The two sisters and theatre artist Fania Mindell opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn in October 1916. They made flyers in different languages, including English, Yiddish and Italian,to advertise their cliniic. Byrne is not widely known today. Despite this, her early activism had a big impact on raising awareness of the importance of access to information about birth control. When Ethel Byrne was arrested, a group of politically active New York women wanted to meet President Woodrow Wilson. They wanted Wilson to undo laws that made distributing bith control a crime. 