ABSTRACT
Many women in poverty areas would like to limit the size of their families and are simply unaware of existing birth control methods, or do not have such methods available to them. The barriers of church, state, law, and public opinion had been breached. A successful program for birth control for poor women had been inaugurated. The story in retelling often assumes mythical proportions. People at later times would refer to the growth and climax of the program as those of a family planning empire; today they still tell grandiose tales of its founder. Descriptions of Joe Beasley's personality and his personal relationships are rampant in Louisiana. With the concerns of a pediatrician, Beasley interpreted the 1959 UN Declaration of the Rights of a Child to say that these rights applied to children only after birth. The events leading to the first publicly supported family planning clinic in Louisiana occurred simultaneously rather than sequentially.
