Margaret Sanger

American birth control activist and nurse (1879–1966)

Margaret Sanger

Sanger in 1922

Born|

Margaret Louise Higgins

(1879-09-14)September 14, 1879

Corning, New York, U.S.

Died| September 6, 1966(1966-09-06) (aged 86)

Tucson, Arizona, U.S.

Other names| Margaret Sanger Slee
Occupation(s)| Social reformer, sex educator, writer, nurse
Spouses|

* William Sanger

(m. 1902; div. 1921)​

[a]
* James Noah H. Slee

(m. 1922; died 1943)​

Children| 3
Relatives|

* Ethel Byrne (sister)

Margaret Sanger (née Higgins; September 14, 1879 - September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, founded Planned Parenthood, and collaborated in the development of the first birth control pill. Sanger is regarded as a founder and leader of the birth control movement.

Sanger worked as a nurse in the slums of New York City, where she often treated mothers desperate to avoid conceiving additional children, some of whom were suffering the effects of unsanitary back-alley abortions. Out of these encounters arose a determination to give women the power to choose when to have children. Her drive to promote birth control was influenced by Malthusian concerns about the detrimental effects of overpopulation. She was also an adherent of the eugenic movement, and believed that birth control would reduce the number of unfit people, and improve the overall health of the human race.

To promote birth control, Sanger gave speeches, wrote books, and published periodicals. She frequently provoked arrest by distributing birth control literature in contravention of obscenity laws. She was arrested several times, and each time she hoped to get a favorable legal ruling that would overturn laws that impeded birth control. She was responsible for several major legal victories, including one that enabled physicians to dispense contraceptives; and another - Griswold v Connecticut - which legalized contraception, without a prescription, for couples nationwide.

Sanger established a network of dozens of birth control clinics across the country, which provided reproductive health services to hundreds of thousands of patients. She discouraged abortion, and her clinics never offered abortion services during her lifetime. She co-founded several organizations dedicated to family planning, including Planned Parenthood and International Planned Parenthood Federation. In the early 1950s, Sanger persuaded philanthropists to provide funding for biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the first birth control pill. She died in Arizona in 1966.

## Early life

[edit]

Sanger's parents were Irish Catholics who separately emigrated from Ireland. Her father, Michael Hennessey Higgins immigrated to Canada with his family, then moved to the U.S. at the age of 14, and joined the Union army in the Civil War as a drummer at 15. Upon leaving the army, he studied medicine and phrenology but ultimately became a stonecutter.[2][3] Her mother, Anne Purcell Higgins, immigrated to the U.S. with her family during the Great Famine.[2]

Anne and Michael were married in 1869.[2] In 22 years, Anne Higgins conceived 18 times, giving birth to 11 live babies before dying at the age of 49.[2]

Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins in 1879 in Corning, New York, the sixth of 11 surviving children. She spent her early years in a bustling household.[4] Michael was a free-thinker, an atheist and an activist for free public education and women's suffrage.[5]

Supported by her two older sisters, Margaret Higgins attended the Hudson River Institute at Claverack College, before enrolling in 1900 at White Plains Hospital as a student nurse.[6] In 1902, she married architect William Sanger.[6] Although she suffered from tuberculosis, she settled down to a quiet life in Westchester, New York and had three children.[6]

## Woman rebel

[edit]

First issue of The Woman Rebel newsletter, 1914. Seven issues were published.[7]

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 nurse, making house calls in the slums of the East Side, while her husband worked as an architect and a house painter. The couple became active in local socialist politics. She joined the Women's Committee of the Socialist Party of New York and took part in the labor actions of the Industrial Workers of the World, including the 1912 Lawrence textile strike and the 1913 Paterson silk strike. She socialized with the bohemian community of Greenwich Village, including local intellectuals, left-wing artists, socialists and social activists, such John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman.[8][9][10]

Working as a nurse, Sanger visited many working-class immigrant women in their homes; many of them underwent frequent childbirth, miscarriages and self-induced abortions.[11] Availability of contraceptive information was limited, due to the Comstock Act, a federal anti-obscenity law which prohibited - among other things - mailing contraceptives, or even information about contraception.[12] In 1913, she visited public libraries, searching for publications that instructed women how to avoid conception, but she found none.[13]

