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Margaret Sanger
Sanger in 1922
Born
Margaret Louise Higgins

(1879-09-14)September 14, 1879
Corning, New York,
United States
DiedSeptember 6, 1966(1966-09-06) (aged 86)
Tucson, Arizona,
United States
Occupation(s)Social reformer, sex educator, writer, nurse
Spouse(s)William Sanger (1902–1921)[note 1]
James Noah H. Slee (1922–1943).

Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise Higgins, September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Overview

Sanger used her writings and speeches primarily to promote her racist way of thinking. She was prosecuted for her book Family Limitation under the Comstock Act in 1914. She was afraid of what would happen, so she fled to Britain until she knew it was safe to return to the US.[citation needed] Sanger's efforts contributed to several judicial cases that helped legalize contraception in the United States.[citation needed] Due to her connection with Planned Parenthood Sanger is a frequent target of criticism by opponents of abortion. Sanger, who has been criticized for supporting negative eugenics, remains a recognizable and controversial figure in the American reproductive rights movement.[2]

In 1916, Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, which led to her arrest for distributing information on contraception. Her subsequent trial and appeal generated controversy. Sanger felt that in order for women to have a more equal footing in society and to lead healthier lives, they needed to be able to determine when to bear children. She also wanted to prevent unsafe abortions, so-called back-alley abortions,[3] which were common at the time because abortions were usually illegal.[citation needed] She believed that while abortion was sometimes justified it should generally be avoided, and she considered contraception the only practical way to avoid the use of abortions.[4]

In 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In New York City, she organized the first birth control clinic staffed by all-female doctors, as well as a clinic in Harlem with an entirely African-American staff.[citation needed] In 1929, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, which served as the focal point of her lobbying efforts to legalize contraception in the United States. From 1952 to 1959, Sanger served as president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She died in 1966, and is widely regarded as a founder of the modern birth control movement.

Life

Early life

Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins in 1879 in Corning, New York,[5] to Michael Hennessey Higgins, an Irish-born stonemason and free-thinker, and Anne Purcell Higgins, a Catholic Irish-American. Michael Hennessey Higgins had emigrated to the USA at age 14 and joined the U.S. Army as a drummer at age 15, during the Civil War. After leaving the army, Michael studied medicine and phrenology, but ultimately became a stonecutter, making stone angels, saints, and tombstones.[6] Michael H. Higgins was a Catholic who became an atheist and an activist for women's suffrage and free public education.[7] Anne Higgins went through 18 pregnancies (with 11 live births) in 22 years before dying at the age of 49. Sanger was the sixth of eleven surviving children,[8] and spent much of her youth assisting with household chores and caring for her younger siblings. Anne's parents took their children and emigrated to Canada when she was a child, due to the Potato Famine.

Supported by her two older sisters, Margaret Higgins attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute, before enrolling in 1900 at White Plains Hospital as a nurse probationer. In 1902, she married the architect William Sanger and gave up her education.[9] Though she was plagued by a recurring active tubercular condition, Margaret Sanger bore three children, and the couple settled down to a quiet life in Westchester, New York.

Sanger with sons Grant and Stuart, c. 1919

Social activism

In 1911, after a fire destroyed their home in Hastings-on-Hudson, the Sangers abandoned the suburbs for a new life in New York City. Margaret Sanger worked as a visiting nurse in the slums of the East Side, while her husband worked as an architect and a house painter. Already imbued with her husband's leftist politics, Margaret Sanger also threw herself into the radical politics and modernist values of pre-World War I Greenwich Village bohemia. She joined the Women's Committee of the New York Socialist party, took part in the labor actions of the Industrial Workers of the World (including the notable 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike and the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike) and became involved with local intellectuals, left-wing artists, socialists and social activists, including John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman.[10]

Sanger's political interests, emerging feminism and nursing experience led her to write two series of columns on sex education entitled "What Every Mother Should Know" (1911–12) and "What Every Girl Should Know" (1912-13) for the socialist magazine New York Call. By the standards of the day, Sanger's articles were extremely frank in their discussion of sexuality, and many New York Call readers were outraged by them. Other readers, however, praised the series for its candor, one stated that the series contained "a purer morality than whole libraries full of hypocritical cant about modesty.[11] Both were later published in book form in 1916.[12]

During her work among working class immigrant women, Sanger was exposed to graphic examples of women going through frequent childbirth, miscarriage and self-induced abortion for lack of information on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Access to contraceptive information was prohibited on grounds of obscenity by the 1873 federal Comstock law and a host of state laws. Searching for something that would help these women, Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to find information on contraception.[13] These problems were epitomized in a (possibly fictional) story that Sanger would later recount in her speeches: while Sanger was working as a nurse, she was called to the apartment of a woman, "Sadie Sachs," who had become extremely ill due to a self-induced abortion. Afterward, "Sadie" (whose marital status Sanger never mentioned) begged the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent this from happening again, to which the doctor simply advised her to remain abstinent. A few months later, Sanger was called back to "Sadie's" apartment — only this time, "Sadie" died shortly after Sanger arrived. She had attempted yet another self-induced abortion.[14][15] Sanger would sometimes end the story by saying, "I threw my nursing bag in the corner and announced ... that I would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth." Although "Sadie Sachs" was possibly a fictional composite of several women Sanger had known, this story marks the time when Sanger began to devote her life to help desperate women before they were driven to pursue dangerous and illegal abortions.[15][16] Sanger opposed abortion, but primarily as as a societal ill and public health danger that would disappear if women were able to prevent unwanted pregnancy.[17]

