara Berg, maintain that the female moral reform movement, with its expanded notion of female influence and its critique of male sexual behavior, was an important contributing factor in the emergence of this first wave of feminist activity. See, Carroll Smith‑Rosenberg, “Beauty, the Beast, and the Militant Woman: A Case Study in Sex Roles and Social Stress in Jacksonian America,” American Quarterly 23, no. 4 (1971): 562–84; and Barbara J. Berg, The Remembered Gates: Origins of American Feminism 1800–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978).  2. “An Appeal to Legislators and their Constituents,” Advocate of Moral Reform 10, no. 20 (1844): 155.   3.  Elizabeth Twaddell, “The American Tract Society, 1814–1860,” Church History 15, no. 2 (1946): 121, quoting: Article 1, Constitution of the American Tract Society, Address of the Executive Committee, 23.  4. George E. Connor, “The Awakening of Edward Bellamy: Looking Backward at Religious Influence,” Utopian Studies 11, no. 1 (2000): 44, quoting Charles Grandison Finney, one of the most influential orators of the Second Great Awakening. The Second Great Awakening is associated with postmillennial thought, which conceives of the millennium “as a new golden age in history which will prepare the way for Christ’s coming.” David E. Smith “Millenarian Scholarship in America,” American Quarterly 17, No 3 (1965): 539. This contrasts with premillennial thought according to which the thousand years of peace will not be ushered in until Christ’s return to earth—an eventuality that will be heralded by “fiery and cataclysmic events.” Ibid., 538–39.  5. Whitney R. Cross, The Burned‑Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850 (New York: Harper and Row, 1981), 55. See also, Smith‑Rosenberg, “Beauty, the Beast, and the Militant Woman,” 565, 567–68.

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 6. Larry Whitaker, Seduction, Prostitution, and Moral Reform in New York, 1830–1860 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1997), 53. For a detailed study of the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, see: Lu Ann De Cunzo, “Reform, Respite, Ritual: Perspectives on the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1800–1850,” Historical Archeology 29, no 3 (1995) (Special Issue); and Lu Ann De Cunzo, “On Reforming the ‘Fallen’ and Beyond: Transforming Continuity at the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1845–1916,” International Journal of Historical Archeology 5, no. 1 (2001): 19–43.  7. Whitaker, Seduction, Prostitution, and Moral Reform, 53–58.   8.  Ibid., 3–7, 24–25.   9.  Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825–1880 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992), 88. 10. William Sanger, History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects Throughout the World (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1858), 29–30. 11. Whitaker, Seduction, Prostitution, and Moral Reform, 27. See also Mary Ryan’s detailed treatment of what she refers to as the “gendered geography of the nineteenth century city.” Ryan, Women in Public, 88. 12. Claudia D. Johnson, “That Guilty Third Tier: Prostitution in Nineteenth‑Century American Theaters,” American Quarterly 27, no. 5 (1975): 577 (Special issue on Victorian Culture in America). According to Johnson, the “assignment of prostitutes to one part of the theatrical house had a profound impact on theater design, on theatrical economics, and on the extent to which theater was accepted and supported in the nineteenth century.” Ibid., 575. 13. Ibid., 577. 14. Rodney Hessinger, Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn: Visions of Youth in Middle‑Class America, 1780–1850 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 154–55. 15. Whitaker, Seduction, Prostitution, and Moral Reform, 32–33, 89–91. 16.  Nancy Cott, “Passionlessness: An Interpretation of Victorian Sexual Ideology, 1790–1850,” Signs 4, no. 2 (1978): 225–28. It is important to recognize that the ideal of female passionlessness was not extended to black women, particularly those in bondage, who continued to be regarded as innately lascivious. See Deborah G. White, Ar’n’t I a Woman:? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). 17.  Cott, “Passionlessness,” 233. 18.  Rosenberg, “Beauty, the Beast and the Militant Woman,” 565. Internal tensions, particularly over what type of religious instruction the inmates of the asylum were to receive, also contributed to the collapse of the society. See, Whitaker, Seduction, Prostitution, and Moral Reform, 59. 19. Wright, “The First of Causes to Our Sex,” 15–17, quoting from the Conclusion of the New York Magdalen Society’s First Annual Report, which was reprinted in the New York Evangelist, July 16, 1831, 74. 20. Based upon her study of the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, Lu Ann De Cunzo concludes that the apparent lack of interest that the prostitutes

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in residence showed in their own salvation stemmed from the fact that “most of Philadelphia’s fallen women rejected the Society’s views of their moral status and needs.” De Cunzo, “On Reforming the ‘Fallen’ and Beyond,” 25. As she explains, “They made clear their belief that they were not morally degraded or polluted as a result of their sexual activity” and while “some sought to return to the ‘paths of virtue’ most used the Asylum for other purposes,” such as for a brief respite from the cold and hunger of life in the streets. Ibid. 21.  Regarding the society’s origins and its subsequent growth, with a particular focus on the spread of rural auxiliaries, see generally: Wright, “The First of Causes to Our Sex,” ch. 3. Shortly, after the establishment of the New York Society, women in Boston founded the Boston Female Moral Reform Society. As its base of support expanded beyond the city, it changed its name to the New England Female Moral Reform Society. For detail, see: Flora L. Northrup, The Record of a Century, 1834–1894, (New York: American Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless, 1934). 22.  Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787, Paris. Available on line at: http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=306. 23. “The Fatal Maelstrom for Young Men,” Friend of Virtue 10, no. 14 (1847): 69. 24.  “Immoralities of Cities,” Friend of Virtue 10, no. 14 (1847): 212–13. 25. The Advocate of Moral Reform was published by the AFMRS and the Friend of Virtue was published by the New England Female Moral Reform Society. 26.  “Extract from a Sermon,” preached by Reverend E. N. Kirk in Islington Chapel, London, Advocate of Moral Reform 7, no. 12 (1841): 89. 27.  Address of Ministers of Boston to their Fellow Citizens, Friends of Virtue 11, no. 9 (1848): 133. 28.  “Beware of Strangers,” Advocate of Moral Reform 12, no. 10 (1846): 74–75. 29.  “Young Men in Cities,” Friend of Virtue 11, no. 1 (1848), 14. 30. Ibid. 31.  “Execution of Potter,” Advocate of Moral Reform 12, no. 16 (1846): 125. 32.  “Young Men in Cities,” Friend of Virtue, 14. 33. “Beauty, Flattery, and Vice,” Friend of Virtue 9, no. 11 (1846):167. Grounded in a vision of a simpler and more harmonious past, female moral reformers were not the only ones to express a longing for an idealized and more tranquil rural existence. Giving voice to these longings, prominent writers, including Emerson and Thoreau, wrote of the pain of the “sense of a violent break with the past” and the disconnection from “the recent past all at once a green colonial memory.” Leo Marx, “The Machine in the Garden,” The New England Quarterly 29, no. 1 (1956): 30–31. 34. “Minutes of the Semi‑Annual Meeting of the AFMRS,” Advocate of Moral Reform 10, no. 20 (1844): 158. 35. Sarah M. Grimke, Letter VIII—“On the Condition of Women in the United States,” in Letters on the Equality of the Sexes, (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838), 278.

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36. Karen Sánchez‑Eppler, “Bodily Bonds: The Intersecting Rhetorics of Feminism and Abolition,” Representations 24, Special Issue: America Reconstructed, 1840–1940 (1988): 32. 37.  See, Ronald G. Walters, “The Erotic South: Civilization and Sexuality in American Abolitionism,” American Quarterly 25, no. 2 (1973): 192–93; and Sánchez‑Eppler, “Bodily Bonds,” 29. The author also gratefully acknowledges Daniel Wright’s having brought to her attention the fact that many of the New York and Boston female moral reformers were also active in the abolitionist movement, and were thus engaged on multiple fronts. Personal correspondence with Mr. Wright on December 13, 2007. 38. White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, 29. 39.  Walters, “The Erotic South,” 182–83. See also, White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, 44–45. 40.  Sarah M. Grimke, “On the Condition of Women in the United States,” 278–79. 41.  Walters, “The Erotic South,” 181, discussing the views of Louisa J. Barker, Influence of Slavery Upon the White Population, (New York: American Anti‑Slavery Society, 1855–56), 6. 42.  Ibid., 182, quoting George Bourne, Slavery Illustrated in Its Effects Upon Women and Domestic Society (Boston: Knapp, 1837), 71. 43. See, Nicole Rousseau, Black Woman’s Burden: Commodifying Black Reproduction (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 72–73; and Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow, 2007), 46–47. 44.  Sánchez‑Eppler, “Bodily Bonds,” 33–34. 45. “Annual Report” Ninth Anniversary of the N.E.F.M.R. Society, Friend of Virtue 10, no. 13 (1847): 193. 46.  “Extracts from a Lecture on the Subject of Moral Reform,” Advocate of Moral Reform 4, no. 14 (1838): 106. 47. Ibid. 48.  “Reply to a Correspondent” Friend of Virtue 9, no. 22 (1846): 346. 49.  “Woman the Tempter,” A Speech by Edward Sanford, Esq. on the trial of Amelia Norman, Advocate of Moral Reform 10, no. 5 (1844): 34. Ms. Norman was acquitted of the charge that she had murdered the man who had seduced her. Cast as the sentimental victim of a heartless villain, this case helped to advance the cause of moral reform. For further discussion, see: See, John T. Parry and Andrea L. Hibbard, “Law, Seduction and the Sentimental Hero: The Case of Amelia Norman,” American Literature 78, no. 2 (2006): 325–55. 50. Hessinger, Seduced, Abandoned, and Reborn, 152–55, quoting David Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 216. For further detail on the rake culture, including a discussion of strategies that male reformers adopted for controlling unbridled sensuality, such as advice manuals warning of the

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dangers of masturbation, see Hessinger, particularly chapters 5 and 6, and Caroll Smith‑Rosenberg, “Sex as Symbol in Victorian Purity: An Ethnohistorical Analysis of Jacksonian America,” The Journal of Sociology, Supplement: Turning Points: Historical and Sociological Essays on the Family 84 (1978): S212–47. 51.  “Seduced and Betrayed,” Advocate of Moral Reform 12, no. 13 (1846): 99. Note that in this story, not even the young woman’s parents are able to protect her from the depraved Mr. Everett. 52.  Ibid., 99–100. 53.  “Woman the Tempter,” Advocate of Moral Reform 10, no. 5 (1844), 33. 54. “An Address delivered on behalf of the Hamilton F.M.R. Society,” by Rev. Mr. Sheldon, Advocate of Moral Reform 12, no. 3 (1846): 18. 55. Ibid. 56.  Mary P. Ryan, “The Power of Women’s Networks: A Case Study of Female Moral Reform in Antebellum America,” Feminist Studies 5, no. 1 (1979): 73. Ryan also argues that this effort “helped to lay the groundwork for the Victorian sexual code which placed particular stock in the purity of females.” Ibid. 57.  “Annual Meeting of the N.Y.F.M.R.S.,” Advocate of Moral Reform 7, no. 11 (1841): 85. 58.  Charles G. Finney, “Letters to Parents, no. 6,” Advocate of Moral Reform 7, no. 1 (1841): 4. 59. Ibid. 60. “Confectionary,” Friend of Virtue 11, no. 10 (1848): 154. See also, “The Sources of Licentiousness,” Advocate of Moral Reform 10, no. 20 (1844): 163. The author gratefully acknowledges the insightful comment of April P. Haynes that this argument reflects the influence of health reformer Sylvester Graham on the female moral reformers. This point is discussed in her PhD dissertation “Riotous Flesh, Gender, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice, 1830–1860” (PhD dissertation University of California: Santa Barbara, 2009). Personal correspondence with Ms. Haynes on November 19, 2009. 61. “The Sources of Licentiousness,” Advocate of Moral Reform 10, no. 20 (1844): 163. 62. Ibid. 63.  “Annual Report,” Ninth Anniversary of the N.E. F. M.R. Society, Friend of Virtue, 10, no. 13 (1847): 203. See also, “The Fatal Effects of Novel Reading,” Advocate of Moral Reform 6, no. 3 (1840): 19. 64.  “Moral Insanity Caused by Novel‑Reading,” Friend of Virtue 10, no. 14 (1847): 236; emphasis in original. 65.  “What Is the Tendency of Moral Reform Efforts?” Friend of Virtue 9, no. 18 (1846): 281–82. For more on this approach to childrearing, see chapter 2 in Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: The Making of American Social Policy against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 66.  “To Parents,” Advocate of Moral Reform 7, no. 1 (1841): 50. 67.  “A Young Man Saved by His Mother’s Fidelity” Friend of Virtue 9, no. 4 (1846): 58.

Notes to Chapter 1

33.

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68. “A Mother’s Influence,” Advocate of Moral Reform 12, no. 5 (1846):

69. “The Prisoner’s Address to his Mother,” Advocate of Moral Reform 12, no. 5 (1841): 40. 70. “Why Do You Publish Names?” Advocate of Moral Reform 5, no. 3 (1839): 20. 71.  “Sin is a Reproach,” Advocate of Moral Reform 4, no. 5 (1838): 37. 72.  “Mark the Man!” Advocate of Moral Reform 4, no. 20 (1838): 154. 73.  “Why Do You Publish Names?,” 20. 74.  As discussed in chapter 2, this theme also permeated the effort by Social Purity Reformers to raise the age of sexual consent. 75. “Appropriate Duties of Auxiliaries,” Friend of Virtue 9, no. 21 (1846): 329. See also, “One Reason for the Decline of Moral Reform Societies,” Advocate of Moral Reform 7, no. 18 (1841): 141. 76. “An Address Delivered on behalf of the Hamilton F.M.R Society,” by Rev. Mr. Sheldon, Advocate of Moral Reform 12, no. 3 (1846): 18. 77.  “To Young Ladies,” Advocate of Moral Reform 4, no. 3 (1838): 17. 78. Wright, “The First of Causes to Our Sex,” 127. According to Wright, the call by reformers for an end to unsupervised late night socializing between young men and women was likewise intended to give young women “greater agency in the courtship process.” Ibid., 141. 79.  “To Young Ladies,” The Advocate of Moral Reform, 17. 80. Ibid. 81.  “Extracts from a Lecture on Moral Reform,” The Advocate of Moral Reform 14, no. 4 (1838): 106. 82.  See generally Cott, “Passionlessness.” 83. In similar fashion, female abolitionists also began pushing against the boundaries of what was considered to be acceptable female activity during the course of the 1830s. See generally, Dubois Feminism and Suffrage. 84. “A Word in Season. Who Is Circulating Petitions?” Advocate of Moral Reform 5, no. 22 (1839): 173. 85.  “Petitions! Petitions!”: 189. 86.  “A Word in Season. Who Is Circulating Petitions?,” 173. 87.  Anne M. Boylan, “Women and Politics in the Era before Seneca Falls,” Journal of the Early Republic 10, no. 3 (1990): 363–82. 88.  “Annual Meeting of the N.Y.F.M.R. Society,” Advocate of Moral Reform 5, no. 11 (1839): 85. Regarding this deferential approach, see generally Boylan, “Women and Politics.” 89. “An Appeal to Legislators and Their Constituents,” Advocate of Moral Reform 10, no. 20 (1844): 155. 90. Wright, “The First of Causes to Our Sex,” 149–50. 91.  “Minutes of the Third Semi‑Annual Meeting of the A.F.M.R Society,” Advocate of Moral Reform 7, no. 20 (1841): 156.