The hardships women faced were epitomized in a story that Sanger would recount in her speeches: while she was working as a nurse, she was called to the apartment of a woman, "Sadie Sachs", who had a severe sepsis infection due to a self-induced abortion. Sadie begged the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent this from happening again. The doctor laughed and said "You want your cake while you eat it too, do you? Well it can't be done. I'll tell you the only sure thing to do .... Tell Jake to sleep on the roof [that is, abstain from sex]." A few months later, Sanger was called back to Sadie's apartment, and found that Sadie had attempted yet another self-induced abortion; she died shortly after Sanger arrived. 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".[14][15]

The Sadie Sachs episode was described by Sanger as the origin of her commitment to spare women from dangerous and illegal abortions.[16] Sanger opposed abortion, not on theological grounds, but as a societal ill and public health danger - which would disappear, she believed, if women were able to prevent unwanted pregnancy.[17]

Searching for a way to share her ideas with the public, she wrote two columns for the New York Call socialist magazine: What Every Mother Should Know (1911–12) and What Every Girl Should Know (1912–13).[18] The columns gave advice to women and girls on love, masturbation, and sex, and emphasized the distinction between sex and love.[19][20] 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 integrity and candor.[21] Both series were published in book form in 1916.[22]

Sanger's political interests, her emerging feminism and her nursing experience led her to believe that only by liberating women from the risk of unwanted pregnancy would fundamental social change take place. In 1914, she undertook a decades-long campaign to free women, starting with The Woman Rebel, an eight-page monthly newsletter that used the slogan "No Gods, No Masters."[7][b] The newsletter contained articles about a variety of progressive subjects, including contraception, and was designed to challenge governmental censorship of contraceptive information through confrontation.[23][c]

Sanger, collaborating with anarchist friends, popularized the term birth control as a more candid alternative to euphemisms such as family limitation; the term birth control was suggested in 1914 by a young friend, Otto Bobsein.[25][d]

Sanger became estranged from her husband in 1913, and the couple's divorce was finalized in 1921.[26]

## Year as an outlaw

[edit]

This page from Sanger's Family Limitation, 1919 Ninth edition, describes a cervical cap.[27]

Sanger's first obstacle to educating women about contraception was the Comstock Act - which banned dissemination of information about contraception. Her strategy was to deliberately violate the Act, hoping that the confrontation would eventually lead to amendment of the law.[28][29][e] Throughout 1914, she attempted to mail copies of the monthly The Woman Rebel newsletter.[f] Postal authorities intercepted five of its seven issues, but Sanger continued publication.[31][32] In August 1914, Sanger was finally arrested for sending The Woman Rebel through the postal system.[33]

While awaiting trial, she wrote a 16-page pamphlet, Family Limitation, which detailed several contraceptive methods, discussed marriage and sex, and chided husbands who - after sex - fell asleep without bringing their wife to a climax.[34][35][36] Fearing arrest, several printers refused to print the pamphlet; she finally found a socialist printer willing to undertake the job, and he resorted to printing it secretly, at night.[37] The pamphlet was very popular: 100,000 copies were printed of its first edition, it went through 18 editions, and it was translated into a dozen languages.[35]

Facing imprisonment if she went to trial,[g] she fled to Canada, where fellow activists forged a passport that permitted her to sail to England in early November.[39] Sanger spent most of her self-imposed exile in England, where contact with British Malthusians - such as Charles Vickery Drysdale and Bessie Drysdale - helped refine her socioeconomic justifications for birth control. She shared the concern of Malthusians that overpopulation led to poverty, famine and war.[40] She would return to Europe in 1922, and attended the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian Conference - where she was the first woman to chair a session;[41] and she organized the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth-Control Conference that took place in New York in 1925.[42][43] Overpopulation would remain a concern of hers for the rest of her life.[40]

