Sanger, Margaret

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{{Infobox Biography
 
{{Infobox Biography
 
| subject_name  = Margaret Higgins Sanger
 
| subject_name  = Margaret Higgins Sanger
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| image_caption  = Margaret Sanger.
 
| image_caption  = Margaret Sanger.
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| date_of_birth  = [[September 14]], [[1879]]
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| date_of_birth  = September 14, 1879
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| place_of_birth = [[Corning (city), New York|Corning]], [[New York]]
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| place_of_birth = Corning, [[New York]]
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| date_of_death  = [[September 6]], [[1966]]
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| date_of_death  = September 6, 1966
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| place_of_death = [[Tucson]], [[Arizona]]
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| place_of_death = Tucson, [[Arizona]]
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| occupation    =  
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| occupation    = Activist, Founder Planned Parenthood
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| spouse        =  
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| spouse        = William Sanger
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| left_align    = yes
 
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'''Margaret Higgins Sanger''' ([[September 14]], [[1879]] – [[September 6]], [[1966]]) was an [[United States|American]] [[birth control]] activist, an advocate of certain aspects of [[eugenics]], and the founder of the [[American Birth Control League]] (which eventually became [[Planned Parenthood]]). Initially met with fierce opposition to her ideas, Sanger gradually won some  support, both in the public as well as the courts, for a woman's choice to decide how and when she will bear children. Though her support of eugenics was less well received, Margaret Sanger was instrumental in opening the way to universal access to birth control.
 
  
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==Early life==
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'''Margaret Higgins Sanger''' (September 14, 1879 - September 6, 1966) was an [[United States|American]] [[birth control]] activist, and the founder of the American Birth Control League (which eventually became [[Planned Parenthood]]). Sanger worked as a public health nurse in the slums of [[New York City]] at the beginning of the twentieth century. She was strongly motivated to help women in the throes of poverty who were often grappling with health issues related to pregnancy and childbearing. She was also deeply affected by the circumstances of her own mother, whose poor health and untimely death was exacerbated by a large family she could not fully care for.
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Sanger was born in [[Corning (city), New York|Corning]], [[New York]]. Her mother, Anne Purcell Higgins, was a devout [[Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]] who went through 18 pregnancies (with 11 live births)<ref>Steinem.</ref> before dying of [[tuberculosis]] and [[cervical cancer]]. Sanger attended Claverack College, a boarding school in [[Hudson, New York|Hudson]] for two years. Her sisters paid her tuition, and when they were unable to continue to provide this assistance, Sanger returned home in 1899. Her mother died the same year, after which Sanger enrolled in a nursing program at a hospital in [[White Plains, New York|White Plains]], an affluent New York suburb. In 1902, she married William Sanger. Although stricken by tuberculosis, she gave birth to a son the following year, followed in later years by a second son and a daughter who died in childhood. Sanger's ill health, marriage and subsequent pregnancy prevented her from completing her third year of training and attaining a certification, though her new husband assured her that he would care for her and that she would be better off raising their children than pursuing a career.<ref name="chesler">Chesler.</ref>
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Sanger believed that uncontrolled fertility and [[poverty]] were inexorably related. While her ideas about women being able to decide how and when to bear children were initially met with fierce opposition, she gradually won support from both the public and from the courts. Sanger was arrested numerous times for expressing her views on birth control.  
  
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In 1912, after a devastating fire destroyed the new home that her husband had designed, Sanger and her family moved to [[New York City]], where she went to work in the poverty-stricken [[Lower East Side, Manhattan|East Side]] slums of [[Manhattan]]. That same year, she also started writing a column for the ''New York Call'' entitled "What Every Girl Should Know." Distributing a pamphlet, ''Family Limitation'', to poor women, Sanger repeatedly risked scandal and imprisonment by acting in defiance of the [[Comstock Law|Comstock Law of 1873]], which outlawed as [[obscene]] the dissemination of contraceptive information and devices.
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==Biography==
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Sanger was born in Corning, [[New York]]. Her father Michael Higgins was described as a "free thinker and an outspoken radical." <ref>MSU.edu, [http://www.msu.edu/course/mc/112/1920s/Sanger/Information.html About Margaret Sanger.] Retrieved March 25, 2007.</ref> Her mother, Anne Purcell Higgins, was a devout [[Roman Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]] who went through 18 pregnancies (with 11 live births)<ref>Steinem.</ref> before dying of [[tuberculosis]] and [[cervical cancer]]. Sanger attended Claverack College, a boarding school in Hudson, New York, for two years. Her sisters paid her tuition until 1899, when they were unable to continue to provide this assistance and she returned home. Her mother died the same year, after which Sanger enrolled in a nursing program at a hospital in White Plains, New York. In 1902, she married William Sanger. Although stricken by tuberculosis, she gave birth to a son the following year, followed in later years by a second son and a daughter who died in childhood.  
  