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 92. “Abstract of Annual Reports,” Advocate of Moral Reform 6, no. 16 (1840): 127.   93.  Boylan, “Women and Politics,” 379.  94. “Who Has ‘a Mind to Work?’” Advocate for Moral Reform 7, no. 22 (1841): 173; emphasis in original.   95.  “Defective State of the Laws for the Protection of Women,” reprinted from the London Female’s Friend in the Advocate for Moral Reform 12, no. 19 (1846): 146.  96. “Petitions for ‘Moral Reform,”” Advocate of Moral Reform 6, no. 8 (1845): 59. This quote is from a sarcastic article deriding the moral reform cause, which was published in the Advocate without any explanatory text or attribution of authorship. Although the language and tone suggests that it may well have been penned by a hostile lawmaker, this cannot be determined with certainty.  97. “Something Singular,” Advocate of Moral Reform 6, no. 5 (1840): 34.   98.  “A Word in Season, Who Is Circulating Petitions?” Advocate of Moral Reform 5, no. 22 (1839): 173.   99.  “The Legal Protection of the Sentiments and Affections,” Extracts from a Lecture delivered before the Mechanics’ Institute of New York, by E. P. Hurlbut, Esq., Advocate of Moral Reform 7, no. 8 (1841): 58. 100. Ibid. 101.  “Legislation on Licentiousness” Friend of Virtue 9, no. 1 (1846): 3–4. This quote is from an article that was originally published in the New York Observer, and was reprinted in the Friend of Virtue in the hope that it would “induce those engaged in circulating petitions to double their diligence.” Ibid., 3. 102. “Something Singular,” Advocate of Moral Reform 6, no. 5 (1840): 34; emphasis added. 103. Ibid. 104.  Jane E. Larson, “ ‘Women Understand So Little, They Call My Good Nature Deceit.”” A Feminist Rethinking of Seduction,” Columbia Law Review 93 (1993): 383. For details on the development of this tort, see: M. B. W. Sinclair, “Seduction and the Myth of the Ideal Woman,” Law and Inequality 5 (1987): 33–102; and Stephen Robertson, “Seduction, Sexual Violence, and Marriage in New York City, 1886–1955,” Law and History Review 24 (2006): 331–74. 105.  In the second half of the nineteenth century, as states sought to codify their laws in order to bring order and rationality to the legal system, many enacted seduction statutes that eliminated the services requirement and extended the right of action to young women themselves. Sinclair, “Seduction and the Myth of the Ideal Woman,” 61–64. 106.  Kendrick v. McCarey, 11 Ga. 603, 606 (Ga. 1852). 107. “Petitions to the Legislature of the State of New York,” Advocate of Moral Reform 5, no. 20 (1839): 159. 108. “An Appeal to Legislators and their Constituents,” Advocate of Moral Reform 10, no. 20 (1844): 155. 109. “The Punishment Due to the Seducer,” Advocate of Moral Reform 12, no. 14 (1846): 112.

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110.  “Opinions of the Press,” Advocate of Moral Reform 10, no. 11 (1844): 110. 111. “Petitions,” Advocate of Moral Reform 11, no. 9 (1845): 37. 112. “A Response”—this was a letter sent in to the Advocate in reaction to Hurlbut’s article on the “Legal Protection of Sentiments and Affections,” by a reader who signed herself “A Wife and Sister,” Advocate of Moral Reform 7, no. 11 (1841): 87. 113.  “The Legal Protections of the Sentiments and Affections,” 58. 114.  “Law and Morality,” Advocate of Moral Reform 5, no. 7 (1839): 51. 115. Ibid. 116.  “Consistency of Law,” Advocate of Moral Reform 12, no. 2 (1844): 11. 117.  “Report of the Committee of the Judiciary,” Advocate of Moral Reform 6, no. 10 (1840): 78. 118. Ibid. 119. “An Appeal to Legislators and their Constituents,” Advocate of Moral Reform 10, no. 20 (1844): 165; emphasis added. 120. Ibid. 121. Laws of New York, Chapter 111 (1848). The legislature also enacted a companion anti‑abduction law, which made it a crime to “inveigle, entice, or take away any unmarried female of previous chaste character under the age of twenty‑five years, for the purpose of prostitution.” Laws of New York, Chapter 105 (1848). For details on the legislative process, see: Wright, “The First of Causes to Our Sex,” ch. 6. 122. For an analysis of seduction prosecutions, see: Stephen Robertson, “Seduction, Sexual Violence, and Marriage in New York City, 1886–1955,” Law and History Review 24 (2006): 331–74; and Brian Donovan, “Gender Inequality and Criminal Seduction: Prosecuting Sexual Coercion in the Early 20th Century,” Law and Social Inequality 30 (2005) 61–86.   Starting in the 1930s, many states, including New York, enacted “anti–heart balm” statutes that repealed seduction laws and eliminated other measures that were similarly intended to redress sexual and romantic betrayal, such as suits for a breach of the promise to marry. 123. Wright, “The First of Causes to Our Sex,” 153–54. For detail on these trials, see: David Anthony, “The Helen Jewett Panic: Tabloids, Men, and the Sensational Public Sphere in Antebellum New York,” American Literature 69, no. 3 (1997): 487–514. 124. Wright, “The First of Causes to Our Sex,” 165. 125.  Ibid., 167.

Chapter 2. Protecting Her Most Prized Possession  1. Wright, “The First of Causes to Our Sex,” 165–70.   2.  Josephine E. Butler, “The New Abolitionist Movement,” The Philanthropist 8, no. 7 (1893): 7.

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 3. “The Social Purity Movement in Europe,” The Philanthropist 1, no. 8 (1886): 4.  4. “Unprotected Girlhood,” The Philanthropist 1, no. 12 (1886): 4.  5. Sanger, History of Prostitution, 18.  6. Ibid., 19–20.   7.  John C. Burnham, “Medical Inspection of Prostitutes in America in the Nineteenth Century: The St. Louis Experiment and Its Sequel,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 45, no. 3 (1971): 205.   8.  According to Burnham, the maxim quoted above in the section title— “One Night with Venus and a Lifetime with Mercury”—reflects an early awareness dating back to at least the sixteenth century that syphilis was both “contagious and venereal in nature.” Ibid., 203.   9.  S. D. Gross, “Syphilis in Its Relation to the National Health,” Address in Surgery, delivered before the American Medical Association at its meeting in Detroit, June 3, 1874, Transactions of the American Medical Society 25 (1874): 249. 10.  Ibid., 279–81. 11.  Ibid., 280. 12. J. Marion Sims, “Anniversary Address before the American Medical Association,” Medical And Surgical Reporter 35, no. 3 (1876): 45. 13.  Ibid., 45. 14.  Ibid., 47. 15.  G. B. H. Swayze, “Shall the Spread of Syphilitic Poison be Prevented?” Medical and Surgical Reporter 37, no. 15 (1877): 282. See also J. William White, “The Prevention of Syphilis: An Address Prepared at the Request of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and Read Before it December 14, 1881,” Philadelphia Medical Times 12, no. 8 (1882): 233. 16. Gross, Syphilis in Relationship to the National Health, 282. 17.  Ibid., 283–84. 18.  The author would like to acknowledge the important influence of Kristen Luker’s book, Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) on her thinking about the medical campaign to regulate prostitution. In particular, Luker’s discussion of how doctors carved out a professional realm of expertise on the subject of abortion offered a useful lens through which to identify critical themes in the medical campaign to regulate prostitution. 19.  A system of public registration and inspection of prostitutes, known as reglementation, had been in effect in Paris since the start of the century, when officials who were invested in cleaning up the city “extended their concern to troublesome individuals as well.” Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in 19th Century France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), xv. 20.  Burnham, “Medical Inspection of Prostitutes,” 206, quoting Dr. William L. Barrett in the St. Louis Board of Health 3rd Annual Report (1870), 29–32. For other less well‑known municipal experiments with the regulation of prostitutes, see Neil Larry Shumsky, “Tacit Acceptance: Respectable Americans and Segregated Prostitution, 1870–1910,” Journal of Social History 19, no. 4 (1986): 665–79; and

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Ruth Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution 1900–1918 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1982). Although the physicians’ campaign for the municipal regulation of prostitution was largely unsuccessful, according to Burnham, de facto regulation was not an uncommon phenomenon. As he explains, it was not unusual for “enterprising persons engaged in the prostitution business . . . to have the girls and women in their charge inspected regularly by a physician, simply as a matter of public relations and good business.” Burnham, “Medical Inspection of Prostitutes,” 204, note 4. He also writes that the police in some cities “enforced an unofficial or unrecognized reglementation, usually by threatening to arrest prostitutes who refused to take medical treatment.” Ibid.   In addition, during the Civil War, military officials in Nashville and a few other locales promulgated rules mandating the medical examination of prostitutes who serviced the soldiers, in order to protect the men from venereal infection. See R. Percy Crandall, MD, “Venereal Disease in the Navy and Its Prevention,” Medical News 70, no. 24 (1897): 781. Some private industries also apparently implemented their own regulation schemes. For example, in 1899, the Minnesota Iron Company implemented a system for the inspection of prostitutes who worked in parlors on company property. Lawrence O. Gostin and James G Hodge Jr., “Piercing the Veil of Secrecy in HIV/AIDS and Other Sexually Transmitted Diseases: Theories of Privacy and Disclosure in Partner Notification,” Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy 5 (2002): 19. 21.  Burnham, “Medical Inspection of Prostitutes,” 211. 22.  Sims, “Anniversary Address,” 47. 23.  Burnham, “Medical Inspection of Prostitutes,” 211. 24.  Mary Sponberg, Feminizing Venereal Disease: The Body of the Prostitute in Nineteenth‑Century Medical Discourse (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 3. According to Sponberg, the discovery in the early 1800s that gonorrhea could remain asymptomatic in women further served to reinforce the idea that “women’s bodies were a pathological terrain” rife with hidden dangers. Ibid., 5. 25.  Ibid., 45. 26.  Gross, “Syphilis in Its Relation to the National Health,” 284. 27. Ibid. 28.  White, “The Prevention of Syphilis,” 229. 29. Swazy, “Shall the Spread of Syphilitic Poison Be Prevented?”: 284; emphasis added. 30. William Parker, MD, John O. Stone, MD, James Crane, MD, “The Social Evil: The Extent of Prostitution and Its Consequences in New York City. Proposed Legal Measures to Mitigate Its Evils,” Chicago Medical Examiner 8, no. 3 (1867): 142; emphasis added. 31. Sponberg, Feminizing Venereal Disease, 45. 32. Swazy, “Shall the Spread of Syphilitic Poison Be Prevented?” 284. 33. Espousing a highly engaged and dynamic approach to raising children, moral education societies came into being in the years after the Civil War as “the lineal heirs to both early feminist and popular health reformers’ interest

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in child‑rearing.” David Pivar, Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control 1868–1900 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1973), 79. 34.  Dr. Rebecca C. Hallowell, “A Medical Voice for Purity,” The Philanthropist 3, no. 10 (1888): 2. Unlike in England, where purity forces coalesced under the direction of the Social Purity Alliance as early as 1883, in the United States, the movement lacked a cohesive national structure until the formation of the National Purity Alliance in 1895. For details on the organizational development and ideology of the social purity movement, see generally Pivar, Purity Crusade. 35. In doing so, they drew upon slogans such as that quoted in the above‑section title which stressed the moral righteousness of their position. Anna Rice Powell, “The International Federation for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice” The Philanthropist 3, no. 6 (1888): 2. 36.  Hallowell, “A Medical Voice for Purity,” 2. 37. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, “Cruelty and Lust—Appeal to Women,” The Philanthropist 6, no. 12 (1891): 1. 38.  Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, “Rescue Work in Relation to Prostitution and Disease,” The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health 75, no. 1 (1882): 38. 39.  Ibid., 39; and Blackwell, “Cruelty and Lust,” 1. 40.  Hallowell, “A Medical Voice for Purity,” 2. 41.  “The Social Evil,” Scribner’s Monthly 12, no. 4 (1876): 591. 42.  Blackwell, “Cruelty and Lust,” 1. 43. Blackwell, “Rescue Work,” 40; emphasis in original. 44.  “Address by Ex‑Judge Noah Davis upon Legal Restraint for Vicious Men and Women,” The Philanthropist 10, no. 3 (1895): 5–6. 45.  “The Social Evil,” 592. See also, Reverend Antoinette Brown Blackwell, “Immorality of the Regulation System,” The Philanthropist 11, no. 5 (1896): 2–3. 46.  Blackwell, “Immorality of the Regulation System,” 3. 47.  As quoted in a review of “The Purchase of Women,” The Philanthropist 2, no. 3 (1887): 4. 48.  Powell, “International Federation,” 1. 49.  “The Old Year and the New,” The Philanthropist 3, no. 1 (1888): 4. 50.  Francis E. Willard, “Social Purity: The Latest and Greatest Campaign,” The Philanthropist 1, no. 6 (1886): 2. 51. “Annual Meeting of the American Purity Alliance,” The Philanthropist 19, no. 1 (1904): 1. 52.  “An Insulting Proposal,” Outlook 31, no. 11 (1893): 324. Reformers also challenged the efficacy of regulation, asserting that by encouraging licentiousness, regulation actually contributed to the spread of disease. See Aaron M. Powell, “State and Municipal Regulation of Prostitution,” A Paper Read before the Section on Public Health of the New York Academy of Medicine, The Philanthropist 9, no. 4 (1894): 3, referencing the work of Dr. Edmund Andrews, one of the first doctors to speak out in opposition to regulation. 53. Powell, “State and Municipal Regulation of Prostitution,” 2, quoting Reverend Gladstone, whom he refers to as the “Grand Old Man” of the British anti‑regulation movement.

