Basic Information

Margaret Higgins Sanger was born September 14, 1879 in Corning, New York (Yasunari, 2000). Sanger is widely considered the original pioneer for reproductive rights in the United States due to her work in the popularization and provision of birth control. Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in American history, and founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Background Information

Margaret Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins, daughter of Anne Purcell Higgins and Michael Hennessey Higgins, both Irish immigrants (Sanger, 1938, p.11-12). Michael Higgins was a progressive and politically active person, attributes which Margaret inherited (Yasunari, 2000). Sanger was one of eleven children, and her mother, strained by numerous pregnancies, died at age forty-six (Yasunari, 2000). Sanger studied and became an obstetric nurse, a field in which she witnessed the disparities of circumstance between wanted and unwanted babies. She frequently worked with poor women who had more children than they could afford to care for, and those who underwent illegal abortion procedures to avoid having more. She was moved by the tragedy and heartache she saw to begin research into methods of contraception (Yasunari, 2000). She married William Sanger, bore three children, Stuart, Grant, and Peggy (Sanger, 1938, p. 65) and was divorced in 1921. Sanger remarried in 1922, to James Slee, with whom she continued her life’s work.

Contributions to the First Wave

Margaret Sanger made many contributions to the women’s movement. In 1916, she opened the first birth control clinic in United States history, located in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York (Sanger, 1938, p. 215). The clinic’s operation was illegal, and after nine days Sanger was arrested. The following year she was tried and sentenced to thirty days at the Queens County Penitentiary (Yasunari, 2000). In 1921, five years after opening her first clinic, Sanger founded the American Birth Control League (ABCL) (Sanger, 1938, p. 298). The ABCL later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, where Margaret Sanger served as president for much of the rest of her life.

Sanger wrote and published a number of books including What Every Mother Should Know (1914), Family Limitation (1914), Woman and the New Race (1920), and Motherhood in Bondage (1928). Her writing dealt with themes of female liberation and made a strong case for birth control and family planning. She believed that “women who have a knowledge of contraceptives . . . are not forced to balance motherhood against social and spiritual activities. Motherhood is for them to choose, as it should be for every woman to choose” (Sanger, 1920).

Many of Sanger’s books plainly described various methods of birth control and their proper use. This made them the subject of harsh criticism on religious and “moral” grounds. The American Women’s Association honored Margaret Sanger with the Medal of Achievement in 1931, in recognition of her work to overturn the Comstock laws (Yasunari, 2000). The Comstock laws, named for Anthony Comstock, had since 1873 made it illegal to disseminate information about sex, birth control and other “obscene” material through the mail (Yasunari, 2000), which Sanger did when she used the postal service to distribute her writings.

Sanger has been criticized for collaborating on, or at least turning a blind eye to, the work of eugenicists in the period before World War II. She did receive for publication some material on that theme around 1920 (Sanger, 1938, p. 261), but it is not clear whether it was printed. Accusations of racism have also stemmed from her work to promote birth control within the African-American community, but this may be a matter of perspective. Sanger did believe that poor and working women would benefit the most from increased access to and education about birth control. She wrote that “each and every unwanted child is likely to be in some way a social liability” (Sanger, 1920) and that “the way to get rid of labor problems, unemployment, low wages, the surplus, unwanted population, is to stop breeding” (Sanger, 1920). These statements, and many others like them made through the course of her life, earn Sanger her most incisive criticism, that of classism.

 

The problem of birth control has arisen directly from the effort of the feminine spirit to free itself from bondage.

~ Margaret Sanger (Sanger, 1938, p. 28)

Analysis and Conclusion

Margaret Sanger left a deep and lasting impact on the women’s movement. Her lifelong devotion to her work in the fields of birth control and female liberation and empowerment has seldom been matched. She was willing to break the laws she felt were unjust and standing in the way of women’s freedom, and even went to jail for her convictions.

Sanger faced strong opposition to her work for many years, but she never backed down from a fight. She repeatedly took her grievances with the status quo to the courts, and made steady progress through the course of her life. At the time of her death in 1966, birth control was legal through a majority of the United States. Her legacy lives on in the continued mission of Planned Parenthood, and through the many, many people in the United States and abroad who have access to safe, reliable birth control today.

References

Bain News Service. (1916). Mrs. Margaret Sanger [Photograph]. Bain News Service, photograph collection. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2014703168/

Sanger, M. H. (1938). Margaret Sanger: Pioneering advocate for birth control. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Sanger, M. H. (1920). Woman and the new race. Retrieved from https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1325175/assignments/4902771?module_item_id=9649266

Underwood & Underwood. (1922). Margaret Sanger [Photograph]. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2004672785/

Yasunari, K. (2000). Margaret Sanger. Peace review, 12(4), p619-626. DOI 10.1080/10402650020014735