During her stay in England, she was profoundly influenced by British physician Havelock Ellis - author of the multi-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex.[44][45] Under his tutelage, she expanded her birth control strategy to incorporate the additional benefit of stress-free, enjoyable sex; and came to adopt his view of sexuality as a powerful, liberating force.[46][47][48] Sanger returned from England in October 1915 to face trial. Before the December trial, her five-year old daughter died of pneumonia.[49][h] She was offered a plea bargain, but refused, because she wanted to use the trial as a forum to advocate for the right of women to control their own bodies.[50] The prosecutor dropped the charges.[51]

Early in 1915, 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, spending thirty days in jail while attracting interest in birth control as an issue of civil liberty.[52][53]

## The birth control movement begins

[edit]

Main article: Birth control movement in the United States

Sanger with her sister, Ethel Byrne, on the steps of a New York courthouse during a trial in 1917.[54]

Some northern European countries had more liberal policies towards contraception than the United States; when Sanger visited a Dutch birth control clinic in 1915, she encountered 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.[55] Diaphragms were generally unavailable in the United States due to the Comstock Act, so Sanger and others began importing them from Europe, in defiance of United States law.[56]

On October 16, 1916, Sanger opened a family planning and birth control clinic - the first in the United States - in the Brownsville neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York.[57][i] Nine days after the clinic opened, Sanger was arrested for giving a birth control pamphlet to an undercover policewoman.[59] After she bailed out of jail, she continued assisting women in the clinic until the police arrested her a second time. She and her sister, Ethel Byrne, were charged with distributing contraceptives in violation of New York state law.[60]

Sanger and Byrne went to trial in January 1917.[61][62] Byrne was convicted and sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse, where she went on a hunger strike. She was force-fed, the first woman hunger striker in the U.S. to be so treated.[63] After ten days - when Sanger pledged that Byrne would never break the law - her sister was pardoned.[64] Sanger was also convicted; the trial judge was not persuaded by Sanger's argument that women had the right to enjoy sex without worrying about conceiving an unwanted child.[65] Sanger was offered a more lenient sentence if she promised to not break the law again, but she refused and said: "I cannot respect the law as it exists today."[66] She was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse.[67]

An initial appeal was rejected, but in a subsequent court proceeding in 1918 (after Sanger had served her sentence) the birth control movement secured a major victory when the New York Court of Appeals (New York's highest court) issued a ruling which allowed physicians in New York to dispense contraceptives.[68][69][j] 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 for future endeavors.[71]

In February 1917, Sanger began publishing the periodical Birth Control Review, serving as its editor until 1929. The magazine was published monthly until 1940.[72]

In her 1920 book Woman and the New Race, Sanger framed her fight for birth control in the context of history, psychology, and feminism.[73][74][75] She wrote that male-dominated institutions, such as the church and state, have prohibited birth control throughout history - leading women to have too many children, too closely spaced. This, in turn, was a direct cause of mental distress and social pathology, and prevented women women from full expression of their "feminine spirit".[76] Sanger asserted that women have always fought back against this form of oppression through secretive use of abortion, contraception, or infanticide.[76] Sanger believed that these efforts to limit family size were a manifestation of women's desire for freedom,[76] writing:

> "A free race cannot be born of slave mothers. A woman cannot choose but give a measure of that bondage to her sons and daughters. No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother."[77]

In 1920–1921, and intermittently until his death in 1946, she had a love affair with the English novelist H.G. Wells.[78] In 1922, she married her second husband, wealthy businessman James Noah H. Slee.[79]

## Organizing

[edit]

Activist Kitty Marion sold copies of Birth Control Review on the streets of New York for 13 years.[80]

After World War I, Sanger continued to be frustrated by the inverted priorities of charities: they provided free obstetric and post-birth care to indigent women, yet failed to offer birth control or assistance in raising the children.[81] She wrote: "The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid ... her eighth."[81] Sanger saw a societal need to limit births by those least able to afford children: the affluent and educated already limited their childbearing, yet the poor and uneducated lacked access to contraception and information about birth control.[82]

Support from wealthy donors in the early 1920s enabled Sanger to expand her reach beyond local, small-scale activism, and allowed her to organize the American Birth Control League (ABCL).[83] The founding principles of the ABCL were:

