Mabel Sine Wadsworth

Mabel Sine Wadsworth
Wadsworth in 1990
Born	Mabel Antoinette Sine October 14, 1910 Rochester, New York
Died	January 11, 2006(2006-01-11) (aged 95) Bangor, Maine
Nationality	American
Education	University of Rochester School of Nursing diploma, 1931
Occupation	Birth control activist
Years active	1946–1980s
Spouse(s)	Richard C. Wadworth
Children	3
Parent(s)	David Albert Sine Effie Maude Harrison Sine
Awards	Maine Women's Hall of Fame, 1990

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.

Mabel Antoinette Sine was born in Rochester, New York, to David Albert Sine and his wife Effie Maude Harrison Sine. After graduating from Spencerport High School, she studied at the University of Rochester School of Nursing, receiving her diploma in 1931. That same year, she married Richard C. Wadworth, M.D. (1905–1980). They had three daughters. They resided in Framingham, Massachusetts, during her husband's tenure as a pathologist at Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham. In 1946 they relocated to Bangor, Maine, where her husband headed the Stoddard Laboratory at Eastern Maine General Hospital and Medical Center from 1947 to 1972.

Until women have control of their reproductive life they are not equal.

While in nursing school, Wadsworth became acquainted with the work of American birth control activist Margaret Sanger. She decided to work in the field of reproductive rights education, as she saw more and more teen girls having unwanted pregnancies. Coming to Bangor in 1946, she joined the Maternal Health League, a volunteer organization modeled on Sanger's work which stressed contraceptive education. In the 1950s and 1960s, Wadsworth organized teams of outreach workers who went door to door in rural Maine to teach women about birth control. She told the Bangor Daily News in 2005: