In April of 1929, the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in Greenwich Village was raided by police. They arrested five staff members, confiscated medical records, and tried to bully patients into giving them their names and addresses.
Their tactics backfired. The Bureau and its clinic in Brooklyn received an enormous amount of publicity, and many doctors protested the violation of doctor-patient confidentiality. When the case came to court on April 19, 1929, the judge ruled that the police had exceeded the scope of the search warrant he had issued, and the case was dropped.
Above, Sanger (third from left) and the five arrested staff members after their victory: A.L. Field, Dr. Elizabeth Pissiot, Sanger, Dr. Hanna M. Stone, and Mrs. Marcella Sideri.
Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images/Fine Art America