> "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."[84]

The 1918 New York court decision had created an exception to the Comstock Act: contraceptives could be obtained, provided they were prescribed by a physician.[k] To exploit this new loophole, in 1923 she established the Clinical Research Bureau (CRB) - a medical clinic with physicians on staff.[85][86] The CRB was the first birth control clinic in the U.S. that could dispense contraceptives directly to patients; and its staff of doctors, nurses and social workers was entirely female.[87] The clinic received extensive funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his family, who continued to make anonymous donations to Sanger's causes in subsequent decades.[88][89]

In 1922, soon after the formation of the ABCL, Sanger raised her international profile by traveling to Asia, and giving speeches in Korea, Japan and China.[90] She ultimately visited Japan six times, working with Japanese feminist Kato Shidzue to promote birth control.[91][92] In China, she observed that the primary method of family planning was female infanticide.[93] Chinese feminists inspired by Sanger's visit went on to be significantly involved in the subsequent Chinese debates on birth control and eugenics.[94]

In her role as president of the ABCL, she chafed at bureaucratic interference from second-generation reformers on the board of directors.[95] Seeking more independence, she resigned as the president of the ABCL and took full control of the CRB, renaming it the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB), marking the beginning of a schism that would last until 1939.[96][97] By the 1930s, the BCCRB was serving over 10,000 patients per year, providing a range of gynecological services, conducting research, and training physicians and students.[97]

In 1925, Sanger's second husband, Noah Slee, contributed to the birth control movement by smuggling diaphragms into New York from Canada, hidden inside his company's cargo.[98] He then co-founded Holland-Rantos - the first manufacturer of legal diaphragms in the United States.[98]

## Outreach and expansion

[edit]

Sanger's monthly Birth Control Review included letters from women, typically in need of birth control, which were collected into the book Motherhood in Bondage.[99][l]

Sanger invested a great deal of effort promoting birth control to the public. In 1916, she embarked on a cross-country lecture tour, speaking in dozens of cities - at churches, women's clubs, homes, and theaters.[100] Her audience included workers, churchmen, liberals, socialists, scientists, and upper-class women.[100] She once lectured on birth control to the women's auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in Silver Lake, New Jersey.[101] Explaining her decision to address them, Sanger said that she was willing to speak to any group that would listen, if it helped promote the birth control cause. She described the experience as weird, and reported that she had the impression that the audience were all half-wits, and, therefore, spoke to them in the simplest possible language, as if she were talking to children.[101]

She wrote several books 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.[102] She wrote two autobiographies, both aimed at promoting birth control: Margaret Sanger: My Fight for Birth Control published in 1931; and Margaret Sanger An Autobiography published in 1938.[103]

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.[104][105] Many of the letters were printed in the monthly Birth Control Review, and 470 of these letters were compiled into the 1928 book,  Motherhood in Bondage.[99]

Throughout the 1920s, Sanger and the ABCL expanded outward from their New York base by creating a network of birth control clinics across the country: Chicago (1924), Los Angeles (1925), San Antonio (1926), Detroit and Baltimore (1927), Cleveland, Newark, and Denver (1928), and Atlanta, Cincinnati, and Oakland (1929).[106] These clinics were managed by local birth control advocates, and funded by local donors.[106] Those that met Sanger's standards became official affiliates of the BCCRB.[106] A survey in 1930 showed that twelve of the clinics were, collectively, seeing a total of about 8,000 new patients per year.[107]

## African American community

[edit]

W. E. B. Du Bois served on the board of Sanger's Harlem clinic.[108]

Women of all races and religions were served by Sanger's birth control clinics. Sanger did not tolerate bigotry among her staff, nor would she tolerate any refusal to work within interracial projects.[109] By 1929 about 12% of clinic patients listed Harlem as their address.[110]

In 1924, James H. Hubert, an African American social worker and the leader of New York's Urban League, asked Sanger to consider opening a clinic in an African American neighborhood.[111][112] In response, she established a clinic in the Columbus Hill neighborhood of New York City, but the clinic operated for only three months before closing due to low patient numbers.[110][111][m]