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54.  Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, “Rescue Work,” 40. 55. Ibid. 56. Keith Thomas, “The Double Standard,” Journal of the History of Ideas 20, no. 2 (1959): 195. 57. Pivar, Purity Crusade, 88–92; see also John C. Burnham, “Medical Inspection of Prostitutes,” 217–18. 58. “The Changing Views of Medical Men,” The Philanthropist 19, no. 2 (1904): 4. Regarding the founding of the American Hygiene Association, see Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), ch. 2. 59. Alan Hunt, Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 77. 60. Ibid. 61.  Pall Mall Gazette, July 6 (1885): 12. 62.  Ibid., 5. 63.  For further details on the “Maiden Tribute” series and Stead’s involvement in the “purchase” of this young girl and his subsequent trial on abduction charges, see: Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late‑Victorian London (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 64. For additional discussion on the British experience, in addition to Walkowitz, see Deborah Gorham, “‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon’ Re‑Examined: Child Prostitution and the Idea of Childhood in Late‑Victorian England,” Victorian Studies 21, no. 3 (1978): 353–79. 65. Georgia Mark, “The Age of Consent,” The Union Signal 11, no. 46 (1885): 4. 66.  “First Decade Meeting and Subscription Anniversary,” The Philanthropist 1, no. 2 (1886): 4. According to Georgia Mark, this age was based on English common law, although she notes that during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, England raised the age from ten to twelve, and “during the present reign” had raised the age to thirteen. Mark, “The Age of Consent,” 4. 67.  “Legal Protection for Young Girls,” The Philanthropist 1, no. 1 (1886): 4. 68. Mark, “The Age of Consent,” 5. Lothario is the name of a heartless seducer in the early‑eighteenth‑century play The Penitent, by Nicholas Page. 69.  Address by Dr. Emily Blackwell, The Philanthropist 1, no. 3 (1886): 7. 70. Powell, “State and Municipal Regulation of Prostitution,” 3, quoting Gladstone. 71.  “Editorial Notes,” The Arena 15 (February 1891): 376. 72. “The Philanthropist,” The Philanthropist 1, no. 2 (1886): 8; emphasis added. 73.  Ibid., 382. 74.  Mark, “The Age of Consent,” 5. 75.  “The Age of Consent,” The Union Signal 11, no. 46 (1885): 2. 76. Frances E. Willard, “Arousing the Public Conscience,” in Helen H. Gardener, “The Shame of America—Editorial Notes: The Age of Consent,” Arena 3, no. 15 (1891): 382.

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77.  Emily Blackwell, “Another Physician Speaks,” in “The Shame of America,” 213; and Gardener, “What Shall the Age of Consent Be?” in ibid., 195. 78.  Willard, “Arousing the Public Conscience,” in ibid., 197. 79. “Congress and Girlhood,” The Philanthropist 2, no. 11 (1877): 4. For further detail on the legislative campaign in the District of Columbia, see Jane E. Larson, “‘Even a Worm Will Turn at Last:’ Rape Reform in Late NineteenthCentury America,” Yale Journal of Law and Humanity 9 (1997): 1–72. 80.  “The Responsibilities of Men,” The Philanthropist 1, no. 5 (1886): 4. 81. Ibid. 82.  “Congress and Girlhood,” 4. 83. Mary Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995): 26–30. 84. Peter W. Bardaglio, Reconstructing the Household: Families, Sex, and the Law in the Nineteenth‑Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 212–13. 85.  Ibid., 213. 86.  For further details on the antilynching movement, including the failure of white purity reformers to respond to this crisis, see Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 29–30. Regarding the role of African American women in the antilynching movement, see: Mary Jane Brown, Eradicating this Evil: Women in the Anti‑Lynching Movement, 1892–1940 (New York: Routledge, 2000); Ida B. Wells and Jacqueline Jones Royster, eds., Southern Horror and Other Writings: The Anti‑Lynching Campaign of Ida B Wells, 1892–1900 (New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 1996). 87.  “‘Age of Consent’ Legislation,” The Philanthropist 2, no. 4 (1887): 1. 88.  Aaron M. Powell, “History of Recent Years, and Present Status of Age of Consent Laws,” in “The Shame of America,” 194. 89.  According to Odem, although the fervor of the age‑of‑consent campaign peaked by the turn of the century, “reformers continued their efforts in many states well into the twentieth century.” As a result, by 1920, the clear majority of states had raised the age of sexual consent to sixteen or eighteen years. Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 36–37. 90. Works that emphasize the protective nature of the campaign include: Larson, “‘Even a Worm Will Turn at Last,’” 1–72; and Stephen Robertson, “Age of Consent Law and the Making of Modern Childhood in New York City, 1886– 1921,” Journal of Social History 35, no. 4 (2002): 781–98. Works that emphasize the repressive nature of the campaign include Odem, Delinquent Daughters; and Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight. Deborah Gorham also discusses the repressive nature of the campaign; however, her primary critique is that its focus on sexual exploitation allowed middle‑class reformers to ignore the fact that the “causes of juvenile prostitution were to be found in an exploitative economic structure” of which they were an integral component. Gorham, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon Re‑Examined,” 355–57, 372–79. 91.  Marks, “Age of Consent,” 4–5.

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 92. Helen H. Gardener, “A Battle for Sound Morality, or the History of Recent Age-of Consent Laws,” Part 1, Arena 13, no. 3 (1895): 354.   93.  Brief of Dr. George W. Brush, on “Bill Increasing Age of Consent to Eighteen Years in New York,” in “A Battle for Sound Morality,” Part I, 358.   94.  Carrie Clyde Holly, “‘Age of Consent’ in Colorado,” in Gardener, “A Battle for Sound Morality,” Part II, 6.   95.  Gardener, “A Battle for Sound Morality,” Part 1, 355–56.  96. Gardener, “What Shall the Age of Consent Be?” in “The Shame of America,” 196.   97.  “Legal Protection for Young Girls,” 5.   98.  Francis E. Willard, “Arousing the Public Consciousness,” in “The Shame of America,” 197.   99.  Brief of Dr. George W. Brush, on “Bill Increasing Age of Consent to Eighteen Years in New York,” in “A Battle for Sound Morality,” Part I, 358. 100. Emily Blackwell, “Another Physician Speaks,” in “The Shame of America,” 211. 101.  Dr. Emily Blackwell, “Address,” The Philanthropist, 1, no. 3 (1886); 8. 102. Willard, “Arousing the Public Consciousness,” in “The Shame of America,” 197. 103.  Aaron M. Powell, “History of Recent Years, and Present Status of Age of Consent Laws,” in “The Shame of America,” 194. 104.  Vie H. Campbell (President, Wisconsin, W.C.T.U), “Why an Age of Consent?” in “The Age of Consent: A Symposium,” 286. 105.  O. Edward Janney, “A Physician’s View of These Laws,” in “The Shame of America,” 206. 106. Emily Blackwell, “Another Physician Speaks,” in “The Shame of America,” 210. 107. Carrie Clyde Holly, “Age of Consent in Colorado,” in “A Battle for Sound Morality,” Part II, 6. 108.  Rev. A. H. Lewis, “‘Age of Consent’ Legislation,” The Philanthropist 2, no. 4 (1887): 1–2. 109.  Larson, “‘Even a Worm Will Turn at Last’” 12–32. 110. “Protection of Girlhood,” The Philanthropist 1, no. 10 (1886): 4. See also, Blackwell, “Address,” 8. As developed in chapter 3, these changing views of childhood played a significant role in the Progressive Era juvenile court movement. 111. Emily Blackwell, “Another Physician Speaks,” in “The Shame of America,” 211. 112.  Ibid, 212. 113.  “Protection of Girlhood,” The Philanthropist 1, no. 10 (1886): 4. 114.  Holly, “Age of Consent in Colorado,” 6. See also “Brief of Dr. George W. Brush, in “A Battle for Sound Morality, 363, and Lewis, “The Age of Consent Legislation,” 1. 115.  Blackwell, “Address” 7. 116. Ibid.

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117.  Gardener, citing the remarks of Dr. Aneil Martin, in his address as the retiring president of the Arizona Medical Association, in “A Battle for a Sound Morality,” Part I, 365. 118.  Holly, “Age of Consent in Colorado,” 3. 119. Ibid. 120.  For a discussion of this male interest in women’s bodies, see, generally, Thomas, “The Double Standard”; Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006); and Bardaglio, Reconstructing the Household. Importantly, both Block and Bardaglio also discuss how these prevailing understandings of sexuality were employed to support patterns of racial dominance. 121.  See Cott, “Passionlessness,” 226, 233. 122. Hunt, Governing Morals, 99. 123. Ibid. 124.  Holly, “Age of Consent in Colorado,” 5. 125.  Gardener, “The Victory in New York, Arizona, and Idaho,” in “A Battle for Sound Morality,” Part 1, 355–56. 126.  Holly, “Age of Consent in Colorado,” 7. 127.  Gardener, “A Battle for Sound Morality,” Part III, Arena 14, no. 2 (1895). 128. Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 24. See also, Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York 1789–1860 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987).

Chapter 3. Responding to the “Girl Problem”  1. Ruth M. Alexander, The “Girl Problem”: Female Sexual Delinquency in New York, 1900–1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 1.  2. Herbert H. Lou, Juvenile Courts in the United States (New York: Arno Press, 1972), 24.   3.  See Elizabeth J. Clapp, Mothers of All Children: Women, Reformers, and the Rise of Juvenile Courts in Progressive Era America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).   4.  Julian Mack, “The Juvenile Court,” Harvard Law Review 23 (1909): 107; emphasis added.   5.  State v. Aaron, 4 N.J.L. 231, 245 (1818) as cited in Andrew M. Carter, “Age Matters: The Case of a Constitutionalized Infancy Defense,” Kansas Law Review 54 (2006): 714.  6. Lou, Juvenile Courts, 19.   7.  See generally, Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, ch. 2.  8. John Demos, Past, Present, and Personal: The Family and the Life Course in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 97–98. See also: Joseph F. Kett, “Reflections on the History of Adolescence in America,” History of the Family 8, no. 3 (2003): 355–73.

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 9. Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2004), 76. Some historians argue that this presentation of the child as a “miniature adult” in early American history has been overstated, and that children were actually regarded as being quite different in nature and kind from adults. See, for example: Ross W. Beals, “In Search of the Historical Child: Miniature Adulthood and Youth in Colonial New England,” American Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1975): 379–98. 10.  For details on these early reforms, see: Lou, Juvenile Courts, 13–19; John C. Watkins Jr., The Juvenile Justice Century: A Sociolegal Commentary on American Juvenile Courts (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1998), 3–31; David S. Tanenhaus, “Between Dependency and Liberty: The Conundrum of Children’s Rights in the Gilded Age,” Law and History Review 23, no. 2 (2005): 351–85. 11. Lou, Juvenile Courts, 19. 12.  Ibid., 18. 13.  In the 1960s, the informality of hearings and the closely associated lack of constitutional safeguards prompted a major rethinking of the juvenile court’s individualized approach to youthful offenders. These concerns reached a sympathetic Supreme Court, which, in the landmark In Re Gault decision, 387 U.S. 1 (1967), ruled that juveniles are entitled to basic constitutional protections, such as the right to appointed counsel. (This case is discussed briefly in chapter 4.) As a result of Gault and subsequent high court decisions that further delineated the procedural rights of juveniles, these hearings are now conducted with greater formality and attention to constitutional mandates. For two particularly thoughtful treatments of the subject, see: Barry C. Feld, “A Century of Juvenile Justice: A Work in Progress or a Revolution that Failed?” North Kentucky Law Review 34 (2007): 189–257 and Elizabeth S. Scott and Thomas Grisso, “Developmental Incompetence, Due Process, and Juvenile Justice Policy,” North Carolina Law Review 83 (2005): 793–846. 14. In the Matter of the Delinquency of Lyndelle Lundy, 82 Wash. 148, 143 P. 885, 887 (1914). 15.  Mack, “The Juvenile Court,” 107. For further detail on the history of the juvenile court system, see also: David S. Tannenhaus, Juvenile Justice in the Making (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); and Watkins, The Juvenile Justice Century. 16.  Mack, “The Juvenile Court,” 107. 17.  Paul Colomy and Martin Kretzmann, “Projects and Institution Building: Judge Ben B. Lindsey and the Juvenile Court Movement,” Social Problems 42, no. 2 (1995): 191. 18.  J. Herbie Di Fonzo, “‘Deprived of Fatal Liberty’: The Rhetoric of Child Saving and the Reality of Juvenile Incarceration,” University of Toledo Law Review 26 (1995): 861. For one of the earliest and most forceful statements of this position, see: Anthony M. Platt, The Child Savers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). 19. Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 76. 20.  Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 11. 21. Ibid.

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22.  See Pleck, Domestic Tyranny, ch. 2; Demos, Past, Present, and Personal, 44–48. 23. Carl N. Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 74. Much has been written about what is often referred to as the ideology of “separate spheres,” including a body of scholarship challenging the early historical assumption that women were simply passive conscripts in this new domestic order. See, for example: Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Deborah L. Rotman, “Separate Spheres? Beyond the Dichotomies of Domesticity,” Current Anthropology 47, no. 4 (2006): 666–74; Kim Warren, “Separate Spheres: Analytical Persistence in United States Women’s History,” History Compass 5, no. 1 (2007): 262–77; Estelle Freedman, “Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism,” Feminist Studies 5, no. 3 (1979): 512–29; and Cott, “Passionlessness,” 225–28. 24. For a detailed treatment of the critical role that women played in the juvenile court movement, see: Clapp, Mothers of All Children, and Tannenhaus, Juvenile Justice in the Making, ch. 1. 25. Clapp, Mothers of All Children, 3–4, 20. As Clapp makes clear, not all reformers who relied upon maternal motifs to advance their cause were actually mothers. Drawing a clear distinction between two groups whom she identifies as “traditional maternalists” and “professional maternalists,” she writes that although the latter group “used the language of maternalism, their training in social science and their close examination of life in the poor neighborhoods of America’s cities was of more importance in shaping their perception of the problem than was their gender consciousness.” Ibid., 4. 26. Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 109, and generally ch. 5. 27.  Ibid., 118–21. For a detailed analysis of how racial attitudes shaped the juvenile court’s treatment of young African American women, see: Cheryl D. Hicks, Talk with You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010). 28. Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn‑of‑the‑Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 6. 29. State v. Dunn, 53 Ore. 304, 99 P. 278, 280 (1909). These incidents apparently took place while the defendant was providing Hallie with “electrical treatments” for an undisclosed ailment. Although not a licensed doctor, Mr. Dunn evidently maintained a professional office for this purpose. 30.  Ibid., 281. 31. Ibid. 32.  Ibid., 282. 33.  It should be noted that this crime does not just cover instances of sexual contact between an adult and minor, but includes a broad array of conduct that is deemed likely to cause or contribute to a minor’s delinquency. 34.  People v. McDougal, 74 Cal. App. 666, 241 P. 598, 602 (1925).

