Margaret Higgins Sanger
"The Woman Rebel"
Margaret Higgins Sanger, born in Corning, New York on September 14, 1879, is credited today with starting the movement of birth control. She 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 has suffered as she bore eleven children. She came to believe in the importance to women’s lives and women’s health with the availability of birth control.
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. Despite that Act, in 1914 she issued a short-lived magazine called, The Woman Rebel, and also distributed a pamphlet, Family Limitation, which advanced her views. She was indicted for mailing materials advocating birth control, but the charges were dropped. In 1916 she opened in Brooklyn the first birth-control clinic in the United States. With all her legal appeals Sanger was able to get the federal courts to grant physicians the right to give advice about birth-control methods. After the Comstock Act was reinterpret in 1936 physicians obtained permission to import and prescribe contraceptives.
She became president of the American Birth Control League, founded by her in 1921. This organization changed its name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942. Sanger traveled throughout Europe to study the issue of birth control in that continent. She took her campaign of birth control as far as the Asian countries, including Japan and India.
Sanger got married twice. Her first marriage to William Sanger lasted twenty years. In 1922 she was remarried to J. Noah H. Lee.
For many that oppose her views, they charged her with eugenicism and racism. Those that support her consider the charges exaggerated or false.
Books:
My Fight for Birth Control
Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography
Women and the New Race
The Pivot of Civilization
Happiness in Marriage
Motherhood in Bondage
Favorite Quotes:
“Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers -- and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.”
“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body.”
“No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”
Books about Margaret Higgins Sanger:
The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Vol.1: The “Woman Rebel”
by: Esther Katz
Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement: A Bibliography
by: Gloria and Ronald Moore
A Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and Birth Control in America
by: Ellen Chesler
Margaret Higgins Sanger, born in Corning, New York on September 14, 1879, is credited today with starting the movement of birth control. She 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 has suffered as she bore eleven children. She came to believe in the importance to women’s lives and women’s health with the availability of birth control.
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. Despite that Act, in 1914 she issued a short-lived magazine called, The Woman Rebel, and also distributed a pamphlet, Family Limitation, which advanced her views. She was indicted for mailing materials advocating birth control, but the charges were dropped. In 1916 she opened in Brooklyn the first birth-control clinic in the United States. With all her legal appeals Sanger was able to get the federal courts to grant physicians the right to give advice about birth-control methods. After the Comstock Act was reinterpret in 1936 physicians obtained permission to import and prescribe contraceptives.
She became president of the American Birth Control League, founded by her in 1921. This organization changed its name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America in 1942. Sanger traveled throughout Europe to study the issue of birth control in that continent. She took her campaign of birth control as far as the Asian countries, including Japan and India.
Sanger got married twice. Her first marriage to William Sanger lasted twenty years. In 1922 she was remarried to J. Noah H. Lee.
For many that oppose her views, they charged her with eugenicism and racism. Those that support her consider the charges exaggerated or false.
Books:
My Fight for Birth Control
Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography
Women and the New Race
The Pivot of Civilization
Happiness in Marriage
Motherhood in Bondage
Favorite Quotes:
“Woman must have her freedom, the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she will be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers -- and before it can be his, it is hers alone. She goes through the vale of death alone, each time a babe is born. As it is the right neither of man nor the state to coerce her into this ordeal, so it is her right to decide whether she will endure it.”
“No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her own body.”
“No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.”
Books about Margaret Higgins Sanger:
The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Vol.1: The “Woman Rebel”
by: Esther Katz
Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement: A Bibliography
by: Gloria and Ronald Moore
A Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and Birth Control in America
by: Ellen Chesler
posted by anbiator @ 9:48 PM
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