In 1929, Hubert approached Sanger again, this time suggesting a clinic in Harlem.[113][114][112] Sanger secured funding from the Julius Rosenwald Fund and opened the clinic in 1930.[115][116] The clinic was directed by an all African American advisory board consisting of 15 African American doctors, nurses, clergy, journalists, and social workers; the clinic exclusively employed African American doctors, nurses, and social workers.[110][117][n] The clinic was publicized in the African American press as well as in African American churches, and it received the approval of W. E. B. Du Bois, the co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the editor of its magazine, The Crisis.[118][119][110][108] The clinic's clientele was about half African American and half white, and almost 3,000 patients visited the clinic in its first year and a half.[110] The Harlem clinic provided contraceptives and information to thousands of African American women until it closed in the mid 1940s.[116][112]

In June 1932, Sanger published a special issue of Birth Control Review titled "The Negro Number". Seven African American authors - including W.E.B Du Bois, George Schuyler, and Charles S. Johnson - contributed articles to the issue, providing reasons why contraception was beneficial for the African American community.[120][o][p]

During the 1920s and 1930s, Sanger toured the South and observed that African American women were neglected by the medical establishment, particularly in segregated areas.[121] In 1939, she worked with fellow birth control advocates Mary Lasker and Clarence Gamble to create the Negro Project, an effort to deliver information about birth control to impoverished African American people.[121][122] Sanger knew that the church played an important role in African American communities, so she advised Gamble (both Sanger and Gamble were white) on the importance of affiliating with African American ministers, writing:

> "The ministers work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the [Birth Control] Federation [of America] as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. 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."[123]

When academic Angela Davis analyzed that quote, she interpreted the passage "We do not want word to go out" as evidence that Sanger led a secretive effort to reduce the African American population against its will.[124][q] This interpretation has been widely repeated in the anti-abortion community, leading many to believe Sanger was racist.[125][126] However, most scholars interpret the passage as Sanger's effort to prevent the spread of unfounded rumors about nefarious purposes, and they find no evidence that Sanger was a racist.[127][128][129][r][s]

After the Negro Project was initiated, management was handed to the Birth Control Federation of America. The project lasted from 1940 to 1943, but was not successful: no new clinics were established, and participation rates were not very high.[122]

## Planned Parenthood

[edit]

Main article: Planned Parenthood

Sanger opened a clinic in this building in 1930, and it operated in New York City for 43 years. It is now a National Historic Landmark.[130]

In 1929, Sanger formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control to lobby for legislation to overturn restrictions on contraception.[131][t] The lobbying did not produce results, so Sanger changed tack and in 1933 she ordered diaphragms from Japan to trigger a decisive battle in the courts.[131][133] The diaphragms were seized by the U.S. government, and Sanger's subsequent legal challenge to the confiscation led to a breakthrough 1936 court decision - United States v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries - which permitted physicians to dispense contraceptives nationwide.[134][135][u] This court victory motivated the American Medical Association to adopt contraception as a normal medical service (1937) and a key component of medical school curriculums (1942).[136][137][138]

Eager to take advantage of the One Package of Japanese Pessaries  court ruling - which permitted birth control clinics across the country to begin dispensing contraceptives - leaders of the birth control movement took steps in 1937 to mend the rift between the ABCL and the BCCRB.[139] The two organizations merged in 1939 as the Birth Control Federation of America.[97] 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.[140]

In the late 1940s, Sanger reduced her involvement in Planned Parenthood, and turned her attention to improving access to birth control globally. In 1948 she founded an exploratory committee - the International Committee on Planned Parenthood - which brought together representatives from birth control organizations in several countries around the world.[141] Four years later, in 1952, the committee evolved into the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which - as of 2025[update] - is the world's largest family planning NGO, consisting of 150 Member Associations working in 146 countries.[141][142][143] Sanger was the organization's first president and served in that role from 1952 to 1959.[141]

In the early 1950s, Sanger persuaded philanthropist Katharine McCormick to provide funding for biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the first birth control pill, which was eventually sold under the name Enovid.[144][145] Pincus recruited John Rock, Harvard gynecologist, to investigate clinical use of progesterone to prevent ovulation.[145] Pincus would later say that Sanger's role was essential in the development of the pill.[146]