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35. John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 222–29. 36.  Crista DeLuzio, Female Adolescence in American Scientific Thought, 1830– 1930 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2007), 119–21. For a thoughtful discussion about Ellis’s and Hall’s theories on adolescent sexuality, see chapters 3 and 4 of DeLuzio. For detail on the ways in which Hall’s theory was linked to his ideas about “racial progress and racial differentiation,” see: Moran, Teaching Sex, 15–19. 37. Phyllis Blanchard, The Adolescent Girl: A Study from the Psychoanalytic Viewpoint, with a preface by Dr. G. Stanley Hall (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924), 46, 60, 15. 38.  G. Stanley Hall, Adolescence: Its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education (New York: D. Appleton, 1904), 493. 39. Blanchard, The Adolescent Girl, 60–61. 40. DeLuzio, Female Adolescence, 127, quoting Hall, Adolescence, 116. 41. Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 6. 42. Odem, Delinquent Daughters,100. 43.  Robert A. Woods and Albert J. Kennedy, Young Working Girls: A Summary of Evidence from Two Thousand Social Workers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 84; also quoted above in section heading. 44. Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 34. 45. Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 58. 46. Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 34. 47.  Woods and Kennedy, Young Working Girls, Preface, v. 48. Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 38, quoting Harriet McDoual Daniels, a settlement worker who both provided evidence for the Young Working Girls study and went on to author a subsequent study entitled: The Girl and Her Chance: A Study of the Conditions Surrounding the Young Girl Between Fourteen and Eighteen Years of Age in New York City (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1914), 9. 49. These include: Sophonisba P. Breckenridge and Edith Abbott, The Delinquent Child and the Home (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1912); Daniels, The Girl and Her Chance; Ruth S. True, The Neglected Girl (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1914); June Purcell‑Guild, “Study of One Hundred and Thirty One Delinquent Girls Held at the Juvenile Detention Home in Chicago,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 10, no. 3 (1919): 441–76; and Anna T. Bingham, “Determinates of Sex Delinquency in Adolescent Girls Based on Intensive Studies of 500 Cases,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 13, no. 4 (1922): 494–587. 50.  Woods and Kennedy, Young Working Girls, 41. 51.  Ibid., 41–42. 52. Daniels, The Girl and Her Chance, 15. 53.  Breckenridge and Abbott, The Delinquent Child, 73–74. 54.  Bingham, “Determinants of Sex Delinquency,” 505–506. 55.  Ibid., 507. 56.  Woods and Kennedy, Young Working Girls, 26.

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57.  Ibid., 67. 58. Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 14. 59.  Ibid., 17; and generally, 14–18. 60. Ibid., see also: ch. 6 in Odem, Delinquent Daughters, and Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 21–33. 61. Hicks, Talk with You Like a Woman, 183. 62.  For detail, see: Odem, Delinquent Daughters, ch. 6; and Hicks, Talk with You Like a Woman, ch. 6. As both authors discuss, once parents asked for help in managing their daughters’ behavior, the juvenile court often assumed far greater control over them than they had intended to relinquish. For black families, this risk was compounded by “racism within the criminal justice system [that] undermined the efforts of relatives who used state intervention to stabilize family relationships.” Hicks, Talk with You Like a Woman, 203. 63. Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 159. 64. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child, 11; see generally ch. 2. 65. Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 103. 66.  Woods and Kennedy, Young Working Girls, 26. 67.  Ibid., 23. 68. Daniels, The Girl and Her Chances, 58, 63. See also Woods and Kennedy, Young Working Girls, 25–27. 69.  Woods and Kennedy, Young Working Girls, 107. 70.  Ibid., 108–109, 114; see generally ch. 8. Regarding the effort to reform the public dance hall, see: Elisabeth I. Perry, “‘The General Motherhood of the Commonwealth’: Dance Hall Reform in the Progressive Era,” American Quarterly 37, no. 5 (1985): 719–33. 71.  See, Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 28–31. 72. Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 58, 63. 73. Hicks, Talk with You Like a Woman, 185–86. 74.  Woods and Kennedy, Young Working Girls, 100. 75. Hicks, Talk with You Like a Woman, 186, citing Jane Addams, “Social Control,” Crisis 1, no. 3 (June 1911): 22. 76.  Michael A. Rembis, Defining Deviance: Sex, Science and Delinquent Girls, 1890–1960 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 42. 77.  Jean Walker, “Factors Contributing to the Delinquency of Defective Girls,” University of California Publications in Psychology 3, no. 4 (1925): 155. According to Walker, “Although recent research has shown definitely that the amount of mental deficiency among juvenile delinquents does not approximate the high figure which early investigators put forward,” the author nonetheless takes the position that “feeble‑mindedness stands forth as a sufficiently constant factor in all investigations of delinquency to merit definite and critical attention.” 148. 78. Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 1. 79.  Ibid., 3. 80.  Purcell‑Guild, “Study of One Hundred and Thirty‑One Delinquent Girls,” 445, 467–68; emphasis added.

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81.  Ibid., 468. 82.  Ibid., 469. 83.  Ibid., 472. 84. Ibid. 85. Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 33, quoting Mabel Ulrich, Lectures to Social Morality Institute, “The Child and the Young Girl,” February 27, 1915, 10. Sexual education was one of the preventative strategies that Progressive Era reformers adopted to save young women from illicit encounters by helping them to understand the critical importance of channeling their desire into heterosexual marriage. See: Bryon Strong, “Ideas of the Early Sex Education Movement in America, 1890–1920,” History of Education Quarterly 12, no. 2 (1972): 129–61; and Moran, Teaching Sex, ch. 2. Other strategies included the regulation of places of commercial entertainment, and the organization of a wide range of educational and recreational activities by professional women. See: Perry, “‘The General Motherhood of the Commonwealth,’” 719–33; and more generally, Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 42–47; and Woods and Kennedy, Young Working Girls, ch. VI and VIII. 86.  Kate Burr Johnson, “Problems of Delinquency Among Girls,” Journal of Social Hygiene 12, No. 7 (1926): 385. 87.  Breckinridge and Abbott, The Delinquent Child and the Home, 37–38. 88.  Ibid., 27, 38. 89. Ibid., 37–38. According to Breckinridge and Abbott, in order to save their good name, rather than being charged with “immorality,” girls were frequently charged with “being incorrigible or disorderly,” particularly if the indiscretion was an “isolated or accidental one” p. 37. 90.  Ibid., 35. 91. Ibid., 30–31. In her empirical study of 341 delinquent girls in California, Julia Mathews of the California Bureau of Juvenile Research likewise found that “among girl delinquents, sex offenses predominate, while among boys, the violation of property rights is the most frequent cause of commitment.” Julia Mathews, “Survey of 341 Delinquents Girls in California,” The Journal of Delinquency 8, no. 3–4 (1923): 209–11.  Although not comparative in nature, other studies of the time likewise made clear that the majority of girls appearing before the juvenile courts were there because of morality‑related offenses. See, for example: Bingham, “Determinants of Sex Delinquency in Adolescent Girls”: 494–87; Mabel Agnes Elliott, Correctional Education and the Delinquent Girl: A Follow‑Up Study of One Hundred and Ten Sleighton Farm Girls (Harrisburg: n.p, 1928); Purcell-Guild, “Study of One Hundred and Thirty-One Delinquent Girls,” 441–67.  For contemporary studies that similarly reveal this gendered pattern with respect to the offenses that young women and men were charged with, see: Vanessa Carroll, “Cultivating Boyhood and Girlhood: The Role of Gender in Progressive Era Juvenile Justice Reform in Wisconsin,” Wisconsin Women’s Law Journal 22 (2007): 149–51; Charlotte Lyn Bright, Scott H. Decker, and Andrea M. Burch, “Gender and Justice in the Progressive Era: An Investigation of Saint Louis Juvenile Court

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Cases, 1909–1912,” Justice Quarterly 24 no. 4 (2007): 657–78; Mary E. Odem, “Single Mothers, Delinquent Daughters, and the Juvenile Court in Early 20th Century Los Angeles,” Journal of Social History 25, no. 1 (1991): 37.  For one of the earliest and most influential feminist analyses of these discriminatory patterns, see: Meda Chesney‑Lind, “Girls and Status Offenses: Is Juvenile Justice Still Sexist?” Criminal Justice Abstracts 20 (1988): 144–65; “Girls’ Crime and Woman’s Places: Toward a Feminist Model of Female Delinquency,” Crime and Delinquency 35, no. 1 (1989): 5–29; and “Judicial Paternalism and the Female Status Offender: Training Women to Know Their Place,” Crime and Delinquency 23, no. 2 (1977): 121–30.   92.  Steven Schlossman and Stephanie Wallach, “The Crime of Precocious Sexuality: Female Juvenile Delinquency in the Progressive Era,” Harvard Educational Review 48, no. 1 (1978): 72.   93.  Ibid. See also, Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 136.   94.  Purcell‑Guild, “A Study of One Hundred and Thirty‑One Delinquent Girls,” 445. The author notes that the girl was not “personally acquainted” with the soldiers to whom she was writing; however, there is nothing to suggest that an acquaintanceship with them would have altered the outcome, given that another young woman in the study was arrested in the middle of the night for going to see “a sailor by whom she had ‘been picked up and was crazy about.’” Ibid.  95. Winifred Richmond, The Adolescent Girl: A Book for Parents and Teachers (New York: Macmillan, 1925), 113.   96.  Breckinridge and Abbott, The Delinquent Child, 74.   97.  Kate Burr Johnson, “Problems of Delinquency among Girls,” Journal of Social Hygiene 12, no. 7 (1926): 385.   98.  Breckinridge and Abbott, The Delinquent Child, 27.  99. Ibid., 8. 100. Moran, Teaching Sex, 24. 101.  Ibid., 29. 102. Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood, 15, and generally ch. 1–3. See also, Mark Thomas Connelly, The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). 103. Connelly, The Response to Prostitution, 15, 23. 104.  Ibid., 40–41. 105.  Ibid., quoting: The Newark Vice Commission, The Report of the Social Evil Condition in Newark, (1913–1914), 12–13. 106. Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood, 40. 107. Burr Johnson, “Problems of Delinquency among Girls,” 386. For an in‑depth treatment of this topic, see Rembis, Defining Deviance, 41. 108.  Breckinridge and Abbott, The Delinquent Child and the Home, 27. 109.  Martha P. Falconer, “Causes of Delinquency Among Girls,” Annals of the American Academy of Political Science 36, no. 1 (1910): 79. See generally: Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 114–15; Steven Schlossman and Stephanie Wallach, “Response to Critics: Rethinking the Crime of Precocious Sexuality,” Journal of the History of

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Childhood and Youth 2, no. 1 (2009): 110–24; Carroll, “Cultivating Boyhood and Girlhood”: 149–51; Charlotte Lyn Bright, Scott H. Decker, and Andrea M. Burch, “Gender and Justice in the Progressive Era: An Investigation of Saint Louis Juvenile Court Cases, 1909–1912,” Justice Quarterly 24, no. 4 (2007): 657–58; Schlossman and Wallach, “The Crime of Precocious Sexuality”: 65–92. 110. The remark of a nineteenth‑century commentator as quoted in Schlossman and Wallach, “The Crime of Precocious Sexuality,” 85. 111.  See Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 115–18; and Schlossman and Wallach, “The Crime of Precocious Sexuality,” 70, 75–79. 112.  Breckinridge and Abbott, The Delinquent Child and the Home, 27. 113.  Falconer, “Causes of Delinquency Among Girls,” 79. 114.  Breckinridge and Abbott, The Delinquent Child and the Home, 41. 115. Hicks, Talk With You Like a Woman, 185–86. 116.  Ibid., 192. 117.  Ibid., 189. It should also be noted that reformers had almost no faith in the rehabilitative potential of the “feeble‑minded” sexual delinquent and many believed that she should be permanently committed to an institution—a stance that was reinforced by the eugenic fear that reproduction by the feeble‑minded would further weaken the nation’s gene pool. 118. Odem, Delinquent Daughters, 117. 119. Elliott, Correctional Education and the Delinquent Girl, 18. 120.  Ibid., C‑2. 121.  Ibid., 14. 122. Ibid. Although the study was an attempt to assess “objectively the programs and methods of modern reformatory training,” Elliott noted it was difficult to reach a definitive conclusion about whether the girls were “any better than if they had not had the presumable advantages both of atmosphere and of training” of Sleighton Farms as no “comparable study [had] been made of wayward girls in court cases, who were not finally sent to a reform school or were sent to a so‑called ‘oldtype’ or ‘non‑progressive’ school.” She further notes that there was no definitive way to ascertain “what the result would have been had Sleighton Farm not intervened” (18–19), given the myriad of confounding variables, including the type of home a girl had come from and her mental status. She was, however, quite pleased to note that most were doing quite well, thus suggesting that intervention had at least some positive impact on a majority of the girls who had been committed to the farm. 18–19, 37–38. 123.  Ibid., 37–38. 124.  Ibid., 65–69. 125.  Ibid., 81. 126.  Ibid., 57. See also, Bingham, “Determinants of Sex Delinquency,” 566, regarding the rehabilitative benefits of marriage. 127. Elliott, Correctional Education, 22; emphasis in original; see also 57–58. 128. Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 3. 129.  Ibid., 59.

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130. DeLuzio, Female Adolescence, 145 and generally ch. 4. See also, Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 59–66. 131.  For a discussion of the failure of the eugenics movement, see: Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985): 118–47 and Jonathan Marks, Human Biodiverstiy: Genes, Race, and History (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1995), 89–95. Regarding the Progressive Era response to prostitution, see Rosen, The Lost Sisterhood, ch. 2. 132. Alexander, The “Girl Problem,” 38, quoting Daniels, The Girl and Her Chances, 9. 133. Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act of 1978, Hearings Before the Committee on Human Resources, U.S. Senate, 95th Cong., second session, (1978), 18.

