Born in 1872 in Worcester, Massachusetts, Mary became a pivotal leader of women’s suffrage, first in Boston in 1908, then as an officer of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in New York (1910 to 1915). She left suffrage work in 1915 to tackle the legalization of birth control. At the time, all information about birth control was deemed “lewd, lascivious, and obscene” under U.S. federal law known as the Comstock law. It was illegal for doctors to discuss contraception with their patients,  and even in some states, for parents to discuss it with their adult, married children. 

Mary founded the National Birth Control League in 1915 (later, the Voluntary Parenthood League) to overturn the law. Instantly, she became a bitter rival of Margaret Sanger’s for leadership of the movement. By 1925, having failed to pass legislation in Congress, Mary passed the torch to Margaret Sanger. But in a government sting operation in 1929, she was indicted for sending obscene literature through the U.S. mail. Her crime? Mailing a 28-page booklet for teens called The Sex Side of Life: An Education for Young People. In the booklet, she described the facts of human sexuality and included drawings of male and female reproductive organs. 

The ACLU rose to Mary’s defense, but she lost her case. In 1930, she was vindicated when a Federal appeals court overturned her conviction, resulting in a landmark precedent that enabled the U.S. publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses and other previously banned books.