Accepting the connection proposed between contraception and working-class empowerment by radicals such as Emma Goldman, Sanger came to believe that only by liberating women from the risk of unwanted pregnancy would fundamental social change take place. She proceeded to launch a campaign to challenge governmental censorship of contraceptive information. She would set up a series of confrontational actions designed to challenge the law and force birth control to become a topic of public debate. Sanger's trip to France in 1913 exposed her to what Goldman had been saying. Sanger's experience during her trip to France directly influence The Women Rebel newsletter. The trip to France was also the beginning of the end of her marriage with William Sanger.[18]

In 1914, Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, an eight-page monthly newsletter which promoted contraception using the slogan "No Gods, No Masters".[19][note 2][20] Sanger, collaborating with anarchist friends, popularized the term "birth control" as a more candid alternative to euphemisms such as "family limitation"[21] and proclaimed that each woman should be "the absolute mistress of her own body."[22] In these early years of Sanger's activism, she viewed birth control as a free-speech issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel, one of her goals was to provoke a legal challenge to the federal anti-obscenity laws which banned dissemination of information about contraception.[23][24] Though postal authorities suppressed five of its seven issues, Sanger continued publication, all the while preparing, Family Limitation, another challenge to anti-birth control laws. This 16-page pamphlet contained detailed and precise information and graphic descriptions of various contraceptive methods. In August 1914 Margaret Sanger was indicted for violating postal obscenity laws by sending the The Woman Rebel through the postal system. Instead of standing trial, she jumped bail and fled to Canada. Then, under the alias "Bertha Watson", sailed for England. En route she ordered her labor associates to release copies of the Family Limitation.[25]

Margaret Sanger spent much of her 1914 exile in England, where contact with British neo-Malthusianists helped refine her socioeconomic justifications for birth control. She was also profoundly influenced by the liberation theories of British sexual theorist Havelock Ellis. Under his tutelage she formulated a new rationale, intending not just to make sexual intercourse safer for women, but more pleasurable. Early in 1915, Margaret Sanger's estranged husband, William Sanger, gave a copy of Family Limitation to a representative of anti-vice politician Anthony Comstock. William Sanger was tried and convicted, he spent thirty days in jail, while also escalating interest in birth control as a civil liberty issue.[26][27][28]

Birth control movement

Main article: Birth control movement in the United States
This page from Sanger's Family Limitation, 1917 edition, describes a cervical cap.

Some countries in northwestern Europe had more liberal policies towards contraception than the United States at the time, and when Sanger visited a Dutch birth control clinic in 1915, she learned about diaphragms and became convinced that they were a more effective means of contraception than the suppositories and douches that she had been distributing back in the United States. Diaphragms were generally unavailable in the United States, so Sanger and others began importing them from Europe, in defiance of United States law.[10]

In 1917, she started publishing the monthly periodical Birth Control Review.[note 3]

On October 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.[29] Nine days after the clinic opened, Sanger was arrested. Sanger's bail was set at $500 and she went back home. Sanger continued seeing some women in the clinic until the police came a second time. This time Sanger and her sister, Ethel Byrne, were arrested for breaking a New York state law that prohibited distribution of contraceptives, Sanger was also charged with running a public nuisance.[30] Sanger and Ethel went to trial in January 1917.[31] Byrne was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse but went on hunger strike. She was the first woman in the US to be force fed.[32] Only when Sanger pledged that Byrne would never break the law, she was pardoned after ten days.[33] Sanger was convicted; the trial judge held that women did not have "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception."[34] Sanger was offered a more lenient sentence if she promised to not break the law again, but she replied: "I cannot respect the law as it exists today."[35] For this, she was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse.[35] An initial appeal was rejected, but in a subsequent court proceeding in 1918, the birth control movement won a victory when Judge Frederick E. Crane of the New York Court of Appeals issued a ruling which allowed doctors to prescribe contraception.[36] The publicity surrounding Sanger's arrest, trial, and appeal sparked birth control activism across the United States, and earned the support of numerous donors, who would provide her with funding and support for future endeavors.[37]

Sanger became estranged from her husband in 1913, and the couple's divorce was finalized in 1921.[38] Sanger's second husband was Noah Slee. He followed Sanger around the world and provided much of Sanger's financial assistance. The couple got married in September 1922, but the public did not know about it until February 1924. They supported each other with their pre-commitments.[39]

American Birth Control League

Sanger published the Birth Control Review from 1917 to 1929.[note 4]

After World War I, Sanger shifted away from radical politics, and she founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) in 1921 to enlarge her base of supporters to include the middle class.[40] The founding principles of the ABCL were as follows:[41]

We hold that children should be (1) Conceived in love; (2) Born of the mother's conscious desire; (3) And only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of health. Therefore we hold that every woman must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception except when these conditions can be satisfied.

