Controversy and Courage

About the Book

Controversy and Courage lays out in dramatic detail one community's struggle to enable women to control their own childbearing. From the Depression years in Albany, New York, when the poor had no access to birth control, up through the advent of the Pill and the sexual revolution, to the current battles over abortion, the family planning movement has never been free of religious and political controversy.

The history of Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood is a microcosm of the national experience of family planning clinics, but it is also a uniquely local story with its own heroines and heroes, its own legal battles, its own victories. Controversy and Courage chronicles the eventful and contentious fight for reproductive freedom in Albany for the past 70 years.

About the Author

Mary Kahl has been actively involved with Planned Parenthood for more than 20 years. She has had an academic career in Boston and Albany, New York, and holds a doctorate from Harvard University. Now retired, she lives with her husband in Albany.