Margaret+Sanger

Margaret Higgins Sanger was born on September 14, 1879 in Corning, New York. Born to an impoverished family with an atheist and socialist father and a mother who had birthed 11, Margaret developed a strong liking to the socialist movement and a sense of sympathy to women and underprivileged people. After high school she left to study nursing at White Plains Hospital in New York.  In 1902 she married William Sanger an architect and a socialist. She had three children and during her pregnancy with the first she developed tuberculosis. She soon recovered and led a normal life. However many would disagree that Margaret’s life was not normal. She and her family moved to New York City in 1912 and plunged into radical political activity. She became a very active member of the socialist party and the woman’s labor organizer. Through these she met many people who were radicals just like her and they all organized strikes and movements to capture people’s attention. Margaret felt very passionately about women’s rights. She felt that women could not be equal to men until they had the choice of birth control. turning point is said to be when one of her patients died because the doctor refused her contraceptive information. With this passion she wrote articles about female sexuality for the Socialist Weekly. However these ideas were banned under the Comstock Act of 1873 which states, “ No obscene, lewd, or lascivious book, pamphlet, picture, paper, print, or other publication of an indecent character, or any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion, nor any article or thing intended or adapted for any indecent or immoral use or nature, nor any written or printed card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of any kind giving information, directly or indirectly, where or how, or of whom, or by what means either of the things before mentioned may be obtained or made, nor any letter upon the envelope of which, or postal card upon which indecent or scurrilous epithets may be written or printed, shall be carried in the mail; and any person who shall knowingly deposit, or cause to be deposited, for mailing or delivery, any of the herein before-mentioned articles or things, or any notice or paper containing any advertisement relating to the aforesaid articles or things; and any person who, in pursuance of any plan or scheme for disposing of any of the herein before-mentioned articles or things, shall take or cause to be taken, from the mail any such letter or package, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, for every offense, be fined not less than one hundred dollars, nor more than five thousand dollars, or imprisoned at hard labor not less than one year, nor more than ten years, or both.”  This essentially says that one cannot distribute information publicly about birth control, contraceptives or abortion through mail. In 1913 Sanger traveled to France and helped with a movement on the distribution of information on contraception. When she returned home she divorced her husband and began writing and publishing //Women Rebel// a monthly magazine about women’s politics, liberation and birth control. She was in a lot of trouble with the government, so she fled to England. When she fled she left behind several copies of //Family Limitation//, a contraceptive advice pamphlet to be distributed. She returned in 1915 and found a new journal called //The Birth Control Review// and she opened up her own clinic. She was then thrown in jail for 30 days. However New York then changed its laws anyway and instead of having no information be distributed, had information distributed only by doctors to married women and only for the purpose of treating disease. Nevertheless this did not satisfy Margaret. She lobbied bills for doctors and clinic staffs to be able to distribute information. In 1920 she eventually created the American Birth Control League, later to be known as Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which is still around today. In 1921 she organized the first national birth control conference in New York City. Then in 1923 she opened the first Birth Control Research Center in New York City. This was the first birth control clinic to have doctors and it also set a precedent for the 300 new birth control clinics created by 1938. Margaret worked very hard to keep these clinics running. She started the National Committee on Federal Legislation on Birth Control in D.C. In the 1936 case of the United States vs. One Package, she fought the Comstock Act to have it change so she could mail information out to people and won. Margaret Sanger was a very important woman in the 1920s. She went against the government and all the people who were still not accepting to the sexual revolution that was taking place in America at that time. She fought to give women so much freedom and in the end she was victorious. Although most of America is still against abortion, women still have more of a choice now of whether they wanted children, than they did eighty or ninety years ago because of Sanger. media type="youtube" key="R4csSbewIhg" height="344" width="425"