Sanger's appeal of her conviction for the Brownsville clinic secured a 1918 court ruling that exempted physicians from the law that prohibited the distribution of contraceptive information to women—provided it was prescribed for medical reasons—she established the Clinical Research Bureau (CRB) in 1923 to exploit this loophole.[10][42] The CRB was the first legal birth control clinic in the United States, and it was staffed entirely by female doctors and social workers.[43] The clinic received a large amount of funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his family, which continued to make donations to Sanger's causes in future decades, but generally made them anonymously to avoid public exposure of the family name,[44] and to protect family member Nelson Rockefeller's political career since openly advocating birth control could have led to the Catholic Church opposing him politically.[45] John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated five thousand dollars to her American Birth Control League in 1924 and a second time in 1925.[46] In 1922, she traveled to China, Korea, and Japan. In China she observed that the primary method of family planning was female infanticide, and she later worked with Pearl Buck to establish a family planning clinic in Shanghai.[47] Sanger visited Japan six times, working with Japanese feminist Kato Shidzue to promote birth control.[48] This was ironic since ten years earlier Sanger had accused Katō of murder and praised an attempt to kill her.[49]

In 1926, Sanger gave a lecture on birth control to the women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey.[50] She described it as "one of the weirdest experiences I had in lecturing," and added that she had to use only "the most elementary terms, as though I were trying to make children understand."[50] Sanger's talk was well received by the group, and as a result, "a dozen invitations to similar groups were proffered."[50]

In 1928, conflict within the birth control movement leadership led Sanger to resign as the president of the ABCL and take full control of the CRB, renaming it the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB), marking the beginning of a schism in the movement that would last until 1938.[51]

Sanger invested a great deal of effort communicating with the general public. From 1916 onward, she frequently lectured—in churches, women's clubs, homes, and theaters—to workers, churchmen, liberals, socialists, scientists, and upper-class women.[52] She wrote several books in the 1920s which had a nationwide impact in promoting the cause of birth control. Between 1920 and 1926, 567,000 copies of Woman and the New Race and The Pivot of Civilization were sold.[53] She also wrote two autobiographies designed to promote the cause. The first, My Fight for Birth Control, was published in 1931 and the second, more promotional version, Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography, was published in 1938.

During the 1920s, Sanger received hundreds of thousands of letters, many of them written in desperation by women begging for information on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies.[54][55] Five hundred of these letters were compiled into the 1928 book, Motherhood in Bondage.[56][57]

Planned Parenthood era

Main article: Planned Parenthood
Sanger's Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau operated from this New York building from 1930 to 1973.

In 1929, Sanger formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control in order to lobby for legislation to overturn restrictions on contraception.[58] That effort failed to achieve success, so Sanger ordered a diaphragm from Japan in 1932, in order to provoke a decisive battle in the courts. The diaphragm was confiscated by the United States government, and Sanger's subsequent legal challenge led to a 1936 court decision which overturned an important provision of the Comstock laws which prohibited physicians from obtaining contraceptives.[59] This court victory motivated the American Medical Association in 1937 to adopt contraception as a normal medical service and a key component of medical school curriculums.[60]

This 1936 contraception court victory was the culmination of Sanger's birth control efforts, and she took the opportunity, now in her late 50s, to move to Tucson, Arizona, intending to play a less critical role in the birth control movement. In spite of her original intentions, she remained active in the movement through the 1950s.[60]

In 1937, Sanger became chairman of the newly formed Birth Control Council of America, and attempted to resolve the schism between the ABCL and the BCCRB.[61] Her efforts were successful, and the two organizations merged in 1939 as the Birth Control Federation of America.[62][note 5] Although Sanger continued in the role of president, she no longer wielded the same power as she had in the early years of the movement, and in 1942, more conservative forces within the organization changed the name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a name Sanger objected to because she considered it too euphemistic.[63]

In 1946, Sanger helped found the International Committee on Planned Parenthood, which evolved into the International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1952, and soon became the world's largest non-governmental international women's health, family planning and birth control organization. Sanger was the organization's first president and served in that role until she was 80 years old.[64] In the early 1950s, Sanger encouraged philanthropist Katharine McCormick to provide funding for biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the birth control pill which was eventually sold under the name Enovid.[65]

Death

Margaret Sanger Square, at the intersection of Mott Street and Bleecker Street in Manhattan

Sanger died of congestive heart failure in 1966 in Tucson, Arizona, aged 86, about a year after the U.S. Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized birth control in the United States.[note 6] Sanger is buried in Fishkill, New York, next to her sister, Nan Higgins, and her second husband, Noah Slee.[66] One of her surviving brothers was College Football Hall of Fame player and coach Bob Higgins.[67]

Legacy

Sanger's story has been the subject of several biographies, including an award-winning biography published in 1970 by David Kennedy, and is also the subject of several films, including Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story.[68] Sanger's writings are curated by two universities: New York University's history department maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers Project,[69] and Smith College's Sophia Smith Collection maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers collection.[70]

Sanger has been recognized with several honors. In 1957, the American Humanist Association named her Humanist of the Year. Government authorities and other institutions have memorialized Sanger by dedicating several landmarks in her name, including a residential building on the Stony Brook University campus, a room in Wellesley College's library,[71] and Margaret Sanger Square in New York City's Noho area.[72] In 1993, the Margaret Sanger Clinic—where she provided birth control services in New York in the mid twentieth century—was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.[73] In 1966, Planned Parenthood began issuing its Margaret Sanger Awards annually to honor "individuals of distinction in recognition of excellence and leadership in furthering reproductive health and reproductive rights."[74] The artwork The Dinner Party features a place setting for Sanger.[75]

Due to her connection with Planned Parenthood, many who are opposed to abortion frequently condemn Sanger by criticizing her views on racial supremacy, birth control, and eugenics.[76][77][note 7] In spite of such controversies, Sanger continues to be regarded as a recognizable force in the American reproductive rights movement and woman's rights movement.