Chapter 4. Our Daughters Are Having Babies  1. Maris Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy (New York: Oxford University Press), 24.   2.  Senate Committee on Human Resources, Hearing on the Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act of 1978, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (June 14 and July 12, 1978), 18.  3. House Select Committee on Population, Fertility and Contraception in America Report, 95th Cong., 2d sess., Serial B (December 1978), 57.   4.  Donald T. Critchlow, Intended Consequences: Birth Control, Abortion, and the Federal Government in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 13.   5.  Hugh Moore Fund, The Population Bomb (New York, 1954).  6. Critchlow, Intended Consequences, 14. For further detail on the emergence of the population control movement, see: Stephen W. Mosher, Population Control, Real Costs, Illusory Benefits (Edison: Transaction Press, 2008); Betsey Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control (Boston: South End Press, 1999); James Reed, The Birth Control Movement in American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); Peter J. Donaldson, “On the Origins of the United States Government’s International Population Policy,” Population Studies 44, no. 3 (1990): 385–99; Ruth Dixon‑Mueller, “U.S. International Population Policy and the ‘Woman Question,’” New York University Journal of Law and Policy 20 (1987): 148.  7. John D. Morris, “Eisenhower Bars Birth‑Curb Help,” New York Times, December 3, 1959. While in office, President Eisenhower remained committed, at least officially, to the view that family planning was not a proper governmental activity; however, after leaving the White House, he publicly changed his position and spoke out in favor of federally supported family planning programs. Dixon‑Mueller, “U.S. International Population Policy,” 149, footnote 23.

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  8.  Letter from Dwight D. Eisenhower to William H. Draper Jr., Regarding Study of the United States Military Assistance Project, November 24, 1958. The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index. php?pid=11291. Accessed January 28, 2009.  9. Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs, 103, as quoted in Phyllis Tilson Piotrow, World Population Crisis: The United States Response (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1973), 39. 10.  Dixon‑Mueller, “U.S. International Population Policy,” 148–49. 11.  Ricki Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade (New York: Routledge, 1992), 208, quoting Philip Hauser, former assistant director of the United States Census Bureau and demographer at the University of Chicago, Senate Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Foreign Aid Expenditures, Population Crisis: Hearings on S. 1676: A Bill to Reorganize the Department of State and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 89th Cong., 1st sess. (August 31, September 8, 15, 22, 1965), 1540–41. 12.  It should be noted that this was actually not the first time that the federal government had provided support for family planning initiatives. According to Linda Gordon, during the Great Depression, fueled by concern for the plight of the poor as well as by public anger over taxpayer support of “relief babies,” a few federal agencies began “surreptitiously funding birth control work.” Linda Gordon, The Moral Property of Women: The History of Birth Control Politics in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 237. See also, Johanna Schoen, Choice and Coercion: Birth Control, Sterilization, and Abortion in Public Health and Welfare (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). It is also important to recognize that by the mid‑1960s more than half of the states had already inaugurated their own family planning programs. Underscoring the complex relationship between birth control and efforts to limit the number of births by black women, the earliest state programs were launched in Southern states. Gordon, Moral Property, 233–35. 13. Toni Cade Bambera, “The Pill: Genocide or Liberation?” in The Black Woman An Anthology, ed. Toni Cade Bambera (New York: Washington Square Press, 1970), 208. See also, Black Women’s Liberation Group, “Statement on Birth Control,” in Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement, ed. Robin Morgan (Mt. Vernon: Vintage Press, 1970). For a detailed discussion of how this struggle played out in a low‑income, predominantly black community in Pennsylvania, see Simone M. Caron, “Birth Control and the Black Community in the 1960s: Genocide or Power Politics?” Journal of Social History 31, no. 3 (1998): 545–69. 14. Richard Nixon, “Special Message to the Congress on Problems of Population Growth,” July 18, 1969, Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2132. Accessed July 2, 2012. 15.  Family Planning Services and Population Research Act of 1970. P.L. 91‑572, 91st Cong., 2d sess. (December 24, 1970), sec. 2 (1) and sec. 1006(c)(1); emphasis added.

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16. Kristen Luker, Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 57. 17. Following the revelation in 1973 that a federally funded physician in Alabama sterilized two young black sisters based on his determination that they were “feeble‑minded,” feminist support for Title X was clouded by a growing awareness of the exploitative potential of governmentally supported birth control programs—a concern that feminists of color insisted had to be addressed by the mainstream women’s rights movement in light of the historic link between birth control and efforts to limit the fertility of poor women. See Angela Davis “Racism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights,” in From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement, ed. Marlene Gerber (Boston: South End Press, 1990). 18.  Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). 19.  Those found guilty of breaching this moral injunction risked a possible punishment of imprisonment and “hard labor” for a term of up to ten years. Ch. 258, § 2, 17 Stat. 598, 598 (1873). Congress also appointed Comstock to the position of special agent of the United States Postal Service. Charged with responsibility for enforcing the law, Comstock went about the task with remarkable zeal, often using decoy letters to entrap senders of “obscene” material. For more on the Comstock Law, see: C. Thomas Dienes, “The Progeny of Comstockery: Birth Control Laws Return to Court,” American University Law Review 21, no. 1 (1971): 1–129; Nicola Kay Biesel, Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998); Gaines M. Foster, Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Regulation of Morality 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, “Victoria Woodhull, Anthony Comstock, and Conflict over Sex in the United States in the 1870s,” The Journal of American History 87, no. 2 (2000): 403–34. 20.  Regarding some of the early struggles against the birth control laws, see: Ellen Chessler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (New York: Doubleday, 1992); David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970); Peter Smith, “The History and Future of the Legal Battle Over Birth Control,” Cornell Law Quarterly 49 (1964): 275–303. 21.  Griswold, 381 U.S. at 486–87. 22.  It should, however, be noted that starting in the 1960s, pregnant teens did receive some limited governmental support, mostly by way of efforts to improve the educational outcomes of school‑age mothers who, at the time, were typically expelled from school once it was evident that they were pregnant. See, Luker, Dubious Conception, 62–64. In addition, Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act made it unlawful for schools (at least those receiving federal funds) to discriminate against parenting and pregnant teens. For details, see Wanda S. Pillow, Unfit Subjects: Educational Policy and the Teen Mother (New York: Routledge, 2004); and Jennifer Mittelstadt, “Educating ‘Our Girls’ and ‘Welfare Mothers’: Discussions of Education Policy for Pregnant and Parenting Adolescents in Federal Hearings, 1975–1995,” Journal of Family History 22, no. 3 (1997): 326–52.

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23. Report of The Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. Population and the American Future (March 27, 1972), 100. 24. Richard Nixon, “Statement About the Report of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future,” May 5, 1972. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www. presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=3399. Accessed July 2, 2012. 25.  Robert B. Semple, “President Bars Birth Control Plans,” New York Times, May 6, 1972. 26.  Testimony of Joseph A. Califano, Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Senate Committee on Human Resources, Hearings on the Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevention and Care Act, 18; see also, Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy, 22–24. 27.  For detail, see: William F. Pratt, William D. Mosher, Christine A. Bachrach, and Marjorie C. Horn, “Understanding U.S. Fertility: Findings from the National Survey of Family Growth, Cycle III,” Population Bulletin 39, No. 5 (1984): 3–42. 28. Luker, Dubious Conceptions, 62. 29.  Melvin Zelnik and John F. Kantner, “Sexual and Contraceptive Experience of Young Unmarried Women in the United States 1976 and 1971,” in Teenage Sexuality, Pregnancy, and Childbearing, ed. Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., Richard Lincoln, and Jane Menken (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 70–71. 30.  11 Million Teenagers: What Can Be Done about the Epidemic of Adolescent Pregnancy in the United States? (New York: Alan Guttmacher Institute, 1976). 31. Senator Kennedy. Senate Committee on Human Resources, Report to Accompany S. 2910, Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978), 13–14. 32.  House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearing on the Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (January 25, 1978), 27. 33. Senator Kennedy, Senate Committee on Human Resources, Report to Accompany S. 2910, Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978), 6. 34. House Select Committee on Population, Report on Fertility and Contraception in America, 95th Cong., 2d sess., Serial B (December 1978), citing the work of Dr. Kristin Moore of the Urban Institute, 63–64. This committee was established by the 95th Congress in late 1977 “as a temporary, ad hoc group to investigate domestic and international population problems.” Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy, xiii. In 1978, the committee conducted three days of hearings on the problem of adolescent pregnancy, the results of which are included in the above‑referenced Report on Fertility and Contraception in America. 35.  House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearing on the Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (June 28, 1978), 29. 36. Senator Kennedy, Senate Committee on Human Resources, Report to Accompany S. 2910, Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978), 2.

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37. Luker Dubious Conceptions, 113. See also: Megan Weinstein, “The Teenage Pregnancy ‘Problem’: Welfare Reform and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996,” Berkeley Women’s Law Journal 32 (1998): 117–53. In addition, several of the essays in Annette Lawson and Deborah L. Rhode’s edited collection The Politics of Pregnancy: Adolescent Sexuality and Public Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993) offer a counternarrative on teen motherhood. 38. Luker, Dubious Conceptions, 133; italics in original. 39. Katherine Schultz “Constructing Failure, Narrating Success: Rethinking the Problem of Teen Pregnancy,” Teachers College Record 103, no. 4 (2001): 583. As a professor at an urban public university, the author of this book also has anecdotal evidence of this phenomenon based upon conversations with many of her students who had a child during high school or shortly thereafter, and subsequently committed themselves to getting their lives on track by earning a college degree in order to provide their child with a stable future. Some have also spoken about the importance of being a role model to their child with regard to the importance of education. 40. Ibid. 41. Luker, Dubious Conceptions, 171, 183. 42. Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52 (1976). Both Danforth and the 1979 case of Bellotti v. Baird, 443 U.S. 622 (1979) are discussed later on in the text of the chapter. For a detailed discussion of the minors’ abortion rights cases, see: Ehrlich, Who Decides? 43.  Roe, 410 U.S. at 154. 44.  Bellotti, 443 U.S. at 643. 45.  H.L. v. Matheson, 450 U.S. 398, 414 (1981). 46.  Ibid., quoting Harris v. McCrae, 448 U.S. 297, 325 (1980). 47.  House Select Committee on Population, Report on Fertility and Contraception in America, 57. For a long‑term historical perspective on teen fertility patterns in the United States, see Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Teen Pregnancy, ch. 1. 48.  Ibid., 25. 49. Constance A. Nathanson, Dangerous Passages: The Social Control of Sexuality in Women’s Adolescence (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 26. 50. House Select Committee on Population, Report on Fertility and Contraception in America, 58–59. 51. Ibid. 52.  For example, in 1976, births to girls between the ages of ten and fourteen accounted for only 2.1 percent of the total births to females under the age of twenty. Ibid., 59–60. 53. Pillow, Unfit Subjects, 28–33. 54. Melvin Zelnick and John F. Kantner, “Sexual and Contraceptive Experience,” in Teenage Sexuality, Pregnancy, and Childbearing, ed. Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., Richard Lincoln, and Jane Menken (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 70–71.

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55. Ibid. 56. House Select Committee on Population, Fertility and Contraception in America, 62. 57. The discussion about adoption and surrender owes a great deal to the following books: Ann Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decade Before Roe v. Wade (New York: Penguin Press, 2006); Regina G. Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work 1890–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); and Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie. 58. Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie, 8. See also 86–98 and 152–55. 59.  Ibid., 87–98, 151–52; and Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away, 147–48. 60. Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away, 147–53; emphasis in the original. 61. Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie, 78–83; Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away, 110. 62. Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie, 27, quoting Ursula Gallagher, unwed mother specialist at the United States Children’s Bureau. 63.  Ibid., 42–45. 64. Ibid., 31, quoting Clark Vincent, “Illegitimacy and Value Dilemmas,” Christian Century 80 (1963): 806. For further discussion of some of these racial themes, also see: Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls, 144–65. 65.  See, Melvin Zelnik and John F. Kantner, “First Pregnancies to Women Aged 15–19: 1976 and 1971,” in Teenage Sexuality, 97–98; and June Sklar and Beth Berkov, “Teenage Family Formation in Postwar America,” Family Planning Perspectives 6, No. 2 (1974): 80–90. 66.  Select Committee on Population, Fertility and Contraception in America: Adolescent and Pre‑Adolescent Pregnancy, Hearing, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (February 28, March 1, 2, 1978); emphasis added. It should be noted that Congressman Beilenson presided over the adolescent portion of the Select Committee hearings. 67.  Ibid., at 170–71; emphasis added. 68. Senator Kennedy. Subcommittee on Health of the Senate Committee on Human Resources, Report to Accompany S. 2910, Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act of 1978, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978), 10. For a discussion of how by the mid‑1980s the discourse shifted again to recast the pregnant teen as the welfare‑dependent “other,” see Pillow, Unfit Subjects, 33–39. 69.  Mittelstadt, “Educating ‘Our Girls’ and ‘Welfare Mothers’”: 333. 70. This law was passed as part of the Health Services and Centers Amendments of 1978, P.L. 95‑626, 1978. In 1981, it was succeeded by the Adolescent Family Life Act, which is discussed in the following chapter. 71.  Senate Committee on Human Resources, Report to Accompany S. 2910, Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act of 1978, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978), 9. To maximize positive outcomes, federal funds were to be used both to link together existing services and to develop complementary ones, thus weaving together a safety net of supports.

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72. Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy, 54–55. For further discussion about President Jimmy Carter and the abortion issue, see: Andrew R. Flint and Joy Porter, “Jimmy Carter: The Re‑emergence of Faith‑Based Politics and the Abortion Rights Issue,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 35, no. 1 (2005): 28–51. 73.  Senate Committee on Human Resources, Report to Accompany S. 2910, Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act of 1978, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978), 19. From its inception, Title X has also included a strict abortion‑funding ban that bars the allocation of Title X to an otherwise qualified program in which “abortion is a method of family planning.” 42 U.S Code, sec. 1008 (2000). 74.  Pamela A. Monroe, “Adolescent Pregnancy Legislation: The Application of an Analytical Framework,” Family Relations 36, no. 1 (1987): 20–21. Even this compromise was encoded into law in a watered‑down form. Initially proposed as a mandate that would have required AHSPPA‑funded agencies to actually provide teens with comprehensive options counseling, Congress instead agreed that an agency simply had to inform them that such counseling was available. If the clinic did not actually want to provide the counseling, it could refer her to another site—a compromise that was approved without any meaningful consideration of the additional burden this fragmentation of services might impose on a young woman. 75.  Senate Committee on Human Resources, Report of the Senate Committee on Human Resources to accompany S. 2522. Voluntary Family Planning Services, Population Research, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Amendments of 1978, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978), 12. 76.  Ibid., 37. 77.  Ibid., 31. 78.  Ibid., 17. 79.  Ibid., 24. 80.  Amendment to the Public Health Services Act, P.L. 95‑613, 95th Cong. (November 8, 1978). 81. Vinovskis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy, 62. 82.  Congressional Record, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978), Vol. 124, 37044. 83.  Ibid. The issue of parental notification in the Title X context has been an ongoing source of struggle, although to date, services remain confidential. For more on this topic, see: Stephanie Bornstein, “The Undue Burden: Parental Notification Requirements for Publicly Funded Contraception,” Berkeley Women’s Law Journal 15 (2000): 40–76; Patricia Olah, “The ‘Squeal Rule’ and a Minor’s Right to Privacy,” Hofstra Law Review 12 (1984): 497–530. 84.  Congressional Record, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978): 35624. 85. Wendy Anton Fitzgerald, “Maturity, Difference, and Mystery,” Arizona Law Review 36 (1994): 16. 86.  In Re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967), 18–19, 13. 87.  Tinker v. DeMoines, 393 U.S. 503 (1969). 88. Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, 428 U.S. 52, 74 (1976).