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Margaret separated from her husband William Sanger in 1913. In 1914, Sanger launched ''The Woman Rebel'',an eight page monthly newsletter advocating contraception,with the slogan "No Gods and No Masters" (and coining the term "birth control") and that each woman be "the absolute mistress of her own body." She was indicted for violating postal obscenity laws in August and fled to [[Europe]] as "Bertha Watson" to escape prosecution. There, she had several affairs, including with the science-fiction author [[H. G. Wells]] and sexual psychologist [[Havelock Ellis]]. She returned to the U.S. in Oct. 1915. Her five-year-old daughter, Peggy, died November 6.
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In 1912, after a devastating fire destroyed the new home that her husband had designed, Sanger and her family moved to [[New York City]], where she went to work in the poverty-stricken [[Lower East Side]] of Manhattan. That same year she also started writing a column for the [[Socialism|Socialist]] Party paper, ''The New York Call'' entitled "What Every Girl Should Know." Sanger repeatedly risked scandal and imprisonment by distributing a pamphlet, ''Family Limitation,'' to poor women. By doing so, she was acting in defiance of the [[Comstock Law|Comstock Law of 1873]], which outlawed the dissemination of contraceptive information and devices because they were considered obscene.
  
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==Family planning clinics==
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Margaret separated from her husband, William Sanger, in 1913. In 1914, Sanger launched ''The Woman Rebel,'' a monthly newsletter in which she coined the term "birth control." She was indicted for violating postal obscenity laws in August and fled to [[Europe]] using the assumed name  "Bertha Watson" to escape prosecution. She returned to the United States in 1915, and later that year her five-year-old daughter, Peggy, died.
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On Oct. 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy St. in the Brownsville neighborhood of [[Brooklyn]], the first of its kind in the United States. It was raided nine days later by the police. She served 30 days in prison. An initial appeal was rejected but a state appellate court in 1918 allowed doctors to prescribe contraception.  
 
  
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In 1916, Sanger published ''What Every Girl Should Know,'' which was later widely distributed as one of the [[E. Haldeman-Julius]] "[[Little Blue Books]]." It not only provided basic information about such topics as [[menstruation]], but also promoted an understanding of sexuality in adolescents. It was followed in 1917 by ''What Every Mother Should Know''. She also launched the monthly periodical ''The Birth Control Review and Birth Control News'' and contributed articles on health for the [[United States Socialist Party|Socialist Party]] paper, ''The Call''.
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==Family planning activism==
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On Oct. 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic in [[Brooklyn]], New York, the first of its kind in the United States. It was raided by the police nine days after it opened and Sanger served 30 days in jail. While an initial appeal was rejected, in 1918, a state appellate court allowed doctors to prescribe contraception.  
  
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Sanger founded the [[American Birth Control League]] (ABCL) in 1921 with [[Lothrop Stoddard]] and [[C. C. Little]]. In 1922, she traveled to [[Japan]] to work with Japanese feminist [[Kato Shidzue]] promoting birth control; over the next several years, she would return another six times for this purpose. In this year she married the oil tycoon, James Noah H. Slee.  
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In 1916, Sanger published ''What Every Girl Should Know.'' It provided basic information about sexuality and development, particularly in adolescence. It was followed in 1917, by ''What Every Mother Should Know''.  
  
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In 1923, under the auspices of the ABCL, she established the Clinical Research Bureau. It was the first legal birth control clinic in the U.S. (renamed Margaret Sanger Research Bureau in her honor in 1940). It received crucial grants from [[John D. Rockefeller, Jr.]]'s Bureau of Social Hygiene from 1924 onwards, which were made anonymously to avoid public exposure of the Rockefeller name to her cause. The family also consistently supported her ongoing efforts in regard to population control.<small><ref>Crucial, anonymous Rockefeller grants to the Clinical Research Bureau and support for population control - see
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Sanger founded the [[American Birth Control League]] (ABCL) in 1921, along with [[Lothrop Stoddard]] and [[C. C. Little]]. In 1922, she traveled to [[Japan]] to work with Japanese feminist [[Kato Shidzue]] promoting birth control; over the next several years, she would return another six times for this purpose. In this same year, she married the oil tycoon, [[James Noah H. Slee]].  
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John Ensor Harr, and Peter J. Johnson. ''The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family''. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988. (pp.191, 461-62)</ref></small>
 
  
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Also in 1923, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control and served as its president until its dissolution in 1937 after birth control, under medical supervision, was legalized in many states. In 1927, Sanger helped organize the first [[World Population Conference]] in [[Geneva]].  
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In 1923, under the auspices of the ABCL, she established the Clinical Research Bureau. It was the first legal birth control clinic in the U.S. (renamed Margaret Sanger Research Bureau in her honor in 1940). The clinic received crucial grants from [[John D. Rockefeller]] Jr.'s Bureau of Social Hygiene from 1924 onwards. They were all made anonymously in order to avoid public knowledge that the Rockefellers supported her cause.<ref>John Ensor Harr, and Peter J. Johnson, ''The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family'' (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988). </ref>
  
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Between 1921 and 1926, Sanger received over a million letters from mothers requesting information on birth control. From 1916 on, she lectured "in many places—halls, churches, women's clubs, homes, theaters" to "many types of audiences—cotton workers, churchmen, liberals, Socialists, scientists, clubmen, and fashionable, philanthropically minded women." In 1926, in what she called "one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing", Sanger even gave a lecture on birth control to the [[WKKK|women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan]] in Silver Lake, [[New Jersey]], a group she found so ignorant she had to use only "the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand."<ref name=wkkk>{{cite book |author=Sanger, Margaret |year=1938 |title=Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=pp. 361, 366-7}}</ref>
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Also in 1923, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control and served as its president until its dissolution in 1937, after birth control, under medical supervision, was legalized in many states. In 1927, Sanger helped organize the first [[World Population Conference]] in [[Geneva]].  
  