Views

Sexuality

While researching information on contraception Sanger read various treatises on sexuality in order to find information about birth control. She read The Psychology of Sex by the English psychologist Havelock Ellis and was heavily influenced by it.[78] While traveling in Europe in 1914, Sanger met Ellis.[79] Influenced by Ellis, Sanger adopted his view of sexuality as a powerful, liberating force.[80] This view provided another argument in favor of birth control, as it would enable women to fully enjoy sexual relations without the fear of an unwanted pregnancy.[81] Sanger also believed that sexuality, along with birth control, should be discussed with more candor.[80]

However, Sanger was opposed to excessive sexual indulgence. She stated "every normal man and woman has the power to control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells thinking deeply, are never sensual."[82][83] Sanger said that birth control would elevate women away from a position of being an object of lust and elevate sex away from purely being for satisfying lust, saying that birth control "denies that sex should be reduced to the position of sensual lust, or that woman should permit herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction."[84] Sanger wrote that masturbation was dangerous. She stated: "In my personal experience as a trained nurse while attending persons afflicted with various and often revolting diseases, no matter what their ailments, I never found any one so repulsive as the chronic masturbator. It would not be difficult to fill page upon page of heart-rending confessions made by young girls, whose lives were blighted by this pernicious habit, always begun so innocently."[85] She believed that women had the ability to control their sexual impulses, and should utilize that control to avoid sex outside of relationships marked by "confidence and respect." She believed that exercising such control would lead to the "strongest and most sacred passion."[86] However, Sanger was not opposed to homosexuality and praised Ellis for clarifying "the question of homosexuals... making the thing a—not exactly a perverted thing, but a thing that a person is born with different kinds of eyes, different kinds of structures and so forth... that he didn't make all homosexuals perverts—and I thought he helped clarify that to the medical profession and to the scientists of the world as perhaps one of the first ones to do that."[87] Sanger believed sex should be discussed with more candor, and praised Ellis for his efforts in this direction. She also blamed the suppression of discussion about it on Christianity.[87]


Controversies

Abortion

Sanger advocated the use of contraception for family planning as a safe alternative to abortion.[88][89][90][17] As a nurse she was alarmed by the cases of death that resulted from botched abortions.[91][92] She was eager to separate the issue of birth control from the less acceptable and higher risk procedure of abortion.[88][93] While she did accept abortion "as a last resort"[88][94] she generally distanced herself from the practice as it was then performed.[93]

Eugenics

An advertisement for a book entitled "Woman and the New Race". At the top is a photo of a woman, seated affectionately with her two sons.
Sanger's 1920 book endorsed negative eugenics.

Originally Sanger based the advocacy of birth control on feminist ideals. After World War I, Sanger increasingly appealed to the societal need to limit births by those least able to afford children. The affluent and educated already limited their child-bearing while the poor and ignorant lacked access to contraception and information about birth-control.[95] Here she found an area of overlap with eugenicists.[95] She believed that they both sought to "assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit." They differed in that "eugenists imply or insist that a woman's first duty is to the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her duty to the state."[96] Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, which aims to improve human hereditary traits through social intervention by reducing the reproduction of those who were considered unfit.[97][98]

In “The Morality of Birth Control,” a 1921 speech, she divided society into three groups: the "educated and informed" class that regulated the size of their families, the "intelligent and responsible" who desired to control their families however did not have the means or the knowledge and the "irresponsible and reckless people" whose religious scruples "prevent their exercising control over their numbers.” Sanger concludes “there is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.”[99]

Sanger's eugenic policies included an exclusionary immigration policy, free access to birth control methods and full family planning autonomy for the able-minded, and compulsory segregation or sterilization for the "profoundly retarded".[100][101] In her book The Pivot of Civilization, she advocated coercion to prevent the "undeniably feeble-minded" from procreating.[102]

Although Sanger supported negative eugenics, she asserted that eugenics alone was not sufficient, and that birth control was essential to achieve her goals.[103][104][105]

In contrast with eugenicist William Robinson, who advocated euthanasia for the unfit,[note 8] Sanger wrote, "we [do not] believe that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent breeding."[106] Similarly, Sanger denounced the aggressive and lethal Nazi eugenics program.[101] In addition, Sanger believed the responsibility for birth control should remain in the hands of able-minded individual parents rather than the state, and that self-determining motherhood was the only unshakable foundation for racial betterment.[103][107]

Sanger also supported restrictive immigration policies. In "A Plan for Peace", a 1932 essay, she proposed a congressional department to address population problems. She also recommended that immigration exclude those "whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race," and that sterilization and segregation be applied to those with incurable, hereditary disabilities.[100][101][108]

Race

W. E. B. Du Bois served on the board of Sanger's Harlem clinic.[109]

She collaborated with African-American leaders and professionals who saw a need for birth control in their communities. In 1929, James H. Hubert, a black social worker and leader of New York's Urban League, asked Sanger to open a clinic in Harlem.[110] Sanger secured funding from the Julius Rosenwald Fund and opened the clinic, staffed with black doctors, in 1930. The clinic was directed by a 15-member advisory board consisting of black doctors, nurses, clergy, journalists, and social workers. The clinic was publicized in the African-American press and in black churches, and it received the approval of W. E. B. Du Bois, founder of the NAACP.[111] Sanger did not tolerate bigotry among her staff, nor would she tolerate any refusal to work within interracial projects.[112] Sanger's work with minorities earned praise from Martin Luther King, Jr., in his 1966 acceptance speech for the Margaret Sanger award.[113]