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89. Carey v. Population Services International, 431 U.S. 678, 692–93 (1977). 90.  Bellotti, 443 U.S. at 634. For a critique of the Supreme Court’s reliance on these factors, see: Ehrlich, Who Decides?, ch. 3. For an analysis of the Court’s evolving constitutional jurisprudence in the area of minors’ rights, see: Janet Dolgin, “The Fate of Childhood: Legal Models of Children and the Parent‑Child Relationship,” Albany Law Review 61 (1997): 345–432. 91. Frances French on Behalf of the U.S. Coalition for Life. House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearing on the Health Services Amendments of 1978, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (February 21–23, 1978): 399–400. 92. Senate Committee on Human Resources. Minority Views of Senator Hayakawa. Report to Accompany S. 2910, Adolescent Health, Services, and Pregnancy Prevention Care Act of 1978, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978), 30–31. 93.  Congressional Record, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1978), Vol 124, 37044.

Chapter 5. Our Daughters Are Having Sex  1. See, Jeannie I. Rosoff, “Blocking Family Planning,” Family Planning Perspectives 13, no. 3 (1981): 125–41.   2.  Richard Viguerie, “Ends and Means,” in The New Right Papers, ed. Robert W. Whitaker (New York: St. Martins Press, 1982), 30. Regarding the differences between the “Old Right” and the “New Right,” see: Paul M. Weyrich, “Blue Collar or Blue Blood; The New Right Compared with The Old Right,” ibid., 48–62; and Duane M. Oldfield, The Right and the Righteous, The Christian Right Confronts the Republican Party (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996).  3. Alan Crawford, Thunder on the Right: The “New Right” and the Politics of Resentment (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 5.  4. Whitaker, The New Right Papers, ix–x.  5. Oldfield, The Right and the Righteous, 15–17.   6.  Harvey Cox, “Old-Time Religion,” Boston Globe, July 9, 2006), E‑1.  7. Oldfield, The Right and the Righteous, 59–62.   8.  David Harrington Watt, “The Private Hopes of American Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, 1925–1975,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 1, no. 2 (1991): 163.  9. Ibid., 166. 10. Oldfield, The Right and the Righteous, 59. See also, Robert Freedman, “The Religious Right and the Carter Administration,” The Historical Journal 48, no. 1 (2005): 231. 11.  William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway Books, 2005), 119. 12. Oldfield, The Right and the Righteous, 65–66, referencing an interview with Gary Bauer, head of the Family Research Council.

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13.  Ibid., 97–103. See also, Richard A. Viguerie, The New Right: We’re Ready to Lead (Falls Church: The Viguerie Company, 1981). 14.  Rosalind Pollack Petchesky, “Antiabortion, Antifeminism, and the Rise of the New Right,” Feminist Studies 7, no. 2 (1981): 207. 15.  Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Examination on the Role of the Federal Government in Birth Control, Abortion Referral, and Sex Education Programs, 97th Cong., 1st sess. (March 31, 1981): 1 Subsequent hearings include: Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Hearing on Health Services and Preventative Health Block Grants: Examination to Consider a Fundamental Change in the Administration of Certain Public Health Programs, 97th Cong., 1st sess. (April 2 and 10, 1981); Senate Subcommittee on Aging, Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Oversight of Family Planning Programs Oversight on the Role of the Federal Government in Family Planning Administered under Title X of the Public Health Services Act, 97th Cong., 1st sess. (June 23 and September 28, 1981); Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Health Aspects of Adolescent Sex: Examination of the Alarming Increase in the Rate of Sexual Relations Among Adolescents, Hearing, 97th Cong., 2d sess. (April 19, 1982); and Senate Subcommittee on Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Consideration of the Reauthorization of Title X of the Public Health Service Act, The Population Research and the Voluntary Family Planning Programs, Hearing, 98th Cong., 2d sess. (April 5 and May 1, 1984). 16.  Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, March 31, 1981, 3. This discussion focuses on broad thematic objections that witnesses raised in order to discredit Title X’s programmatic focus on teen pregnancy prevention. It is not intended to provide a comprehensive analysis of the hearings, which also addressed other highly contested matters including: the propriety of “values‑oriented” sexual education; the safety and reliability of various kinds of contraceptives; whether Title X had actually been successful in reducing the rate of teen pregnancies; and whether or not federally funded clinics openly advocated abortion. 17.  Dr. James H. Ford, Member of the Los Angeles and California Medical Associations. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, March 31, 1981, 227. 18.  Senator Jeremiah Denton. ibid., 2–3. 19.  Dr. James H. Ford, ibid., 154–55. 20.  Senator Orrin Hatch, ibid., 8; and Senator Jeremiah Denton, ibid., 3. 21.  Senator Jesse Helms, Senate Subcommittee on Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 5, 1984, 6. 22.  Barbara Maves, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of East Central Indiana. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, March 31, 1981, 37–38. 23. Dr. Breen, The Senate Subcommittee on Aging, Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 19, 1982, 177. 24. Luker, When Sex Goes to School, 98–99; emphasis in the original. 25. Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 187, 195; emphasis added.

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26. Luker, Dubious Conceptions, 62. 27. Senator Jeremiah Denton, Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, March 31, 1981, 85. 28.  Dr. James A. Ford, ibid., 216. 29. Dr. Herbert Ratner, The Senate Subcommittee on Aging, Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 19, 1982, 7–9. 30.  Dr. John Hildebrand, ibid., 17–18. 31.  Dr. Ray Short, ibid., 33. 32.  Denise Cocciolone, Senate Subcommittee on Aging, Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, June 23 and September 28,1981, 111. 33.  Dr. Ray Short. The Senate Subcommittee on Aging, Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 19, 1982, 37. 34. Ibid. 35.  Senator Jeremiah Denton. Senate Subcommittee on Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 5, 1984, 2. 36.  Dr. Hebert Ratner. Senate Subcommittee on Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 19, 1984, 71; emphasis added. 37.  Senator Jeremiah Denton, ibid., 292. 38. Faye Wattleton. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, March 31, 1981, 20. 39. Ibid., 45, 74. 40.  Dr. James H. Ford. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, March 31, 1981, 216, 260. 41.  Senator Jeremiah Denton, quoting Dr. James H. Ford, Senate Subcommittee on Aging, Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources June 23, 1981, 16. 42. Luker, When Sex Goes to School, 109, 93. 43.  Ibid., 84, quoting the Illinois Sex Education Advisory Board, as published in Beatrice M. Gudridge and American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, Sex Education in Schools: A Review of Current Policies and Programs for the Guidance of School Board Members, Administrators, Teachers, and Parents (Washington, DC: National School Public Relations Association, 1969). 44.  Ibid., 186–87. 45.  Ibid., 192. 46.  Ibid., 154, 192. 47.  Ibid., at 196. 48.  Ibid., 162, 195–96. 49. Faye Wattleton, Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, March 31, 1981, 45. 50.  Ibid., at 86. 51.  Ibid., 79.

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52.  Dr. James H. Ford, ibid., 227. 53.  Senator Denton, Senate Subcommittee on Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 5, 1984, 2. 54.  Dr. James H. Ford, Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, March 31, 1981, 220–21. 55.  Senator Jeremiah Denton, ibid., 45. 56. Ibid. 57.  Faye Wattleton, ibid., 16; emphasis added. 58.  Ibid., 24; emphasis added. In this regard, it should be noted that when a young woman (or for that matter, any woman) walks into a Title X clinic, access to abortion is not included in the array of available services due to the statutory ban on the use of federal monies to help fund the cost of abortion. 59.  Adolescent Family Life Act, P.L. 97‑35, 97th Cong (1981). AFLA was signed into law as part of the 1981 Omnibus Reconciliation Act, and became Title XX of the Public Health Services Act (codified at 42 U.S.C. §300z-300z-10 [1981]). As the statutory successor to the AHSPPA, another stated purpose of AFLA was to “establish innovative, comprehensive, and integrated approaches to the delivery of care services both for pregnant adolescents . . . and for adolescent parents.” 42 U.S.C. §300z, (b)(3) (1981). Further, reflecting Congress’ antiabortion proclivities, another primary statutory objective was the promotion of “adoption as an alternative for adolescent parents.” 42 U.S.C. §300z, (b)(2) (1981). 60. Vinovksis, An “Epidemic” of Adolescent Pregnancy, 79. 61. Alesha E. Doan and Jean Calterone Williams, The Politics of Virginity: Abstinence in Sex Education (Westport: Praeger, 2008), 1, see generally ch. 2 and Shelley Arsenault, “Values and Virtue: The Politics of Abstinence‑Only Sex Education,” The American Review of Public Administration 31, no. 4 (2001): 436–54. 62.  Senator Jeremiah Denton. Senate Subcommittee on Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 5 and May 1, 1984, 290. 63.  Senator Jeremiah Denton. Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Report on Adolescent Family Life to Accompany S. 1090, 97th Cong., 1st sess. (July 21, 1981): 7–8. 64. Dr. Mildred F. Jefferson. Senate Subcommittee on Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Hearing on the Reauthorization of the Adolescent Family Life Demonstration Projects Act of 1981: An Overview of the Adolescent Pregnancy Problem and Reauthorization of Title XX of the Public Health Service Act: The Adolescent Family Life Demonstration Projects Act of 1981, 98th Cong., 2d sess. (April 24 and 26, 1984): 168. 65.  Senator Jeremiah Denton. Ibid., 169. 66.  42 U.S.C. §300z, (a)(10)(A) (1981). 67.  Title XX of the Public Health Services Act, 42 U.S.C. §300z-5(a)(21) (B) (1981). 68.  Rebekah Saul, “Whatever Happened to the Adolescent Family Life Act?” The Guttmacher Report on Public Policy 1, no. 2 (1998): 10.

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69.  Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589, 607 (1988). 70. Janice M. Irvine, Talk about Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 100–101, quoting a national sex educator whom Irvine interviewed in 1997. 71. Jacquetta Henderson, Assistant Director of the Family Center Day Care, North Braddock, Pennsylvania, Senate Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, Abstinence Education, Hearing, 104th Cong. 2d sess. (July 22, 1996): 48. 72.  Senator Jeremiah Denton. Senate Report (July 21, 1981): 7. 73. Senator Jeremiah Denton, Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, March 31, 1981, 261. 74.  Senator Jeremiah Denton, Senate Subcommittee on Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources Subcommittee Hearing, April 5 and May 1, 1984, 289. 75.  Senator Jeremiah Denton, Senate Subcommittee on Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 24 and 26, 1984, 3. 76.  Revealing that even this valued goal had its limits, an exception to the notification requirement was written into AFLA to give a pregnant teen whose parents were trying to force her to have an abortion access to confidential care services. 77. Dr. Terrence D. Olson, Senate Subcommittee on Family and Human Services of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 24 and 26, 1984, 62. 78.  42 U.S.C. §300z, (b)(1) (1981). 79. Douglas J. Besharov and Karen N. Gardiner, “Sex Education and Abstinence: Programs and Evaluations,” Children and Youth Services 19, no. 5/6 (1997): 335–36. 80. Ron Haskins and Carol Statuto Bevan, “Abstinence Education and Welfare,” Children and Youth Services 19, vol. 5/6 (1997): 468. 81.  Shelley Arsenault, “Values and Virtue: The Politics of Abstinence‑Only Sex Education,” 15. 82.  Doan and Williams, The Politics of Virginity, 32. 83.  Ibid., 33. 84.  Ibid., 14–18. 85.  Haskins and Bevan, “Abstinence Education and Welfare Reform,” 475. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid., 468. 88.  Title V Section 510 (b)(2)(A) of the Social Security Act. 89.  Title V Section 510 (b)(2)(B)‑(H) of the Social Security Act. In 1997, this eight‑point definition was engrafted onto AFLA. 90.  In 2000, Congress enacted the Special Projects of Regional and National Significance‑Community‑Based Abstinence Education program (Public Law 106‑246, 106th Cong., 2d sess. [July 13, 2000]) (subsequently known as the Community‑Based Abstinence Education program [CBAE]) The most generously funded of the three

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federal abstinence programs, this act allowed community groups, including faith‑based organizations, to apply directly to the federal government for funding without having to go through a state review process as required under Title V, thus facilitating the channeling of funds to the true vanguards of the abstinence cause.  In fiscal year 2010, the Obama administration and Congress eliminated the funding for both the Community‑Based Abstinence Education and the abstinence‑only‑until‑marriage component of Adolescent Family Life Act. In addition, on June 30, 2009, Congress permitted the funding for Title V’s abstinence‑only‑until‑marriage program to expire. However, conservative lawmakers ultimately succeeded “in resurrecting the program when they managed to insert funding for abstinence‑only‑until‑marriage in Senate health care reform legislation (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) and the language remained in the final legislation signed by President Barack Obama. “A Brief History: Abstinence Only Until Marriage Funding.” http://www.nomoremoney.org. 91.  Since 1995, there have been various male outreach initiatives. Although the male client population has increased, men are still a very small percentage of the population served by Title X clinics. For example, in 2010, although a significant increase over prior years, males constituted only 8 percent of the total served. http://www.hhs.gov/opa/title-x-family-planning/initiatives-and-resources/ male-services/index.html (Accessed July 14, 2012). 92.  For purposes of this discussion, unless specifically relevant, no effort will be made to distinguish between the various federal abstinence laws. 93. The “disparate impact” theory was first recognized by the Supreme Court in the landmark case of Griggs v. Duke Power, 401 U.S. 424 (1971). In contrast to a “disparate treatment” case, which involves a challenge to a policy or practice that is clearly discriminatory on its face, such as a whites‑only hiring rule, Griggs involved a successful challenge to a facially neutral employment screening requirement that had a disproportionate impact on black employees and did not actually measure job performance ability. For further discussion, see: William Gordon, “The Evolution of the Disparate Impact Theory of Title VII: A Hypothetical Case Study,” Harvard Journal on Legislation 44 (2007): 529–52; and Steven Willborn, “The Disparate Impact Model of Discrimination: Theory and Limits,” American University Law Review 34 (1985): 799–838. 94. Hanne Blank, Virgin: The Untouched History (New York: Bloomsbury, 2007), 10. See also, Laura M. Carpenter, Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual Experiences (New York: New York University Press, 2005). 95. Blank, Virgin, 10. 96.  Haskins & Bevan, “Abstinence Education,” 466–67. 97.  Linda C. McClain, “ ‘Irresponsible’ Reproduction,” Hastings Law Journal 47 (1996): 374. Regarding the intersection of racial and gender stereotypes that prompted the enactment of PRWORA, see: Risha K. Foulkes, “Abstinence‑Only Education and Minority Teenagers: The Importance of Race in a Question of Constitutionality,” Berkeley Journal of African‑American Law and Policy 10 (2008):