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In 1928, Sanger resigned as the president of the ABCL. Two years later, she became president of the Birth Control International Information Center. In January 1932, she addressed the [[New History Society]], an organization founded by [[Mirza Ahmad Sohrab]] and [[Julia Lynch Olin|Julie Chanler]]; this address would later become the basis for an article entitled ''A Plan for Peace''.<ref name=pouzzner>Pouzzner.</ref> In 1937, Sanger became chairperson of the Birth Control Council of America and launched two publications, ''The Birth Control Review'' and ''The Birth Control News''. From 1939 to 1942, she was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America. From 1952 to 1959, she served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation; at the time, the largest private international family planning organization.
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From 1916 on, she lectured "in many places—halls, churches, women's clubs, homes, and theaters."<ref>Margaret Sanger, ''Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography'' (New York: W. W. Norton, 1938).</ref> In 1930, she became president of the Birth Control International Information Center. In January 1932, she addressed the [[New History Society]], an organization founded by [[Mirza Ahmad Sohrab]] and [[Julia Lynch Olin|Julie Chanler]]; this address would later become the basis for an article entitled ''A Plan for Peace''.<ref name=pouzzner>Pouzzner.</ref> In 1937, Sanger became chairperson of the Birth Control Council of America and launched two publications, ''The Birth Control Review'' and ''The Birth Control News''.
  
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During the 1960 presidential elections, Sanger was dismayed by candidate [[John F. Kennedy]]'s position on birth control (Kennedy did not believe birth control should be a matter of government policy). She threatened to leave the country if Kennedy were elected, but evidently reconsidered after Kennedy won the election.
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In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in [[Harlem.]] Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by the local newspaper, ''The Amsterdam News,'' the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the [[Urban League]], and the black community's elder statesman, [[W. E. B. Du Bois]]. In 1939, Du Bois served on the advisory council for Sanger's "Negro Project," which served [[African-Americans]] in the rural South. Others who supported the project included [[Mary McLeod Bethune]], founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and [[Adam Clayton Powell Jr.]], pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] and the medical [[philanthropy|philanthropists]], [[Albert Lasker|Albert]] and Mary Lasker, were also supporters of the project. Some in the African-American community would later be very critical of her work with blacks because of her support of [[Eugenics]].
  
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In the early 1960s, Sanger promoted the use of the newly available [[birth control pill]]. She toured Europe, Africa, and Asia, lecturing and helping to establish clinics.
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From 1939 to 1942, she was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America. From 1952 to 1959, she served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation; at the time, the largest private international family planning organization.
  
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Sanger died in 1966 in [[Tucson, Arizona]] at age 86 which was eight days from her 87th birthday and only a few months after the landmark ''[[Griswold v. Connecticut]]'' decision, which legalized birth control for married couples in the U.S., the apex of her 50-year struggle.
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In the early 1960s Sanger promoted the use of the newly available [[birth control pill]]. She toured [[Europe]], [[Africa]], and [[Asia]], lecturing and helping to establish clinics.
  
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Sanger's books include ''Woman and the New Race'' (1920), ''Happiness in Marriage'' (1926), ''My Fight For Birth Control'' (1931), and an autobiography (1938).
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Sanger died in 1966, in Tucson, [[Arizona]], at age 86, eight days from her 87th birthday. She died only a few months after the passage of the landmark ''[[Griswold v. Connecticut]]'' decision, which legalized birth control for married couples in the U.S., the apex of her 50-year struggle.
  
 
==Philosophy==
 
==Philosophy==
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Although Sanger was greatly influenced by her father, her mother's death left her with a deep sense of dissatisfaction concerning her own and society's understanding of women's health and childbirth. She also criticized the censorship of her message about sexuality and contraceptives by the civil and religious authorities as an effort by men to keep women in submission. An atheist, Sanger attacked Christian leaders opposed to her message, accusing them of [[Obscurantism]] and insensitivity to women's concerns. Sanger was particularly critical of the lack of awareness of the dangers of and the scarcity of treatment opportunities for [[venereal disease]] among women.  She claimed that these social ills were the result of the male establishment's intentionally keeping women in ignorance. Sanger also deplored the contemporary absence of regulations requiring registration of people diagnosed with venereal diseases (which she contrasted with mandatory registration of those with infectious diseases such as [[measles]]).
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Although Sanger was greatly influenced by her father, her mother's death left her with a deep sense of dissatisfaction concerning her own and society's understanding of women's health and childbirth. Sanger was particularly critical of the dangerous and scarce treatment opportunities available to women for [[venereal disease]]. Sanger spoke against the absence of regulations requiring registration of people diagnosed with venereal diseases (which she contrasted with mandatory registration of those with infectious diseases such as [[measles]]).  
  
