Margaret Sanger
1879-1966
Margaret Sanger
was born into a poor Irish Catholic family in 1879, and watched her
mother die from exhaustion after 18 pregnancies including 11 live
births. She worked as a nurse and midwife in the poorest New York
City neighborhoods just prior to World War I, and watched women in
poor health desperately try to care for children they could not afford
to raise. Contraceptives and information on birth control were outlawed,
due to the strong control of state and federal laws by religious groups.
Ironically, those that could afford to have children, the rich and
the well educated, could covertly locate contraceptives and information
on birth control, which were widely available in Europe.
Sanger decided that in order to improve the health
of poor women and children in this country, contraceptives would have
to be readily available to all. She quit nursing in 1912 and dedicated
the rest of her life to promoting birth control. She wrote a series
of articles titled “What Every Girl Should Know” and “What
Every Woman Should Know.” She started her own newspaper The
Woman Rebel and continued to write and distribute articles, books
pamphlets on birth control. Her plan was to put the power and information
of family planning into the hands of women. This of course put her
in trouble with the law. The Comstock Act of 1873 outlawed the distribution
and sale of birth control information and devices. She was charged
with sending obscenities through the mail and fled to Europe until
the charges were dropped. In 1917 she set up the first of many clinics
in poor neighborhoods to dispense birth control and information on
family planning. She was arrested the following year for creating
a public nuisance and sent to a work camp. She was arrested many times,
and eventually the publicity helped change the laws to allow doctors
to dispense birth control devices and information. Sanger started
the Birth Control League, which eventually became Planned Parenthood
in 1942. Over the years she helped start numerous family planning
organizations across the globe and worked incessantly to pass new
laws making contraceptives legal. She also spearheaded the development
of the contraceptive pill which was released in 1960.
One year before her death in 1965, the Supreme Court
struck down a Connecticut state law that outlawed the use of contraceptives,
even by married couples. In 1972 the law was extended to unmarried
couples, so that now, all women have the right to purchase contraceptives.
Sanger’s detractors have wrongly accused
her of being a racist and a proponent of Eugenics based on her outreach
to poor African Americans. The truth is that Sanger was far from being
racist, and that her books and writings were some of the first to
be banned by the Nazis. The Eugenics movement was popular during her
time, and while she supported some of their beliefs in good health
she clearly disagreed with them on the topic of reproductive freedom,
insisting that reproduction decisions should be made by women and
not by the state. She has been misquoted by the enemies of family
planning, and you can read more about this on the Planned Parenthood
website at www.plannedparenthood.org
The climate has changed in Washington and on the
Supreme Court. Presently, reproductive freedom is being assaulted
by right wing conservative religious groups who want to control women
and their bodies. Federal money is denied to any organization that
dispenses information on birth control, which ironically leads to
unwanted pregnancies and more abortions. The morning after pill is
difficult to obtain, and pharmacies routinely deny it to their customers.
The right to have an abortion is threatened by upcoming Supreme Court
cases, and the pundits believe that if Roe v. Wade is struck down,
the morning after pill and contraceptives will be the next targets.
The religious right-wing is poised to set women back 100 years, to
a time of extreme poverty and desperate and deadly back-room abortions.
It's time we take a look at the heroics of Margaret Sanger, and fight
to maintain the freedoms and rights that she worked so hard for.
