Mabel Sine Wadsworth

Mabel Antoinette Sine Wadsworth (October 14, 1910 – January 11, 2006) was an American birth control activist and women's health educator. Influenced by the work of Margaret Sanger, she organized door to door campaigns in rural Maine in the 1950s and 1960s to teach women about birth control. In the 1960s she established and directed the state's first family planning program which provided contraceptive services, and helped found the Maine Family Planning Association in 1971, serving as its first president. In 1984 she supported the establishment and naming of the Mabel Wadsworth Women's Health Center in Bangor, Maine, a private, non-profit, feminist health center. Wadsworth was in the first class of inductees to the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in March 1990.

Early life, education, and marriage Mabel Antoinette Sine was born in Rochester, New York, to David Albert Sine and his wife Effie Maude Harrison Sine.

Birth control activism

While in nursing school, Wadsworth became acquainted with the work of American birth control activist Margaret Sanger. She told the Bangor Daily News in 2005: It wasn't about feminism back in those days. It was simply educating women that you really and truly could take a pill and not have any more babies. It took some convincing for a lot of them, but when they tried it, they found it worked quite well.

In the 1960s, Wadsworth established and directed Maine's first family planning program that provided contraception services. Rather than hire professionally trained counselors and outreach workers to staff the program, she chose women who could relate with clients because of their own personal experience. She served as the group's first president and was a member of its board of directors.

Other activities Wadsworth volunteered for organizations including the Eastern Maine General Hospital Auxiliary and the League of Women Voters. She participated in the establishment of the Women's Resource Center (forerunner to the Maine Displaced Homemakers Program) and the first NAACP chapter in Maine. She served on the board of directors of the Bangor Counseling Center, serving as its first president.

Awards and honors In March 1990 Wadsworth was in the first class of inductees to the Maine Women's Hall of Fame. In April she received the Maryann Hartman Award from the University of Maine.

In 1993 she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Maine.