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Sanger was also an avowed [[Socialism|socialist]], blaming the evils of contemporary [[capitalism]] for the unsatisfactory conditions of the young working-class women. Her very personal views on this issue are evident in the last pages of ''What Every Girl Should Know''.
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In addition to her controversial work for birth control legislation, Sanger was a proponent of [[eugenics]], defined in the eleventh edition of ''The Encyclopedia Britannica'' as "the organic betterment of the race through wise application of the laws of heredity." <ref>Marian Van Court, The Case for Eugenics in a Nutshell.</ref> In the early twentieth century, the eugenics movement, in which Sanger was prominently involved, gained strong support in the United States. Other adherents to the philosophy of eugenics included [[Charles Lindbergh]]<ref>Christine Rosen, [http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/religion/019515679X/toc.html Preaching Eugenics.] Retrieved March 25, 2007.</ref> [[Theodore Roosevelt]],<ref>Jonathan Marks, [http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/eugenics/eugenics.html Eugenics—Breeding a Better Citizenry Through Science.] Retrieved March 25, 2007.</ref> [[Winston Churchill]],<ref>R. Cort. Kirkwood,
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[http://www.lewrockwell.com/kirkwood/kirkwood37.html Eugenics Not Possible Without The Power Of The State.] Retrieved March 25, 2007.
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</ref> and [[George S. Patton]].<ref>Pattonhq.com, Patton Quotes.</ref> Eugenics is thought by many to insinuate [[racism]], even though its theory does not overtly promote the superiority of one race over another. On the corollary between a woman's choice and parturiency, Sanger commented: "When a motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race."<ref>MSU.edu, [http://www.msu.edu/course/mc/112/1920s/Sanger/Information.html About Margaret Sanger.] Retrieved March 25, 2007.</ref>
  
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===Psychology of sexuality===
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==Legacy and controversy==
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While Sanger's understanding of and practical approach to human physiology were progressive for her times, her thoughts on the psychology of human sexuality place her squarely in the pre-[[Freud]]ian 19th century. Birth control, it would appear, was for her more a means to limit the undesirable side-effects of sex than a way of liberating men and women to enjoy it. In ''What Every Girl Should Know'', she wrote: "Every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and woman who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual." Sexuality, for her, was a kind of weakness, and surmounting it indicated strength:
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While Sanger is widely credited as being instrumental in opening the way for universal access to birth control, she also gained notoriety for her views on [[eugenics]]. In her lifetime, the strongest opposition to her work came from the [[Catholic Church]]. She has often been labeled "an abortion advocate" even though [[abortion]] was illegal during Sanger's lifetime and Planned Parenthood did not support the procedure or lobby for its legalization while she was living.<ref>Rodger Streitmatter, ''Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-231-12249-7</ref> In a 1916 edition of ''Family Limitation,'' she wrote, "No one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable," though she framed this in the context of her birth control advocacy, adding that "abortions will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. (Care is) the only cure for abortions." Sanger consistently regarded birth control and abortion as the responsibility and burden first and foremost of women, and as matters of law, medicine and public policy secondarily.<ref>Gray.</ref>
  
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:Though sex cells are placed in a part of the anatomy for the essential purpose of easily expelling them into the female for the purpose of reproduction, there are other elements in the sexual fluid which are the essence of blood, nerve, brain, and muscle. When redirected in to the building and strengthening of these, we find men or women of the greatest endurance greatest magnetic power. A girl can waste her creative powers by brooding over a love affair to the extent of exhausting her system, with the results not unlike the effects of masturbation and debauchery.
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She also said of abortion in her 1938 autobiography: "To each group we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun."<ref>MSU.edu, [http://www.msu.edu/course/mc/112/1920s/Sanger/Information.html About Margaret Sanger.] Retrieved March 25, 2007.</ref>
  
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Her thoughts on human development were also laden with [[racism]]:
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==Author's works==
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*Sanger, Margaret. 1920. ''Woman and the New Race''. Brentano's.  
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:It is said that a fish as large as a man has a brain no larger than the kernel of an almond. In all fish and reptiles where there is no great brain development, there is also no conscious sexual control. The lower down in the scale of human development we go the less sexual control we find. It is said that the [[aboriginal Australian]], the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets.
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*Sanger, Margaret. 1969. ''Happiness in Marriage''. Maxwell Reprint Co. ISBN 0827720017
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*Sanger, Margaret. 1931. ''My Fight for Birth Control''. Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.
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Sanger, like most of the population of her time, also considered [[masturbation]] dangerous:
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*Sanger, Margaret. 2004. ''The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger''. Dover Publications. ISBN 0486434923
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:In my experience as a trained nurse while attending persons afflicted with various and often revolting diseases, no matter what their ailments, I have never found any one so repulsive as the chronic masturbator. It would be difficult not to fill page upon page of heartrending confessions made by young girls, whose lives were blighted by this pernicious habit, always begun so innocently, for even after they have ceased the habit, they find themselves incapable of any relief in the natural act. [...] Perhaps the greatest physical danger to the chronic masturbator is the inability to perform the sexual act naturally.
 
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For her, masturbation was not just a physical act, it was a mental state:
 
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:In the boy or girl past puberty, we find one of the most dangerous forms of masturbation, i.e., mental masturbation, which consists of forming mental pictures, or thinking obscene or voluptuous pictures. This form is considered especially harmful to the brain, for the habit becomes so fixed that it is almost impossible to free the thoughts from lustful pictures.
 
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=== Eugenics and euthanasia ===  
 
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Sanger was a proponent of [[eugenics]], a social philosophy claiming that human hereditary traits can be improved through social intervention. Methods of social intervention (targeted at those seen as "genetically unfit") advocated by eugenists have included selective breeding, sterilization, and euthanasia. In 1932, for example, Sanger argued for:
 
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<blockquote>A stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.<ref>Sanger, "A Plan For Peace", ''Birth Control Review,'' April 1932, p. 106</ref></blockquote>
 
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With advances in biology and genetics, it has become clear that the policies Sanger advocated to prevent the disabled from reproducing would in practice be ineffective.{{Fact|date=February 2007}} However, in the early 20th century, the eugenics movement, in which Sanger was prominently involved, gained strong support in the United States.  
 