From 1939 to 1942 Sanger was an honorary delegate of the Birth Control Federation of America, which included a supervisory role—alongside Mary Lasker and Clarence Gamble—in the Negro Project, an effort to deliver birth control to poor black people.[114] Sanger wanted the Negro Project to include black ministers in leadership roles, but other supervisors did not. To emphasize the benefits of involving black community leaders, she wrote to Gamble "we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." While New York University's Margaret Sanger Papers Project, argues that in writing that letter, "Sanger recognized that elements within the black community might mistakenly associate the Negro Project with racist sterilization campaigns in the Jim Crow South;"[115] Angela Davis uses the quote to support claims that Sanger intended to exterminate the black population.[116]

Freedom of speech

Sanger opposed censorship throughout her career. Sanger grew up in a home where orator Robert Ingersoll was admired.[117] During the early years of her activism, Sanger viewed birth control primarily as a free-speech issue, rather than as a feminist issue, and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel in 1914, she did so with the express goal of provoking a legal challenge to the Comstock laws banning dissemination of information about contraception.[24] In New York, Emma Goldman introduced Sanger to members of the Free Speech League, such as Edward Bliss Foote and Theodore Schroeder, and subsequently the League provided funding and advice to help Sanger with legal battles.[118]

Over the course of her career, Sanger was arrested at least eight times for expressing her views during an era in which speaking publicly about contraception was illegal.[119] Numerous times in her career, local government officials prevented Sanger from speaking by shuttering a facility or threatening her hosts.[120] In Boston in 1929, city officials under the leadership of James Curley threatened to arrest her if she spoke. In response she stood on stage, silent, with a gag over her mouth, while her speech was read by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.[121]

Works

Books and pamphlets
  • What Every Mother Should Know – Originally published in 1911 or 1912, based on a series of articles Sanger published in 1911 in the New York Call, which were, in turn, based on a set of lectures Sanger gave to groups of Socialist party women in 1910–1911.[122] Multiple editions published through the 1920s, by Max N. Maisel and Sincere Publishing, with the title What Every Mother Should Know, or how six little children were taught the truth ... Online (1921 edition, Michigan State University)
  • Family Limitation – Originally published 1914 as a 16-page pamphlet; also published in several later editions. Online (1917, 6th edition, Michigan State University)
  • What Every Girl Should Know – Originally published 1916 by Max N. Maisel; 91 pages; also published in several later editions. Online (1920 edition); Online (1922 ed., Michigan State University)
  • The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts – May 1917, published to provide information to the court in a legal proceeding. Online (Internet Archive)
  • Woman and the New Race, 1920, Truth Publishing, foreword by Havelock Ellis. Online (Harvard University); Online (Project Gutenberg); Online (Internet Archive); Audio on Archive.org
  • Debate on Birth Control – 1921, text of a debate between Sanger, Theodore Roosevelt, Winter Russell, George Bernard Shaw, Robert L. Wolf, and Emma Sargent Russell. Published as issue 208 of Little Blue Book series by Haldeman-Julius Co. Online (1921, Michigan State University)
  • The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Brentanos. Online (1922, Project Gutenberg); Online (1922, Google Books)
  • Motherhood in Bondage, 1928, Brentanos. Online (Google Books).
  • My Fight for Birth Control, 1931, New York: Farrar & Rinehart
  • An Autobiography. New York, NY: Cooper Square Press. 1938. ISBN 0-8154-1015-8.
  • Fight for Birth Control, 1916, New York] [123] (The Library of Congress)
  • Birth Control A Parent's Problem or Women's?" The Birth Control Review, Mar. 1919, 6-7.
Periodicals
  • The Woman Rebel – Seven issues published monthly from March 1914 to August 1914. Sanger was publisher and editor.
  • Birth Control Review – Published monthly from February 1917 to 1940. Sanger was Editor until 1929, when she resigned from the ABCL.[124] Not to be confused with Birth Control News, published by the London-based Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress.
Collections and anthologies
Speeches

See also

Notes

  1. ^ They became estranged in 1913, but the divorce was not finalized until 1921.[1]
  2. ^ The slogan "No Gods, No Masters" originated in a flyer distributed by the IWW in the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike.
  3. ^ The first issue of Birth Control Review was published in February 1917.
  4. ^ Caption at the bottom of this 1919 issue reads: "Must She Always Plead in Vain? 'You are a nurse—can you tell me? For the children's sake—help me!'"
  5. ^ Date of merger recorded as 1938 (not 1939) in: O'Conner, Karen, Gender and Women's Leadership: A Reference Handbook, p. 743. O'Conner cites Gordon (1976).
  6. ^ In 1965, the case had struck down one of the remaining contraception-related Comstock laws in Connecticut and Massachusetts. However, Griswold only applied to marital relationships. A later case, Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), extended the Griswold holding to unmarried persons as well.
  7. ^ A typical pro-life publication critical of Sanger is: Franks, Angela, Margaret Sanger's Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility, McFarland, 2005.
  8. ^ For example, in his book, Eugenics, Marriage and Birth Control (Practical Eugenics), Robinson wrote: "The best thing would be to gently chloroform these [unfit] children or give them a dose of potassium cyanide."