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3–49; Anne Marie Smith, “The Sexual Regulation Dimension of Contemporary Welfare Law: A Fifty State Overview,” Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, 8 (2002): 121–218; and Cris Mayo, “Gagged and Bound: Sex Education, Secondary Virginity, and the Welfare Reform Act,” in Philosophy of Education Yearbook 1998, ed. Steve Tozer (Urbana: Philosophy of Education Society, 1999): 309–17.   98.  Joseph Piccione and Robert Scholle, Combating Illegitimacy and Counseling Teen Abstinence: A Key Component of Welfare Reform, The Heritage Foundation, July 31, 1995, http://www.heritage.org/ (Accessed December 4, 2009).   99.  Mayo, “Gagged and Bound,” 311. 100. Senator Jeremiah Denton. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, March 31, 1981, 292; emphasis added. 101.  http://www.apurityball.com (Accessed December 9, 2009). 102.  Sex Respect (see below). The above heading is a quote from Colleen Kelly Mast, Sex Respect: The Option of True Sexual Freedom, Student Workbook. (Bradley, IL: Respect Incorporated, 2001). 103.  Doan and Williams, The Politics of Virginity, 103, see generally ch. 4. 104.  The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence‑Only Education Programs, Prepared for Representative Henry Waxman by the Committee on Government Reform‑Minority Staff Special Investigation (2004), 16–18. See also: Julie F. Kay with Ashley Jackson, Sex, Lies, and Stereotypes: How Abstinence‑Only Programs Harm Women and Girls (New York: Legal Momentum, 2008); Mariamne K. Whatley and Bonnie K. Trudell, “Teen‑Aid: Another Problematic Sexuality Curriculum,” Journal of Sex Education 19, no. 4 (1993): 251–71. 105. http://www.communityactionkit.org (accessed December 5, 2012). As SIECUS and others have concluded, the reliance on gender stereotypes is only one of the many serious problems with abstinence curricula. As SIECUS documents in its review of a wide range of abstinence curricula, many also, for example, present inaccurate medical information, rely upon shaming strategies, and marginalize LGBT youth and families. 106. Dr. Colleen Kelly Mast, Sex Respect: Teacher’s Manual (Bradley, IL: Respect Incorporated, 2001). The claim about being the world’s leading abstinence program also appears on Respect Inc.’s Web site. http://www.sexrespect.com (Accessed December 5, 2012). 107. Connaught Marshner, “The Growth of Sex Respect: Saying Yes to Saying No,” Conservative Digest 14, no. 11 (1988): 46. 108.  Laura M. Carpenter, Virginity Lost, 178–79. 109.  Marshner, “The Growth of Sex Respect,” 41. 110. Deborah Tolman, “Doing Desire: Adolescent Girls’ Struggles for/with Sexuality,” Gender and Society 8, no. 3 (1994): 325–26, 338. 111.  Michelle Oberman, “Turning Girls into Women: Re‑evaluating Modern Statutory Rape Laws,” DePaul Journal of Health Law 8 (1994): 155, 161. 112.  Ibid., 162. 113.  Tolman, “Doing Desire,” 325.

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114.  Michelle Fine and Sara I. McClelland, “Sexuality Education and Desire: Still Missing after All These Years,” Harvard Educational Review 76, no. 3 (2006): 297. 115.  Michelle Fine and Sara I. McClelland, “The Politics of Young Women’s Sexuality: Public Policy and the Adolescent Female Body,” Emory Law Journal 56 (2007): 993, 996. 116.  Sex Respect is hardly unique in this regard. Moreover, as previously discussed, like other federally funded abstinence curricula, its content is further marred by other flaws including: medically inaccurate information, reliance on racial and class stereotypes, and the marginalization of LGBT youth. For further reading, in addition to consulting the SIECUS Web site, see: Doan and Williams, The Politics of Virginity, ch. 4. 117.  Sex Respect, Student Workbook, 6, quoting John Gray, who is identified as a “popular psychologist and author from the 1990’s.” 118. Ibid. 119.  Ibid., 5. 120. Ibid., 6. 121.  Ibid., 6–7. 122.  Ibid., 10. 123. Gordon The Moral Property of Women, 58. 124.  Sex Respect, Student Workbook, 13. 125.  Ibid., 12. 126.  Ibid., 97. 127.  Ibid., 12. 128. Ibid. 129. http://www.communityactionkit.org/index.cfm (accessed November 9, 2009). 130.  For an analysis of the racialized rhetoric that was deployed in a debate over school‑based sexuality education in a North Carolina town, see: Jessica Fields, “‘Children Having Children’: Race, Innocence, and Sexuality Education,” Social Problem 52, no. 4 (2005): 549–71. 131.  Sex Respect, Student Workbook, 12. 132.  Ibid., 94. 133.  Ibid., 95. 134.  Ibid., 36, 96. 135. Ibid., 28. Regarding the view of nineteenth‑century purity reformers toward male continence, see: Charles E. Rosenberg, “Sexuality, Class and Role in 19th Century America,” American Quarterly 25, no. 2 (1973): 131–53; Ben Parker‑Benfield, “Spermatic Economy: A Nineteenth Century View of Sexuality,” Feminist Studies 1, no. 1 (1972): 45–74; Alan Hunt, “The Great Masturbation Panic and the Discourses of Moral Regulation in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Britain,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 8, no. 4 (1998): 575–615. 136.  Rosenberg, “Sexuality, Class and Role in 19th Century America,” 139. 137.  Sex Respect, Student Workbook, 97.

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138.  Sex Respect, Teachers’ Manual, 41. 139.  Purity Ball Planner, Abstinence Clearinghouse (2005). 140.  Charlie Gillis, “Dad’s Your Prom Date,” McLeans 120, no. 39 (2007): 66–68. 141. Generations of Light, http://www.generationsoflight.org (Accessed December 12, 2010). 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid. 144. Ibid. 145. Neela Banerjee, “Dancing the Night Away, With a Higher Purpose,” New York Times, May 19, 2008. 146. Jennifer Baumgardner, “Would You Pledge Your Virginity to Your Father?” Glamour, January 2007. 147.  Generations of Light, http://www.generationsoflight.org. 148.  Banerjee, “Dancing the Night Away.” 149.  Generations of Light, http://www.generationsoflight.org. 150.  Purity Ball Planner, Abstinence Clearinghouse. 151.  Randy and Lisa Wilson, Celebrations of Faith (Colorado Springs: Cook Communications Ministries, 2001), 146–51. 152.  Ibid., 43. 153.  Trenholm et al., Final Report, 59. 154.  Douglas Kirby, Emerging Answers 2007: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 15. http://www.thenationalcampaign. org (Accessed July 14, 2012). 155.  Janet Elise Rosenbaum, “Patient Teenagers? A Comparison of the Sexual Behavior of Pledgers and Matched Nonpledgers,” Pediatrics 123, no. 1 (2009): e‑114. 156. Waxman, The Content of Federally Funded Abstinence‑Only Education Programs, 8. 157.  Fine and McClelland, “Sexuality Education and Desire,” 306. 158. Vaughn I. Rickert, Rupal Sanghvi, and Constance M. Wiemann, “Is the Lack of Sexual Assertiveness Among Adolescent and Young Adult Women a Cause for Concern?” Perspectives on Reproductive Health 34, no. 4 (2002): 178. 159.  Ibid., 181. 160. For a discussion of some of the recent feminist work on what sexual empowerment means for young women, see: Deborah L. Tolman, “Female Adolescents, Sexual Empowerment and Desire: The Missing Discourse of Gender Inequity,” Sex Roles 66, no. 11/12 (2012): 746–57. 161.  This new funding stream for comprehensive sex education was approved as part of the 2010 federal Health Care Act, and is known as the Personal Responsibility Education Program. See: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/fysb/resource/prep-factsheet (Accessed July 30, 2013).

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Index

Abbott, Edith, 71, 78–80, 82 abolitionists, 14–15 female, 14, 16, 24 “new,” 33 abortion, 3, 92, 97 family planning programs and, 103–104 Jimmy Carter and, 103 Roe v. Wade, 97, 107, 114 Supreme Court and, 1, 2, 92, 97, 98, 107, 108 teen, 1, 2, 98 Adolescent Health Services and   Pregnancy Prevention Act and,  103–104 authorization of, 1–2, 108 parental consent required for, 1,   98, 107, 108 Abstinence Clearinghouse, 141, 142 abstinence message. See also abstinence-until-marriage message; purity balls engendering the, 130–131, 134–135 beneath the surface, 131–134 legislative context, 131–134 abstinence-only approach, 2, 103, 132–135, 146–148. See also Sex Respect abstinence until marriage, 2, 49, 102, 112, 143, 145, 148. See also marriage mandating, 42, 57–58, 128–130, 145, 148

abstinence-until-marriage message, 128, 132, 137, 143. See also abstinence message Addams, Jane, 71, 75 Adolescent Family Life Act of 1981 (AFLA), 125–128, 135–136 adolescent girls. See also specific topics becoming regulatory subjects, 8, 62, 78–80 renegotiating the boundaries of their lives, 76–77 Adolescent Health Services and Pregnancy Prevention Act (AHSPPA), 95, 103–104 adoption, 100–102 Advocate of Moral Reform (periodical), 12, 13, 22, 26–27, 29 African Americans. See race; slavery age of capacity, 52 age of sexual consent, 58, 59, 61–62. See also campaign to raise age of sexual consent and providing a safe passage to adulthood, 51–55 Alexander, Ruth M., 62, 70, 73, 76, 84 American Female Guardian Society, 30. See also American Female Moral Reform Society American Female Moral Reform Society (AFMRS), 11–12, 19, 30 legislation and, 3, 7, 23–24, 29–30 petition campaign, 24–25, 27

205

206

Index

American Tract Society, 8 Arena (social reform journal), 48–49 Ball, M. V., 20 Bardaglio, Peter W., 47–48 Beilson, Tony, 102 Bellotti v. Baird, 108 Bevan, Carol Statuto, 129 Bingham, Anne T., 72 birth control, 93, 105, 107–108, 118–121, 146 African Americans and, 90 dangers of, 118–119 Dwight Eisenhower and, 89, 93 education about, 93, 109, 146, 148. See also Title X Family Planning Program as a private right, and changing social and legal environments, 91–92 promiscuity, illicit behavior, and, 89, 91, 92, 107–108, 112, 118, 119, 132 and teen pregnancy, 96, 104, 106, 123, 146 Title X and, 94, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112, 117–121, 123, 125, 132 blacks. See race; slavery Blackwell, Antoinette Brown, 41, 42 Blackwell, Elizabeth, 39–40, 49 Blackwell, Emily, 45, 51, 53, 56 Blanchard, Phyllis, 69 Blank, Hanne, 132 Boylan, Anne M., 24, 25 Breckenridge, Sophonisba P., 71, 78–80, 82 Breen, James, 117 “brothel guide,” 10 brothels, 9, 10, 13, 40, 42, 44 Brush, George W., 50 Burnham, John C., 160n8, 160n20 Cade, Toni, 90 Califano, Joseph A., 88, 95

campaign to raise age of sexual consent, 44–46, 60, 61, 68, 147 as a most womanly cause, 46–48 race and, 47–48 themes of, 48–51 protecting virginity, 55–59 providing a safe passage to  adulthood, 51–55 Carey v. Population Services, 107–108 Carter, Jimmy, 103 chastity, 42, 50, 71, 72, 112, 121 premarital, 43, 109 childrearing, 19–21 Christian Right. See New Right Christianity, 8–9. See also Evangelicalism Clapp, Elizabeth, 66, 168n25 class privilege, 70. See also social class Cocciolone, Denise, 119 coming-of-age ritual for boys, 144 Comstock Law, 92 Connelly, Marc, 81 conservatism. See liberal/conservative divide; New Right; Title X Family Planning Program contraceptive revolution, 91, 94. See also birth control Cook County juvenile court, 62–63, 78 Cott, Nancy, 11, 57 Cox, Harvey, 113 criminal justice system, adult children within, 63–65 Danforth, Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v., 107, 108 Daniels, Harriet mcDoual, 71 De Cunzo, Ann, 153n20 decisional authority, 1, 60, 92, 107, 128, 132, 133, 148 legal dualism regarding, 1 decisional capacity, 1–3, 52–55, 121–125 decisions, reproductive, 128, 133, 134, 148

Index Degler, Carl, 66 Delinquent Child and the Home, The (Breckenridge and Abbott), 71 DeLuzio, Crista, 84–85 Demos, John, 64 Denton, Jeremiah, 116, 118, 120, 121, 123–125, 127 disparate impact theory of discrimination, 131, 186n93 Doan, Alesha E., 129, 134–135 double standard of morality, 19, 33, 43, 61, 79–80 vs. single standard of morality, 19,   43, 58, 148–149 sexual, 7, 42, 43. See also genderneutral language attacking the, 16–18 Draper Committee, 89 Dubois, Ellen Carol, 152n1 Dunn, J. D., 67, 68, 72

207

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 89, 93 Elliott, Mabel Agnes, 83, 84, 173n122 Ellis, Havelock, 69 eugenics, 51, 57, 80, 81, 85, 87, 90 Evangelicalism, 8–9, 11, 113–115 and the New Right, 115 purity balls and, 141, 144

Gardener, Helen H., 48–51, 56, 58–59 Garrett, William L., 36 Gault, In re, 106–108, 167n13 gender, 5. See also abstinence message: engendering the; double standard; juvenile justice, engendering; specific topics race and, 132–133 teaching students about the gift of. See Sex Respect gender-neutral language, abstinence laws employing, 131–132 Generations of Light, 142, 144, 145 “girl problem,” 62, 85, 87 emergence of the, 62, 67–77 Gorham, Deborah, 164n90 government. See also specific topics the battle over state-sanctioned vice purifying society, 43–44 rescuing the nation from the   diseased female body, 35–39 “what is morally wrong can never   be physiologically right,” 39–42 the changing business of, 89–91 Grant, Ulysses S., 47 Grimke, Sarah, 14, 15 Griswold v. Connecticut, 91–92 Gross, Samuel D., 35, 37–38