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Sanger promoted the idea of "race hygiene" &ndash; meaning the human race, not the idea of race as ethnicity &ndash; through "negative eugenics," though her writings do not indicate that she believed that any particular (ethnic) race as a whole was more eugenic or dysgenic than any other, and she condemned the anti-Semitic Nazi program as "sad & horrible."<ref name=pouzzner />
 
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Of this, she said, "The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics."
 
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<ref>Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5</ref>
 
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Sanger saw birth control as a means to prevent "dysgenic" children from being born into a disadvantaged life, and dismissed "positive eugenics" (which promoted greater fertility for the "fitter" upper classes) as impractical. Though many leaders in the eugenics movement were calling for active euthanasia of the "unfit," Sanger spoke out against such methods. Edwin Black writes:
 
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<blockquote>In [William] Robinson's book, ''Eugenics, Marriage and Birth Control (Practical Eugenics),'' he advocated gassing the children of the unfit. In plain words, Robinson insisted: 'The best thing would be to gently chloroform these children or give them a dose of potassium cyanide.' Margaret Sanger was well aware that her fellow birth control advocates were promoting lethal chambers, but she herself rejected the idea completely. 'Nor do we believe,' wrote Sanger in ''Pivot of Civilization,'' 'that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent breeding.'<ref name=black-251>Black (''The War Against the Weak''), 251.</ref></blockquote>
 
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She maintained, however, that she advocated certain instances of coercion: "The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind."<ref>
 
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Margaret Sanger, quoted in Charles Valenza. "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?" Family Planning Perspectives, January-February 1985, page 44.</ref>
 
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===Freedom of speech===
 
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Sanger was an avid defender of free speech who was arrested at least eight times for expressing her views in a time when speaking publicly in favor of birth control was illegal. She stated in interviews that she had been influenced by the agnostic orator [[Robert G. Ingersoll]], who spoke in her hometown when she was 12 years old.<ref name="new yorker">"The Child Who Was Mother to a Woman" from ''The New Yorker'', April 11, 1925, page 11.</ref>
 
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==Legacy==
 
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Sanger remains a controversial figure. While she is widely credited as a leader of the modern birth control movement, and remains an iconic figure for the American [[reproductive rights]] movements, she also is reviled by some who condemn her as "an abortion advocate" (perhaps unfairly so: [[abortion]] was illegal during Sanger's lifetime and Planned Parenthood did not then support the procedure or lobby for its legalisation). Pro-life  groups have frequently targeted Sanger for her views, attributing her efforts to promote birth control to a desire to "purify" the human race through eugenics, and even to eliminate minority races by placing birth control clinics in minority neighborhoods.<ref>Marshall.</ref> For this reason, Sanger is often quoted selectively or out of context by detractors, and her history and involvement with socialism and eugenics have often been rationalized or even ignored by her defenders and biographers. Despite the allegations of racism, Sanger's work with minorities earned the respect of civil rights leaders such as [[Martin Luther King Jr.]]<ref>Planned Parenthood Federation of America.</ref> In their biographical article about Margaret Sanger, [[Planned Parenthood]] notes:
 
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<blockquote>In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support for contraceptive use and to bring the benefits of family planning to women who were denied access to their city's health and social services. Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the [[Urban League]], and the black community's elder statesman, [[W.E.B. DuBois]].<ref>Knowles.</ref></blockquote>
 
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Although Sanger's views on abortion (like many of her opinions) changed throughout the course of her life{{Fact|date=February 2007}}, in her early years she was acutely aware of the problem of abortion, typically self-induced or with the aid of a [[midwife]]. Her opposition to abortion stemmed primarily from a concern for the dangers to the mother, and less so from legal concerns or the welfare of the unborn child.<ref>{{cite book|last=Streitmatter|first=Rodger|title=Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America|publisher=[[Columbia University Press]]|date=2001|location=New York|pages=169|id=ISBN 0-231-12249-7}}</ref>  She wrote in a 1916 edition of ''Family Limitation,'' "no one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable," though she framed this in the context of her birth control advocacy, adding that "abortions will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. (Care is) the only cure for abortions." Sanger consistently regarded birth control and abortion as the responsibility and burden first and foremost of women, and as matters of law, medicine and public policy second.<ref>Gray.</ref>
 
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Sanger's 1938 autobiography notes her 1916 opposition to abortion as the taking of life: "To each group we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the  safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun."<ref name=abortion>{{cite book |author=Sanger, Margaret |year=1938 |title=Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton |pages=p. 217}}</ref>
 
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<!-- Some "conclusion" or "summary" paragraph should be here —>
 
  
 
==Notes==
 
==Notes==
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==References==
 
==References==
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*{{cite journal
+
*Chesler, Ellen. 1992. ''Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America.'' Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-60088-5
−
| last = Black
+
*Gray, Madeline. 1979. ''Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control.'' Putnam Pub Group. ISBN 0-399-90019-5
−
| first = Edwin
+
*Kennedy, David M. 1970. ''Birth Control in America; The Career of Margaret Sanger.'' Yale University Press. ISBN 0300012020
−
| authorlink = Edwin Black
+
*Marshall, Robert G. and Chuck Donovan. ''Blessed Are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood.'' San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991. ISBN 0-89870-353-0  
−
| date = [[November 9]], [[2003]]
+
*Reed, Miriam. 2003. ''Margaret Sanger: Her Life in Her Words''. Barricade Books. ISBN 1569802556
−
| title = '''Eugenics and the Nazis - the California connection'''
+
*Sanger, Margaret. ''An Autobiography.'' New York: Cooper Square Press, 1938. ISBN 0-8154-1015-8
−
| journal = San Francisco Chronicle
 