References

  1. ^ Baker, Jean H. Margaret Sanger: a life of passion. p. 126. OCLC 705717104.
  2. ^ Katz 2000.
  3. ^ Cox 2004, p. 3-4.
  4. ^ Sanger, Margaret (1917). Family Limitation (PDF). p. 5.
  5. ^ History of the Corning-Painted Post Area, p. 240
  6. ^ Sanger, Margaret, The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, pp. 1-3.
  7. ^ "Margaret Sanger". Infidels.org. Retrieved 2012-03-12.; Rosalind Rosenberg, Divided lives: American women in the twentieth century, p. 82.
  8. ^ Cooper, James L.; Cooper, Sheila M. (1973). The Roots of American Feminist Thought. Alvin and Bacon. p. 219. ASIN B002VY8L0O.
  9. ^ Sanger, Margaret. Autobiography (New York: Norton, 1938), p. 13; Katz, Esther, et al., eds, The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Vol. 1: The "Woman Rebel" 1900-1928 (Urbana: Illinois University Press, 2003), pp. 4-5.
  10. ^ a b c Chesler 1992.
  11. ^ Chesler 1992, p. 65.
  12. ^ Dietrich 2010; Engelman 2011, p. 32; Blanchard 1992, p. 50; Coates 2008, p. 49
  13. ^ Endres, Kathleen L., Women's Periodicals in the United States: social and political issues, p. 448; Endres cites Sanger, An Autobiography, pp. 95–96. Endres cites Kennedy, p. 19, as pointing out that some materials on birth control were available in 1913.
  14. ^ Lader (1955), pp. 44–50.
    Baker, pp. 49–51.
    Kennedy, pp. 16–18.
  15. ^ a b Viney, Wayne; King, D. A. (2003). A History of Psychology: Ideas and Context. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 0-205-33582-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ^ Composite story: The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1, p. 185. This source identifies the source of Sanger's quote as: "Birth Control", Library of Congress collection of Sanger's papers: microfilm: reel 129: frame 12, April 1916.
  17. ^ a b Streitmatter, Rodger (2001). Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 169. ISBN 0-231-12249-7.
  18. ^ Franks, Angela (2005). Margaret Sanger's Eugenic Legacy: the control of female fertility. North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. pp. 28–29. ISBN 0-7864-2011-1.
  19. ^ Kennedy, pp. 1, 22.
  20. ^ Sanger, Margaret, The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger, Mineola, New York: Dover Printing Publications Inc., 2004, pp. 111-112.
  21. ^ The term "birth control" was suggested in 1914 by a young friend called Otto Bobstein – Chesler, p. 97.
    Katz, The selected papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1, p. 70.
    Galvin, Rachel. Margaret Sanger's "Deeds of Terrible Virtue" Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, September/October 1998, Vol. 19/Number 5.
  22. ^ Engelman, Peter C., "Margaret Sanger", article in Encyclopedia of Leadership, Volume 4, George R. Goethals, et al (eds), SAGE, 2004, p. 1382.
    Engelman cites facsimile edited by Alex Baskin, Woman Rebel, New York: Archives of Social History, 1976. Facsimile of original.
  23. ^ Katz, Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Vol. 1.
  24. ^ a b McCann 2010, pp. 750–51.
  25. ^ Douglas, Emily (1970). Margaret Sanger: Pioneer of the Future. Canada: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. p. 57.
  26. ^ Douglas, Emily (1970). Margaret Sanger: Pioneer of the Future. Canada: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. p. 80.
  27. ^ Haight, Anne Lyon (1935). Banned books: informal notes on some books banned for various reasons at various times and in various places. New York: R.R. Bowker Company. p. 65.
  28. ^ "Anthony Comstock Dies In His Crusade". Reading Eagle. Reading, Pennsylvania. 1915-09-22. p. 6.
  29. ^ Selected Papers, vol 1, p. 199.
    Baker, p. 115.
  30. ^ Margaret Sanger: Pioneer to the Future, p. 109.
  31. ^ Engelman, p. 101.
  32. ^ "First woman in US given English dose". The Seattle Star. 27 Jan 1917. p. 1. Retrieved 16 Nov 2014.
  33. ^ "Mrs. Byrne pardoned; pledged to obey law;". New York Times. 2 Feb 1917. Retrieved 16 Nov 2014.
  34. ^ Lepore, Jill (November 14, 2011). "Birthright: What's next for Planned Parenthood?". New Yorker. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  35. ^ a b Cox, p. 65.
  36. ^ Engelman, pp. 101–3.
  37. ^ McCann, 2010, p. 751.
  38. ^ Cox, p. 76.
  39. ^ Margaret Sanger: Pioneer of the Future pp. 178-80.
  40. ^ Freedman, Estelle B., The essential feminist reader, Random House Digital, Inc., 2007, p. 211.
  41. ^ "Birth control: What it is, How it works, What it will do", The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference, November 11, 12, 1921, pp. 207–8.
    The Birth Control Review, Vol. V, No. 12, December 1921, Margaret Sanger (ed.), p. 18.
    Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, 2001 reprint edited by Michael W. Perry, p. 409.
    These principles were adopted at the first meeting of the ABCL in late 1921.
  42. ^ Baker, p. 196.
  43. ^ Baker, pp. 196–97.
    The Selected Papers, Vol 2, p. 54.
  44. ^ Chesler, pp. 277, 293, 558.
    Harr, John Ensor; Johnson, Peter J. (1988). The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of America's Greatest Family. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 191, 461–62.—crucial, anonymous Rockefeller grants to the Clinical Research Bureau and support for population control
  45. ^ Chesler, Ellen Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992, p. 425.
  46. ^ Katz, Esther; Sanger, Margaret, The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 430.
  47. ^ Cohen, pp. 64–5.
  48. ^ Baker, p. 275.
    Katō, Shidzue, Facing Two Ways: the story of my life, Stanford University Press, 1984, p. xxviii.
    D'Itri, Patricia Ward, Cross Currents in the International Women's Movement, 1848–1948, Popular Press, 1999, pp. 163–67.
  49. ^ Katz, Esther (ed.); Sanger, Margaret, The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger Volume 1: The Woman Rebel 1900-1928, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 421.
  50. ^ a b c Sanger, Margaret (1938). Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography. New York: W. W. Norton. pp. 361, 366–7.
  51. ^ McCann (1994), pp. 177–8.
    "MSPP > About > Birth Control Organizations > Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau". Nyu.edu. 2005-10-18. Retrieved 2009-10-07.
  52. ^ Sanger, Margaret (1938). The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger. W. W. Norton. p. 366. ISBN 0-486-43492-3.
  53. ^ Baker, p. 161.
  54. ^ ""Motherhood in Bondage," #6, Winter 1993/4". Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Retrieved April 9, 2011.
  55. ^ The number of letters is reported as "a quarter million", "over a million", or "hundreds of thousands" in various sources
  56. ^ 500 letters: Cohen, p. 65.
  57. ^ Sanger, Margaret (2000). Motherhood in bondage. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press. ISBN 0-8142-0837-1.