Falconer, Martha, 82 Falwell, Jerry, 115 family planning arena, entry of federal government into, 88–92. See also Title X Family Planning Program feeblemindedness, 75, 76, 81, 173n117 fertility loss, 119 fertility rate, 87–90, 93, 94, 98, 99, 104, 109–111 Fessler, Ann, 101 Fine, Michelle, 137 Ford, James H., 118 French, Frances, 109 Friend of Virtue, 12, 13

Hall, Stanley, 69–70 Hallowell, Rebecca C., 39, 40, 49 Haskins, Ron, 129 Hatch, Orrin, 115–116, 125 Hayakawa, Samuel I., 109 Helms, Jesse, 115 Hicks, Cheryl D., 67, 73, 75, 170n62 Hillabrand, John, 119 H.L. v. Matheson, 98 Holly, Carrie Clyde, 50, 56, 58 homosexual marriage, 112, 130 House Select Committee on Population, 95, 98 Hunt, Alan, 43, 57 Hurlbut, E. P., 26, 28

208

Index

immigrants, 37, 62, 65, 70, 72, 73, 75, 81 infancy defense, 73 internal restraint, inculcation of, 19–21 Janney, O. Edward, 53 Jefferson, Mildred F., 125–126 Jefferson, Thomas, 12 Johnson, Claudia D., 153n12 Johnson, Kate Burr, 78 Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 90 juvenile court movement, 62–65 a court of their own, 65–67 juvenile court system, 107 and becoming regulatory subjects, 78–80 contributing to the delinquency of a minor and, 67–68 female sexual delinquents and, 62, 65–67, 78 gender differences and, 78–79 “maternalized,” 67 parents turning to, 73 Progressive Era, 65 race and, 67 In Re Gault and, 107 reformers and, 66, 67 status offenses and, 68 Juvenile Detention Home in Chicago, 76–77 juvenile justice, engendering, 77–80 Kennedy, Albert J., 70–75, 77 Kennedy, Edward M., 102 knighthood ceremonies, 144, 145 liberal/conservative divide, 122–125. See also New Right libertine casting out the, 22–23 reforming the, 19 licentious men, 23 legislation and, 26, 28, 45 prostitution and, 40

protection of women from, 3, 7 sexual double standard and, 17 women as victims of, 8, 15–16 licentiousness, 19, 20, 45, 54 alcoholism compared with, 40 crusade to expose, 17 “unchecked,” 40 in women, 14–15, 17 Locke, John, 66 Lou, Herbert H., 64–65 Luker, Kristen, 91, 94, 96–97, 117, 122–123, 160n18 Mack, Julian, 63, 65 Madonna/whore dichotomy, 137 Magdalen Society. See New York Magdalen Society “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, The” (Stead), 44 Mark, Georgia, 44, 46, 49–50 marriage, 57, 83, 84, 100–102, 117–119, 122, 127, 148. See also abstinence until marriage rehabilitative power of, 84 sacred sex and, 117 same-sex, 112, 130 seduction with the promise of, 18, 29–30 shotgun, 102 teen pregnancy and, 100–102 virginity and, 49, 56–57, 100, 119, 132–134 Marshner, Connaught T., 135–136 Mast, Colleen Kelly, 135. See also Sex Respect Mayo, Chris, 133 McClelland, Sara I., 137 McDowall, John, 8–11 menstruation, 69 middle class, 59, 60, 62, 70, 84, 100, 102, 139. See also social class conception of childhood, 64–66 middle-class norms and standards, 66, 72, 73

Index Mittlestadt, Jessica, 102 Monroe, Pamela A., 180n74 Moore, Thomas Everett, 89 moral insanity, 20 Moral Majority, 115 moral reform, ruin and, 12–23 moral reform publications, 12–13, 17 moral reformers. See also social purity reformers female, 16–19 reforming the libertine, 19 moral values. See also specific topics parents vs. government as responsible for imparting them to children, 120–121 Moran, Jeffrey, 80, 117–118 New England Moral Reform Society (NEFMRS), 24 New Right and the national shift to the Right, 112–115 rise of, 112–115 New York Committee Against the State Regulation of Vice, 43 New York Committee for the Prevention of State Regulation of Vice, 33, 45–46 New York Female Moral Reform Society (NYFMRS), 11–12 New York Magdalen Society, 9, 11 Nixon, Richard M., 90, 93 novel reading as source of corruption, 20 Oberman, Michelle, 136 obscenity laws. See Comstock Law Odem, Mary, 47, 59, 73 Olson, Terrence D., 128 parents. See childrearing passionlessness, 8, 23, 57, 62, 68, 136, 147, 148 Peiss, Kathy, 67, 70

209

“personal responsibility,” 105, 121–123, 133, 148–149 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), 132 Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP), 148 Petchesky, Rosalind, 115 physicians. See also prostitution: medical professionals and pro-regulationist, 34, 37, 42 Planned Parenthood, 109, 125, 136 Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth, 107, 108 population growth, 93, 95, 98. See also fertility rate; pregnancies poverty, 90, 132. See also tenement districts teen pregnancy, early maternity, and, 95, 96 Powell, Aaron, 42 pregnancies, “epidemic” of teen, 93–94. See also abortion: teen; Title X Family Planning Program birth control and, 96, 104, 106, 123, 146 Congress’ response to, 103 sowing the seeds of dissension,  108–109 two-pronged strategy, 103–108 emergence of the pregnant teen as an object of public concern, 94–95 the “girl next door,” 99–102 a more visible presence, 99 and opposition to teen sex, 116–120 and the paradox of timing, 95–100, 102 race and, 101 trends in policymaking, 94–95 pregnancy, unplanned, 96, 105, 106 pregnant women, 19 promiscuity, 120, 121, 127, 130, 132. See also under birth control

210

Index

promiscuity (continued) among black working girls, 75 feeblemindedness and, 76 and the government, 108 rehabilitation and, 83 vs. respectability, 75, 102 Title X and, 103 prostitutes linked to corruption, 81 as sexual outlaws crossing the boundaries of appropriate behavior, 38 as source of contagion, 36–38 state-mandated inspections of, 34–36, 38–39 as victims of man’s animalistic passions, 37 working women compared with, 70, 74–75, 81 prostitution, 85 anti-abduction bill and, 24 anti-prostitution efforts and, 81 changing roles of women and, 81 debate over legalization of, 34–36, 41, 43, 45 history, 9, 34 licentious men and, 40 medical professionals and, 33–39, 42, 43 reasons women are drawn to, 9–11 reclaiming the fallen victims of male lust, 9–12 reformers and, 36, 37, 41–43, 45 registration and regulation of, 33–36, 40, 42, 45 sexual delinquents and, 80 slavery and, 33, 37, 41 as social evil, 35, 36 urban theaters and, 10 venereal disease and, 33–38, 40 prostitution reform, 9 puberty, 51–53, 69, 72, 138 Public Health Services Act, Title X of. See Title X Family Planning Program

Purcell-Guild, June, 76–77, 79 purity. See also sexual purity; social purity reformers demonstrating, 125–128 a family-centered approach to, 125–127 ideal of, 38, 43, 48, 66, 139, 141, 147, 148 purity balls, 141 “because we cherish our daughters as regal princesses,” 141–144 “What about Boys?,” 144–145 race, 75, 90. See also specific topics gender and, 132–133 juvenile court system and, 67 race relationships, 47–48 racialized adoption practices, 101 rape. See also sexual coercion concept of, 31, 59–60 rape laws, 54, 58. See also statutory rape laws Ratner, Herbert, 119, 120 reading novels, as source of corruption, 20 Reagan, Ronald, 112, 125 reform. See moral reform rehabilitation (of the sexual delinquent), 51, 80–83 goals, 83 preventive, 83 race and, 82–83 rehabilitative ethos, 65, 83 rehabilitative ideal, 83, 84 rehabilitative potential, 80, 82 replacing old standards with new standards, 83–84 rehabilitative power of marriage, 84 religion, Evangelicalism, 16. See also Christianity Rembis, Michael A., 76 respectability, 59, 60, 75 female moral reformers and, 7 middle-class ideal of, 57 parents and, 73

Index vs. promiscuity, 75, 102 Victorian, 59, 75, 80 working-class black families and, 73 respectable vs. non-respectable classes, 57 respectable womanhood, 7, 16 responsibility. See “personal responsibility” Richmond, Winifred, 79 Roe v. Wade, 97, 107, 114 Rosen, Ruth, 81 Ryan, Nancy, 19 Sánchez-Eppler, Karen, 16 Sanger, William, 9–10, 34–35 Schlossman, Steven, 79 Schultz, Katherine, 96–97, 178n39 Second Great Awakening, 8, 8, 30 seduction, 7–8 beyond, 67–70 legislative campaign to criminalize the act of, 3, 23–31 seduction narrative, 50, 68, 70, 85. See also sexual narrative purity/moral reform and, 15, 17, 49 reversal of, 62, 78 “Sex: What We Are, and What a Difference” (student workbook), 137 Sex Respect: Teacher’s Manual (Mast), 141 Sex Respect: The Option of True Sexual Freedom, Student Workbook (Mast), 135–141, 143 gender differences, 137–138 gender stereotypes, 134–135 male-female sexual differences, 137–138 racial stereotypes, 139 sexual and family values, the confluence of, 122–125 sexual coercion, 45, 54, 59–60, 74. See also rape protecting women from, 3, 55 legislation for, 4, 27, 54–56, 59.  See also age of sexual consent

211

sexual consent, 55–58, 60. See also age of sexual consent sexual delinquents, female, 67–68, 79, 84–85, 87, 95, 96, 171n91. See also rehabilitation the case of J. D. Dunn and Hallie, 67, 68, 72 causes, 72, 74–77 definitional boundaries of the category, 70, 78 gender, male delinquents, and, 63, 76, 78–80 intelligence and, 76 juvenile court system and, 62, 65–67, 78 morality and, 76, 77 race and, 67, 75 social class and, 65, 70, 72, 80 vs. victims of seduction, 62 sexual narrative, rewriting the, 67–70 sexual necessity, 39, 40, 49 sexual purity, 21, 26, 27, 56, 59, 144, 145. See also purity; social purity reformers sexual sin, a nation awash in, 8–12 sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). See venereal disease Shaw, Rodney, 104 Short, Ray, 119–120 Sims, Marion J., 35, 37 slavery, 14–16, 24–25 black women and the legacy of, 14–15, 47, 56, 75, 82–83 prostitution and, 33, 37, 41 sexual corruption and, 15–16 sexual exploitation and, 14–16, 24, 37 Sleighton Farms, 83, 84, 173n122 social class, 73. See also middle class; tenement districts; working women/working-class girls criminal justice system and, 84 delinquency and, 65, 70, 72, 80 purity ideal and, 139 teenage pregnancy and, 102

212

Index

social programs, 89–90 social purity reformers, 33–36, 39–42, 44, 47, 49, 56, 57, 132, 147. See also moral reformers; purity Solinger, Ricki, 101 Specter, Dr., 138, 139 Sponberg, Mary, 37 statutory rape, 45, 58 statutory rape laws, 45, 136 Stead, William, 44, 48 Student Workbook. See Sex Respect syphilis, 35, 37, 38 teen pregnancy. See pregnancies, “epidemic” of teen tenement districts, deterioration in moral tone among adolescent girls in, 70–76 tenement house families, 70, 72, 73 “third tier,” 10 Tinker v. Des Moines, 107, 108 Title X Family Planning Program, 90–91, 94, 104, 131, 133 AFLA and, 125–28, 130 amended to expressly include teens, 103, 105 birth control and, 94, 105, 106, 109, 110, 112, 117–121, 123, 125, 132 the conservative attack on, 110–112, 115–126, 128, 132, 133, 135 enacting of, 90–91, 106, 130 funding increase for, 105 goals/intent of, 93, 103–105, 111, 130 and the parent-child bond, 121, 133 proposed amendment requiring parental consent, 105, 109 Tolman, Deborah, 136–137 treating, 74–75 Ulrich, Mabel, 77–78 venereal disease, 30, 33–40, 43, 148 Viguerie, Richard, 113 Vinovskis, Maris, 88, 98

virginity, 58, 116 gender differences and, 58, 112, 132, 144–146 loss of, 3, 22, 25, 27, 49, 57, 100, 102, 145–146 and unleashing of passions, 68 marriage and, 49, 56–57, 100, 119, 132–134 preservation/protection of, 3, 55–59, 143–145 fathers and, 133–134 legislation for, 3, 22, 25, 27, 31,  56, 57. See also age of sexual  consent purity balls and, 141, 143, 145 role in determining life course, 56 Title X and, 132 virtue and, 56, 57, 60, 132–134, 141 virginity pledging, 146 virtue embedded in Title V’s marriage standard, 133 female, 22, 25, 48, 71, 75, 134 abstinence and, 141 delinquency and, 71, 78 homage to, 141 protection of, 7, 55–59, 144 of female slaves, 14–16, 25 Friend of Virtue, 12, 13 virginity and, 56, 57, 60, 132–134, 141 virtuous women fallen women and, 10, 11, 75 moral reform movement and, 11, 12, 17, 21, 22, 28, 45, 57 seduction of, 15, 16, 18, 22, 25, 28–29, 48. See also seduction WAIT (Why Am I Tempted) curriculum, 135 Walker, Jean, 76, 170n77 Wallach, Stephanie, 79 Walters, Ronald G., 15 War on Poverty, 90

Index Wattleton, Faye, 120–121, 123–125 White, J. William, 38 Who Decides?: The Abortion Rights of Teens (Ehrlich), 1 Willard, Francis, 41–42, 46, 51 Williams, Jean Calterone, 129, 134–135 Wilson, Lisa, 143 Wilson, Randy, 141–143 Woman’s Suffrage Movement, 46 women, objectification and commodification of, 136 women’s rights movement, 7, 110 Woods, Robert A., 70–75, 77 Workbook. See Sex Respect working-class families, 62, 73. See also immigrants black, 73, 75

213

working women/working-class girls, 59, 62, 70–71, 84–85. See also tenement districts concerns about nonconforming behavior of, 54, 63, 67, 70–71, 74–75, 81 conditions of, 70 exploited by their families, 73 opportunities, 59 prostitution and, 81 racial differences among, 75 reformers and, 70, 75, 76 trade in, 44 vulnerability, 54–55, 59 Wright, Daniel, 24, 30, 155n37, 157n78 Zelizer, Viviana A., 66, 73–74