−
| pages = D - 1
 
−
| url = http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/09/ING9C2QSKB1.DTL
 
−
}}
 
−
*{{cite book
 
−
| last = Black
 
−
| first = Edwin
 
−
| authorlink = Edwin Black
 
−
| title = The War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race
 
−
| origyear = 2003
 
−
| origmonth = September
 
−
| publisher = Four Walls Eight Windows
 
−
| location = New York City, NY
 
−
| id = ISBN 1-56858-258-7
 
−
}}
 
−
*{{cite book
 
−
| last = Chesler
 
−
| first = Ellen
 
−
| title = Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America
 
−
| origyear = 1992
 
−
  | publisher = Simon & Schuster
 
−
| location = New York City, NY
 
−
| id = ISBN 0-671-60088-5
 
−
}}
 
−
*{{cite book
 
−
| last = Gray
 
−
| first = Madeline
 
−
| title = Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control
 
−
| origdate = 1979
 
−
| publisher = Richard Marek Publishers
 
−
| location = New York City, NY
 
−
| id = ISBN 0-399-90019-5
 
−
| pages = 280
 
−
}}
 
−
*{{cite web
 
−
| url=http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about/thisispp/sanger.html
 
−
| title=The Truth About Margaret Sanger
 
−
| first=Jon
 
−
| last=Knowles
 
−
| publisher=Katharine Dexter McCormick Library
 
−
| year=2004
 
−
}} (''[http://web.archive.org/web/20060426020211/www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/medicalinfo/birthcontrol/bio-margaret-sanger.xml April 20, 2006 version] available on the Internet Archive'')
 
−
*{{cite book
 
−
| author = Marshall, Robert G. and Donovan, Chuck
 
−
| title = Blessed Are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood
 
−
| url =
 
−
| year = 1991
 
−
| month = October
 
−
| publisher = Ignatius Press
 
−
| location = San Francisco, CA
 
−
| id = ISBN 0-89870-353-0  
 
−
}}
 
−
*{{cite book
 
−
| author = Sanger, Margaret
 
−
| title = An Autobiography
 
−
| url =
 
−
| year = 1938
 
−
| month =
 
−
| publisher = Cooper Square Press
 
−
| location = New York, NY
 
−
| id = ISBN 0-8154-1015-8
 
−
}}
 
−
 
 
−
*{{cite web
 
−
| url=http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/birthcontrol/pub-martin-luther-king.xml
 
−
| title=Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
 
−
| author=Planned Parenthood Federation of America
 
−
| year=2004
 
−
}}
 
−
*{{cite web
 
−
| last = Pouzzner
 
−
| first = Daniel
 
−
| year = February 2005
 
−
| url = http://www.mega.nu/ampp/eden/depopulation.html
 
−
| title = Returning to Eden: Herding People, Culling the Herd
 
−
| work = The Architecture of Modern Political Power
 
−
| accessdate = 2006-04-13
 
−
}}
 
−
*{{cite journal
 
−
| first = Margaret
 
−
| last = Sanger
 
−
| year = 1932
 
−
| month = April
 
−
| title = '''A Plan For Peace'''
 
−
| journal = The Birth Control Review
 
−
| pages = 106
 
−
| url = http://www.lrainc.com/swtaboo/taboos/ms_apwp.html
 
−
}}
 
−
*{{cite web
 
−
| url=http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/sanger.html
 
−
| title=Time's 100 Most Important People of the Century: Margaret Sanger
 
−
| work=Time Magazine
 
−
| author=Steinem, Gloria
 
−
| year=April 13, 1998
 
−
}}
 
−
 
 
−
==See also==
 
−
*[[Anthony Comstock]]
 
−
*[[C. C. Little]]
 
−
*[[Emma Goldman]]
 
−
*[[Ernst Rüdin]]
 
−
*[[Havelock Ellis]]
 
−
*[[H.G. Wells]]
 
−
*[[Houghton family]]
 
−
*[[Lothrop Stoddard]]
 
−
*[[Mary Dennett|Mary Ware Dennett]]
 
−
 
 
−
==Further reading==
 
−
===Works by Margaret Sanger===
 
−
*''[http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1689 The Pivot of Civilization]''
 
−
*''[http://pds.harvard.edu:8080/pdx/servlet/pds?id=2575249&n=2&s=4&res=3 Woman and the New Race c.1920]''
 
−
*''[http://digital.lib.msu.edu/collections/index.cfm?TitleID=129 What Every Girl Should Know (1920 ed.)]'' (GIF facsimile available)
 
−
*''[http://digital.lib.msu.edu/collections/index.cfm?TitleID=130 What Every Girl Should Know (1922 ed.)]'' (GIF and PDF facsimiles available)
 
−
*[http://womenshistory.about.com/library/etext/bl_sanger_1924.htm "The Case for Birth Control"] (first published in the ''Woman Citizen'', [[February 23]], [[1924]])
 
−
*[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pill/filmmore/ps_letters.html Correspondence] between Sanger and [[Katharine McCormick]]
 
−
*{{gutenberg author|id=Margaret_Sanger|name=Margaret Sanger}}
 
−
*[http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss43_main.html The Margaret Sanger Papers at Smith College]''
 