  58. ^ "National Committee on Federal Legislation on Birth Control". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project
  59. ^ Rose, Melody, Abortion: a documentary and reference guide, ABC-CLIO, 2008, p. 29.
  60. ^ a b "'Biographical Note', Smith College, Margaret Sangers Papers". Asteria.fivecolleges.edu. 1966-09-06. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
  61. ^ NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project "Birth Control Council of America"
  62. ^ The Margaret Sanger Papers (2010). "MSPP > About > Birth Control Organizations > PPFA". nyu.edu. Retrieved 17 October 2011.
  63. ^ Chesler, p. 393.
    NYU
  64. ^ Ford, Lynne E., Encyclopedia of Women and American Politics, p. 406.
    Esser-Stuart, Joan E., "Margaret Higgins Sanger", in Encyclopedia of Social Welfare History in North America, Herrick, John and Stuart, Paul (eds), SAGE, 2005, p. 323.
  65. ^ Engelman, Peter, "McCormick, Katharine Dexter", in Encyclopedia of Birth Control, Vern L. Bullough (ed.), ABC-CLIO, 2001, pp. 170–1.
    Marc A. Fritz, Leon Speroff, Clinical Gynecologic Endocrinology and Infertility, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2010, pp. 959–960.
  66. ^ Baker, p. 307.
  67. ^ "Margaret Sanger obituary". Toledo Blade. 1966-09-06. Retrieved 2014-07-27. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  68. ^ Choices of the Heart—1995, starring Dana Delany and Henry Czerny, "'Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story (1995)'". IMDb (The Internet Movie Database). 1995-03-08. Retrieved 2009-07-29.
    Portrait of a Rebel: The Remarkable Mrs. Sanger, TV movie, 1980, starring Bonnie Franklin as Sanger; IMDB
  69. ^ "NYU Sanger Papers Project web site". Nyu.edu. 2007-02-07. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
  70. ^ "Smith College collection web site". Asteria.fivecolleges.edu. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
  71. ^ "Friends of the Library Newsletter" (PDF). Wellesley.edu. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
  72. ^ Kayton, Bruce (2003). Radical Walking Tours of New York City. New York: Seven Stories Press. p. 111. ISBN 1-58322-554-4. Retrieved 2010-12-29.
  73. ^ "National Historic Landmark Program". Tps.cr.nps.gov. 1993-09-14. Retrieved 2012-03-12.
  74. ^ "Rockefeller 3d Wins Sanger Award". New York Times. 1967-10-09. Retrieved February 14, 2011.
    "Planned Parenthood Salutes Visionary Leaders in the Fight for Reproductive Freedom." Press release in Business Wire, March 29, 2003: 5006. General OneFile. Web. February 11, 2011.
    Lozano, Juan (March 27, 2009). "Clinton champions women's rights worldwide". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved February 14, 2011. [dead link]
  75. ^ Place Settings. Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved on 2015-08-06.
  76. ^ Marshall, Robert G.; Donovan, Chuck (October 1991). Blessed Are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood. Fort Collins, CO: Ignatius Press. ISBN 978-0-89870-353-5.
  77. ^ "Minority Anti-Abortion Movement Gains Steam". NPR. September 24, 2007. Retrieved 2009-01-17.
  78. ^ Sanger, Margaret, The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications Inc., 2004, p. 94.
  79. ^ Cox, p. 55.
  80. ^ a b Chesler, pp. 13–14.
  81. ^ Chesler
    Kennedy, p. 127.
  82. ^ Sanger, Margaret (December 29, 1912), "What Every Girl Should Know: Sexual Impulses - Part II", New York Call – via The Margaret Sanger Papers Project {{citation}}: External link in |via= (help)
  83. ^ Bronski, Michael, A Queer History of the United States, Beacon Press, 2011, p. 100.
  84. ^ Sanger, Margaret, The Pivot of Civilization, Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2003, p. 204.
  85. ^ Margaret Sanger, "What Every Girl Should Know: Sexual Impulse - Part I", December 22, 1912.
  86. ^ Bronski, Michael, A Queer History of the United States, Beacon Press, 2011.
    Quotes from Sanger, "What Every Girl should know: Sexual Impulses Part II", in New York Call, December 29, 1912; also in the subsequent book What Every Girl Should Know, pp. 40–48; reprinted in The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1, pp. 41–5 (quotes on p. 45).
  87. ^ a b The Mike Wallace Interview, Guest: Margaret Sanger, 9/21/57.
  88. ^ a b c Baker, pp. 3, 86.
  89. ^ Kennedy, p. 81.
  90. ^ Hitchcock, Susan Tyler, Roe v. Wade: Protecting a Woman's Right to Choose, Infobase Publishing, 2006, pp. 29–35.
  91. ^ Chesler, p. 63.
  92. ^ Kennedy pp.16-18, 33.
  93. ^ a b Chesler, p. 271.
  94. ^ Grey, p.280.
  95. ^ a b Kevles, Daniel J. (1985). In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. University of California Press. pp. 90–96. ISBN 0-520-05763-5.
  96. ^ Engelman, p. 132.
  97. ^ Arina Grossu -"Margaret Sanger, Racist Eugenicist Extraordinaire: The founder of Planned Parenthood would have considered many Americans unworthy of life", Washington Times, May 5, 2014.[1] Retrieved 2015-07-27
  98. ^ "People & Events: Eugenics and Birth Control". PBS. Retrieved August 6, 2015.
  99. ^ "American Rhetoric: Margaret Sanger -- The Morality of Birth Control". americanrhetoric.com. Retrieved 8 August 2015.
  100. ^ a b Porter, Nicole S.; Bothne Nancy; Leonard, Jason (2008-02-01). Evans, Sophie J. (ed.). Public Policy Issues Research Trends. Nova Science. p. 126. ISBN 978-1-60021-873-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  101. ^ a b c "The Sanger-Hitler Equation", Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter, #32, Winter 2002/3. New York University Department of History
  102. ^ Sanger, Pivot, p. 181; quoted in Charles Valenza: "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?" Family Planning Perspectives, January–February 1985, p. 44.
  103. ^ a b Sanger, Margaret, "Birth Control and Racial Betterment", Birth Control Review, February 1919, pp. 11–12, Online
  104. ^ Franks, Angela (2005). Margaret Sanger's Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-7864-2011-7.
  105. ^ Freedman, Estelle B. (2007). The Essential Feminist Reader. Modern Library. p. 211.
  106. ^ Black, Edwin (September 2003) [2003]. The War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York City, NY: Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 1-56858-258-7., p. 251.
    Sanger's quote from The Pivot of Civilization, p. 100.
  107. ^ Sanger, Margaret (1921), "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda", Birth Control Review, vol. 5, no. 10, The New York Women's Publishing Company, p. 5 – via The Margaret Sanger Papers Project {{citation}}: External link in |via= (help)
  108. ^ Sanger, "A Plan For Peace", Birth Control Review, April 1932, p. 106. Online
  109. ^ Baker, p. 200.
  110. ^ Hajo, p. 85.
  111. ^ Hajo, p. 85.
    From Planned Parenthood: "The Truth about Margaret Sanger". Planned Parenthood Federation of America.:

