| Margaret Sanger |
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Margaret Louise Higgins Sanger
(Some sources, including Webster's Dictionary of American Women and Contemporary Authors Online (2004) give her birth year as 1883.)
Margaret Sanger was educated as and worked as a nurse. In her work with poor women on the Lower East Side of New York, she was aware of the effects of unplanned and unwelcome pregnancies. Her mother's health had suffered as she bore eleven children. She came to believe in the importance to women's lives and women's health of the availability of birth control, a term which she's credited with inventing.
In 1912, Sanger gave up nursing work to dedicate herself to the distribution of birth control information. However, the Comstock Act of 1873 was used to forbid distribution of birth control devices and information. She wrote articles on health for the Socialist Party paper, the Call, and collected and published articles as What Every Girl Should Know (1916) and What Every Mother Should Know (1917).
In 1913 she went to Europe, founding a paper, Woman Rebel, on her return. She was indicted for "mailing obscenities," fled to Europe, and the indictment was withdrawn. In 1914 she founded the National Birth Control League which was taken over by Mary Ware Dennett and others while Sanger was in Europe.
In 1916 (1917 according to some sources), Sanger set up the first birth control clinic in the United States, and the following year, she was sent to the workhouse for "creating a public nuisance." Her many arrests and prosecutions, and the resulting outcries, helped lead to changes in laws giving doctors the right to give birth control advice (and later, birth control devices) to patients.
In 1927 Sanger helped organize the first World Population Conference in Geneva. In 1942, after several organizational mergers and name changes, Planned Parenthood Federation came into being.
Sanger wrote many books and articles on birth control, marriage and an autobiography (the latter in 1938).
Her first marriage, to William Sanger in 1900, ended in divorce in 1920; she was remarried in 1922 to J. Noah H. Slee, though she kept her by-then-famous (or infamous) name.
Today, organizations and individuals which oppose abortion and, sometimes, birth control, have charged Sanger with eugenicism and racism. Sanger supporters consider the charges exaggerated or false.
| Margaret Sanger on this site |
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- Margaret Sanger Quotations
- "The Case for Birth Control" by Margaret Sanger - 1924 article
| Also on this site |
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| Margaret Sanger on the Web |
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From the Margaret Sanger Papers Project:
- Biography of Margaret Sanger
- Writings by Margaret Sanger
- Margaret Sanger's Birth Control Organizations
- Secondary Sources on Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement
- Sanger and the First World Population Conference
- Gandhi and Sanger Debate Love, Lust and Birth Control
- The King and I - Sanger Remembers Havelock Ellis
- The Passionate Friends - H.G. Wells and Margaret Sanger
- Sanger, Censorship and the Catholic Church
- The Brownsville Clinic Testimony
- Ten Questions for Margaret Sanger on the Question of Women
- Writing Sanger's Life
- TIME 100 - Margaret Sanger
- Pictorial History
- Short profile
- Modern History Sourcebook: Margaret Sanger Autobiography (excerpt)
- Nursing Hall of Fame
- National Women's Hall of Fame
- Profile
- Birth Control history
- Censorship: Wielding the Red Pen - Margaret Sanger and Birth Control
- Margaret Sanger Clinic
| Margaret Sanger: Issues |
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Was she a eugenicist, racist and war-monger, as anti-abortion groups and individuals sometimes claim? Read these articles on both sides of the issue to come to your own conclusions about this controversy about history.
- Do Liberals Owe an Apology to the Victims of Sterilization? The Case of Margaret Sanger
- The Demonization of Margaret Sanger: addressing the anti-Sanger attacks.
- The Negro Project - example of the charges of eugenicism and racism against Sanger
- Sanger Fact Sheet - a defense of Sanger's contributions
- Woman and the New Race by Margaret Sanger - 1920 book that is part of this controversy
- Sanger's Legacy is Reproductive Rights and Racism - an article from 1998 which sees Sanger as a "tarnished heroine"
| Margaret Sanger: Writings |
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- "The Case for Birth Control" by Margaret Sanger - 1924 article
- Comstockery in America": Margaret Sanger's 1915 article, denouncing the Comstock Law and its use to suppress Sanger's writings.
- "Hotel Commodore Speech": Sanger's 1917 speech promoting birth control as necessary for world justice and peace.
- "Morality and Birth Control": Sanger's argument that "Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom." From 1918.
- "No Healthy Race Without Birth Control": Sanger's 1921 call for a baby's right to be wanted and right to a healthy mother.
- Papers Project: Information about the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, a project to make the papers of Sanger available on microfilm, in print, in the library, and on the web.
- The Pivot of Civilization: Project Gutenberg version of Margaret Sanger's book on the problems of "conscripted motherhood" and the value of planned parenthood.
- Selected Letters and Writings...: Announcement of the planned four-volume print publication of selections from Sanger's letters and writings. Also information on the microfilm edition of her papers.
- "To Mothers -- Our Duty": A 1911 article by Margaret Sanger. A call for women to help mothers to be able to stay at home, not the factory, during their children's earliest years.
- Woman and the New Race: Sanger's 1920 book that summarized the reasons birth control was needed by women: health, economic and social costs of not being able to plan family size.
- "Woman's Error and Her Debt": Sanger's 1921 argument that birth control is needed not merely for the freedom it directly brings to a woman, but for bringing to an end the miseries of women burdened by poverty and war, results of over-population.
- Writings by Margaret Sanger: A detailed bibliography of works by Sanger, including notes about many found on the Margaret Sanger Papers Project website.
| About Margaret Sanger |
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- Categories: Nurse, birth control pioneer, social reformer
- Organizational Affiliations: Planned Parenthood, Birth Control League
- Places: United States
- Period: 20th century
Text copyright 1999-2007 © Jone Johnson Lewis.
