Everywhere he went, Reich was impressed with the people’s need for emotional
help. And he strove to find some solution between the very brief contact of van missions
and the long-term psychoanalysis of the individual, a socially useless endeavor because
of the time it took and the small number of available therapists.
In January 1929, Vienna newspapers carried notices about new sexual hygiene
clinics for workers and employees, opened by the Socialist Association for Sex Hygiene
and Sexological Research, which Reich had founded. Four psychoanalytic colleagues and
three obstetricians joined Reich in starting the organization^8.
The sex hygiene clinics were opened in different districts of Vienna, each one
directed by a physician. As the clinics were extremely busy, the lack of time on the part
of the staff became a painful reality. Each case required about half an hour to be diag-
nosed conscientiously, and many persons who came needed considerable help. What
exactly Reich and his associates did in these consultations is not clear. His sex-political
writings are not as rich in case examples as are his psychoanalytic papers. However, we
know that he gave prominence in his early clinical experiences to the problems of abor-
tion, contraception, and adolescent sexuality.
Abortion was the most immediate problem because the first patients tended to
be women wishing to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Reich’s approach to this issue was
amazingly advanced. He was impatient with, indeed outraged by, current debates about
restricting or enlarging the categories of “medical indications” that would permit the
interruption of pregnancy. For him the outstanding fact was that the women didn’t want
children and that they were incapable of bringing them up in a healthy way. Reich also
stressed the terrible economic and social conditions under which many of these expec-
tant mothers lived.
Using emotional and economic factors as legitimations for abortion did not sat-
isfy Reich at all. The essential point was that women should have the right to terminate
their pregnancies,regardless of their medical condition or social-economic situation. Nor
should this position be justified on the grounds that, with this right, women would have
just as many children as before, but “under joyful conditions.” Reich was not concerned
whether or not the population declined because oflegalized abortion. In his own work
he did everything he could to arrange illegal abortions, where necessary, for women who
sought to end their pregnancies but who did not have the “proper” indications. In so
doing, he often took grave legal risks.
Reich met with little success in seeking any political support for the legalization
ofabortion. Social Democratic leaders who privately were in favor of legalized abortion
refused to take a public position for fear of alienating the Catholic vote. The Communist
Party avoided the issue, in part because Marx had rejected the Malthusian position that
the number of births should be restricted if social misery was to be eliminated. Marx
argued that this stance diverted people from the “real” problem of radically changing the
social order.
11 : The Application of Sex-economic Concepts on the Social Scene The Sex-pol: 1927-1930 131