The Life and Times of Marion Pearl Ayer

Women's Rights

When Marion was at Simmons, she did not have the right to vote - not because she was too young, but because she was a woman. It was only in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, that women throughout the United States gained the vote. Before that, it was left up to the states, and only a handful (not including Massachusetts) had allowed it (one such state was Montana, which in 1917 choose Jeannette Rankin as the first woman elected to the US Congress).

Marion also did not have the right to an abortion or even contraception. They had been banned in Massachusetts in 1879 by the "Crimes Against Chastity, Morality, Decency and Good Order" act, which prohibited "selling, lending, giving away or exhibiting contraceptives or abortifacients." In 1916 a young man named Van Kleek Allison was arrested and spent two months in jail for simply distributing family planning booklets in a factory in Boston's North End.