In addition to providing women with contraceptive advice, the clinic functioned as an experimental testing ground for Sanger's own social agenda, particularly her determination to prove the connection between birth control and socio- economic issues. Nevertheless many doctors remained uncomfortable with the idea of a clinic operated by a lay person, and were particularly suspicious of Sanger's radical associations. Physicians recognized that although several New York hospitals had opened birth control clinics, most of these failed because women seemed to prefer women-run clinics. While Sanger resisted their entreaties to cede control over the clinic to physicians, by the end of the 1920s she was working closely with many members of the medical community. Although one visit was sufficient for accumulating the evidence she needed, unbelievably, Detective McNamara returned to the clinic several times for follow-up treatment.
Press reports of the raid itself portray a disorganized affair.
To the jeers of women patients, police stripped the clinic of its contents, confiscating birth control equipment, books and pamphlets, even examples of fraudulent birth control devices. They didn't even know how to make a raid. One of the arrested nurses claimed that the police could not tell the difference between the contraceptive devices and the forceps used to sterilize them. They dropped to the floor when she moved and a spectator reminded her that they were valuable and gave her an envelope to put them in. But it was the medical profession's response to the raid that was especially potent.