    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 a 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. Du Bois.
  112. ^ McCann (1994), pp. 150–4. Bigotry: p. 153.
    See also p. 45, The selected papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1
  113. ^ Planned Parenthood Federation of America (2004). "The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Upon Accepting the Planned Parenthood Sanger Award".
  114. ^ Engelman, p. 175.
    Birth Control Federation of America, The Margaret Sanger Papers Project
    "Birth Control or Race Control? Sanger and the Negro Project". Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter (28). Margaret Sanger Papers Project. 2002-11-14. Retrieved 2009-01-25.
  115. ^ "Smear n Fear", New York University, History Department, Margaret Sanger Papers Project, 2010
  116. ^ "Birth Control or Race Control? Sanger and the Negro Project". Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter (28). Margaret Sanger Papers Project. 2002-11-14. Retrieved 2009-01-25.
  117. ^ "The Child Who Was Mother to a Woman" from The New Yorker, April 11, 1925, p. 11.
  118. ^ Wood, Janice Ruth (2008), The Struggle for Free Speech in the United States, 1872–1915: Edward Bliss Foote, Edward Bond Foote, and anti-Comstock operations, Psychology Press, 2008, pp. 100–102.
  119. ^ "Every Child a Wanted Child", Time, September 16, 1966, p. 96.
  120. ^ Kennedy, p. 149.
  121. ^ Melody, Michael Edward (1999), Teaching America about sex: marriage guides and sex manuals from the late Victorians to Dr. Ruth, NYU Press, 1999, p. 53 (citing Halberstam, David, The Fifties, Villard. 1993, p. 285).
    Davis, Tom, Sacred work: Planned Parenthood and its clergy alliances Rutgers University Press, 2005, p. 213 (citing A Tradition of Choice, Planned Parenthood, 1991, p. 18).
  122. ^ Coates, p. 48.
    Hoolihan, Christopher (2004), An Annotated Catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular Medicine and Health Reform, Vol. 2 (M–Z), University Rochester Press, p. 299.
  123. ^ "The fight for birth control". Hdl.loc.gov. 1931-12-01. Retrieved 2015-08-08.
  124. ^ ""Birth Control Review", Margaret Sanger Papers Project, NYU". Nyu.edu. Retrieved 2012-03-12.

Bibliography

Historiography

  • Sandi L. Dinger, "Sanger, Margaret" in Eleanor B. Amico., ed., Readers Guide to Women's Studies (1998) pp 505–6
Library resources about
Margaret Sanger
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Margaret Sanger.


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