−
 
 
−
===Works by other authors===
 
−
*[http://www.time.com/time/time100/leaders/profile/sanger.html Profile on Time.com]
 
−
*[http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_margaret_sanger.htm Profile in Women's History section of About.com]
 
−
*[http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/ The Margaret Sanger Papers Project]
 
−
*[http://www.blackgenocide.org/sanger.html Online excerpt] from ''Blessed Are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood''
 
−
*[http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/ Online excerpts] from ''The War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race''
 
  
−
{{wikiquote}}
+
==External links==
 +
All links retrieved November 6, 2022.
 +
*Black, Edwin. San Francisco Chronicle. 2003. [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/11/09/ING9C2QSKB1.DTL ''Eugenics and the Nazis—the California Connection''] ''SFGate''.
 +
*[https://www.thoughtco.com/margaret-sanger-quotes-3530134 Margaret Sanger Quotes] ''ThoughtCo''.
 +
*[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/s#a693 Sanger, Margaret, 1879-1966] ''Project Gutenberg''.
 +
*[http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_margaret_sanger.htm ''Margaret Sanger''] ''About.com''.
 +
*Citizen magazine. 1992. [http://www.blackgenocide.org/sanger.html ''The Truth About Margaret Sanger.''] ''Blackgenocide.org''.
 +
*[http://www.sacred-texts.com/wmn/wnr/index.htm ''Woman and the New Race'']'' Sacred-texts.com''
  
 
[[Category:Politics and social sciences]]
 
[[Category:Politics and social sciences]]

Latest revision as of 08:32, 10 March 2023

Margaret Higgins Sanger
MargaretSanger-Underwood.LOC.jpg
Margaret Sanger.
Born
September 14, 1879
Corning, New York
Died
September 6, 1966
Tucson, Arizona

Margaret Higgins Sanger (September 14, 1879 - September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, and the founder of the American Birth Control League (which eventually became Planned Parenthood). Sanger worked as a public health nurse in the slums of New York City at the beginning of the twentieth century. She was strongly motivated to help women in the throes of poverty who were often grappling with health issues related to pregnancy and childbearing. She was also deeply affected by the circumstances of her own mother, whose poor health and untimely death was exacerbated by a large family she could not fully care for.

Sanger believed that uncontrolled fertility and poverty were inexorably related. While her ideas about women being able to decide how and when to bear children were initially met with fierce opposition, she gradually won support from both the public and from the courts. Sanger was arrested numerous times for expressing her views on birth control.

Biography

Sanger was born in Corning, New York. Her father Michael Higgins was described as a "free thinker and an outspoken radical." [1] Her mother, Anne Purcell Higgins, was a devout Roman Catholic who went through 18 pregnancies (with 11 live births)[2] before dying of tuberculosis and cervical cancer. Sanger attended Claverack College, a boarding school in Hudson, New York, for two years. Her sisters paid her tuition until 1899, when they were unable to continue to provide this assistance and she returned home. Her mother died the same year, after which Sanger enrolled in a nursing program at a hospital in White Plains, New York. In 1902, she married William Sanger. Although stricken by tuberculosis, she gave birth to a son the following year, followed in later years by a second son and a daughter who died in childhood.

In 1912, after a devastating fire destroyed the new home that her husband had designed, Sanger and her family moved to New York City, where she went to work in the poverty-stricken Lower East Side of Manhattan. That same year she also started writing a column for the Socialist Party paper, The New York Call entitled "What Every Girl Should Know." Sanger repeatedly risked scandal and imprisonment by distributing a pamphlet, Family Limitation, to poor women. By doing so, she was acting in defiance of the Comstock Law of 1873, which outlawed the dissemination of contraceptive information and devices because they were considered obscene.

Margaret separated from her husband, William Sanger, in 1913. In 1914, Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, a monthly newsletter in which she coined the term "birth control." She was indicted for violating postal obscenity laws in August and fled to Europe using the assumed name "Bertha Watson" to escape prosecution. She returned to the United States in 1915, and later that year her five-year-old daughter, Peggy, died.

Family planning activism

On Oct. 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York, the first of its kind in the United States. It was raided by the police nine days after it opened and Sanger served 30 days in jail. While an initial appeal was rejected, in 1918, a state appellate court allowed doctors to prescribe contraception.

In 1916, Sanger published What Every Girl Should Know. It provided basic information about sexuality and development, particularly in adolescence. It was followed in 1917, by What Every Mother Should Know.

Sanger founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921, along with Lothrop Stoddard and C. C. Little. In 1922, she traveled to Japan to work with Japanese feminist Kato Shidzue promoting birth control; over the next several years, she would return another six times for this purpose. In this same year, she married the oil tycoon, James Noah H. Slee.

In 1923, under the auspices of the ABCL, she established the Clinical Research Bureau. It was the first legal birth control clinic in the U.S. (renamed Margaret Sanger Research Bureau in her honor in 1940). The clinic received crucial grants from John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s Bureau of Social Hygiene from 1924 onwards. They were all made anonymously in order to avoid public knowledge that the Rockefellers supported her cause.[3]

Also in 1923, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control and served as its president until its dissolution in 1937, after birth control, under medical supervision, was legalized in many states. In 1927, Sanger helped organize the first World Population Conference in Geneva.

From 1916 on, she lectured "in many places—halls, churches, women's clubs, homes, and theaters."[4] In 1930, she became president of the Birth Control International Information Center. In January 1932, she addressed the New History Society, an organization founded by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab and Julie Chanler; this address would later become the basis for an article entitled A Plan for Peace.[5] In 1937, Sanger became chairperson of the Birth Control Council of America and launched two publications, The Birth Control Review and The Birth Control News.

In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning clinic in Harlem. Staffed by a black physician and black social worker, the clinic was endorsed by the local newspaper, The Amsterdam News, the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Urban League, and the black community's elder statesman, W. E. B. Du Bois. In 1939, Du Bois served on the advisory council for Sanger's "Negro Project," which served African-Americans in the rural South. Others who supported the project included Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of the National Council of Negro Women, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. Eleanor Roosevelt and the medical philanthropists, Albert and Mary Lasker, were also supporters of the project. Some in the African-American community would later be very critical of her work with blacks because of her support of Eugenics.

From 1939 to 1942, she was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America. From 1952 to 1959, she served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation; at the time, the largest private international family planning organization.

In the early 1960s Sanger promoted the use of the newly available birth control pill. She toured Europe, Africa, and Asia, lecturing and helping to establish clinics.

Sanger died in 1966, in Tucson, Arizona, at age 86, eight days from her 87th birthday. She died only a few months after the passage of the landmark Griswold v. Connecticut decision, which legalized birth control for married couples in the U.S., the apex of her 50-year struggle.

Philosophy

Although Sanger was greatly influenced by her father, her mother's death left her with a deep sense of dissatisfaction concerning her own and society's understanding of women's health and childbirth. Sanger was particularly critical of the dangerous and scarce treatment opportunities available to women for venereal disease. Sanger spoke against the absence of regulations requiring registration of people diagnosed with venereal diseases (which she contrasted with mandatory registration of those with infectious diseases such as measles).

In addition to her controversial work for birth control legislation, Sanger was a proponent of eugenics, defined in the eleventh edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica as "the organic betterment of the race through wise application of the laws of heredity." [6] In the early twentieth century, the eugenics movement, in which Sanger was prominently involved, gained strong support in the United States. Other adherents to the philosophy of eugenics included Charles Lindbergh[7] Theodore Roosevelt,[8] Winston Churchill,[9] and George S. Patton.[10] Eugenics is thought by many to insinuate racism, even though its theory does not overtly promote the superiority of one race over another. On the corollary between a woman's choice and parturiency, Sanger commented: "When a motherhood becomes the fruit of a deep yearning, not the result of ignorance or accident, its children will become the foundation of a new race."[11]

Legacy and controversy

While Sanger is widely credited as being instrumental in opening the way for universal access to birth control, she also gained notoriety for her views on eugenics. In her lifetime, the strongest opposition to her work came from the Catholic Church. She has often been labeled "an abortion advocate" even though abortion was illegal during Sanger's lifetime and Planned Parenthood did not support the procedure or lobby for its legalization while she was living.[12] In a 1916 edition of Family Limitation, she wrote, "No one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable," though she framed this in the context of her birth control advocacy, adding that "abortions will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. (Care is) the only cure for abortions." Sanger consistently regarded birth control and abortion as the responsibility and burden first and foremost of women, and as matters of law, medicine and public policy secondarily.[13]

She also said of abortion in her 1938 autobiography: "To each group we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun."[14]

Author's works

  • Sanger, Margaret. 1920. Woman and the New Race. Brentano's.
  • Sanger, Margaret. 1969. Happiness in Marriage. Maxwell Reprint Co. ISBN 0827720017
  • Sanger, Margaret. 1931. My Fight for Birth Control. Farrar & Rinehart, Inc.
  • Sanger, Margaret. 2004. The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger. Dover Publications. ISBN 0486434923

Notes

  1. ↑ MSU.edu, About Margaret Sanger. Retrieved March 25, 2007.
  2. ↑ Steinem.
  3. ↑ John Ensor Harr, and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988).
  4. ↑ Margaret Sanger, Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1938).
  5. ↑ Pouzzner.
  6. ↑ Marian Van Court, The Case for Eugenics in a Nutshell.
  7. ↑ Christine Rosen, Preaching Eugenics. Retrieved March 25, 2007.
  8. ↑ Jonathan Marks, Eugenics—Breeding a Better Citizenry Through Science. Retrieved March 25, 2007.
  9. ↑ R. Cort. Kirkwood, Eugenics Not Possible Without The Power Of The State. Retrieved March 25, 2007.
  10. ↑ Pattonhq.com, Patton Quotes.
  11. ↑ MSU.edu, About Margaret Sanger. Retrieved March 25, 2007.
  12. ↑ Rodger Streitmatter, Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). ISBN 0-231-12249-7
  13. ↑ Gray.
  14. ↑ MSU.edu, About Margaret Sanger. Retrieved March 25, 2007.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Chesler, Ellen. 1992. Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-60088-5
  • Gray, Madeline. 1979. Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control. Putnam Pub Group. ISBN 0-399-90019-5
  • Kennedy, David M. 1970. Birth Control in America; The Career of Margaret Sanger. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300012020
  • Marshall, Robert G. and Chuck Donovan. Blessed Are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991. ISBN 0-89870-353-0
  • Reed, Miriam. 2003. Margaret Sanger: Her Life in Her Words. Barricade Books. ISBN 1569802556
  • Sanger, Margaret. An Autobiography. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1938. ISBN 0-8154-1015-8

External links

All links retrieved November 6, 2022.

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