The Japanese government invited Sanger to Tokyo in 1954 to address the National Diet - she was the first foreigner to do so - where she gave a speech on "Population Problems and Family Planning".[147][148]

In the late 1930s, Sanger began spending the winters in Tucson, Arizona, intending to play a less critical role in the birth control movement. She moved to Arizona full-time in 1943, after her husband died. In spite of her intention to retire, she remained active in the birth control movement through the 1950s.[149]

## Death

[edit]

Faced with declining health, Sanger moved into a convalescent home at age 83.[149] Before her death, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Griswold v Connecticut, which struck down state laws prohibiting birth control in the United States.[150] The defendant in that case, Estelle Griswold, was the director of the Connecticut affiliate of Planned Parenthood.[151] A year before Sanger died, the Japanese government bestowed upon her the Order of the Precious Crown in recognition of her contributions to Japanese society.[147] She died of congestive heart failure in 1966 in Tucson, Arizona, aged 86. Her funeral was held at St. Philip's in the Hills Episcopal Church in Tucson, followed a month later by a memorial service at St. George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan.[152] Sanger is buried in Fishkill, New York, next to her sister, Nan Higgins, and her second husband, Noah Slee.[153]

## Views

[edit]

### Abortion

[edit]

1916 flyer for Sanger's first clinic, stating "Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent."[154]

In the early 1900s, when Sanger started on her path as an activist, abortion was illegal throughout the United States - though medically necessary abortions were permitted in some states.[155] Although abortion was illegal, it was widespread: in 1930, there were an estimated 800,000 illegal abortions performed in the U.S., resulting in 8,000 to 17,000 woman's deaths from complications.[156][v] Abortion frequency ranged from an estimated one abortion per five live births, to one abortion per 2.5 live births.[158][159] Despite the high rates of morbidity and death from back-alley abortions, there was no prospect of legalizing abortion in Sanger's era; serious efforts to legalize abortion did not begin in the U.S. until the mid-1950s.[160]

Sanger focused all her efforts on promoting contraception, rather than campaigning to make abortion legal. In her view, contraception was beneficial for many reasons: It was safe, simple, inexpensive, reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies, addressed overpopulation, and - most importantly - it eliminated the need for dangerous abortions.[161][162] Historian Peter Engelman notes an irony in Sanger's desire to end abortions: "... the birth control movement of the early 20th century, which evolved into a reproductive rights movement that vowed to make and keep abortion legal, set out initially to end the practice of abortion, which was then illegal."[163]

The majority of the educational material that Sanger produced was focused on contraception, and abortion was rarely mentioned. In her Family Limitation pamphlet, published in 1914, she wrote that every woman is entitled to make a choice of whether to have an abortion or not, and she suggested (incorrectly) that quinine could be used to induce abortion.[164][w] That pamphlet was the one and only time she mentioned a technique for abortion.[164][x]

Numerous public statements from Sanger make it clear that she strongly discouraged abortions.[y] When she opened her first birth control clinic in 1916, she distributed flyers to women, exhorting - in all capitals - "Do not kill, do not take life, but prevent."[154] And in 1932 she wrote in The Nation:

> "[Abortion] is an alternative that I cannot too strongly condemn. Although abortion may be resorted to in order to save the life of the mother, the practice of it merely for limitation of offspring is dangerous and vicious."[169]

Abortions were not performed at clinics managed by Sanger.[170] Through the 1920s, staff were not even permitted to refer patients to physicians (in other facilities) for medically necessary abortions.[170] After 16 years of clinic operations, in 1932, Sanger authorized the staff to refer patients to hospitals for medically necessary abortions.[171][z] Planned Parenthood clinics would not offer abortions until 1970, several years after Sanger's death.[173]

Despite Sanger's public statements denouncing abortion for the purpose of limiting family size, historian Jean Baker suggests that Sanger privately felt that the procedure was ethical - but only as a last resort.[174]

### Free speech

[edit]

Sanger dons a gag before taking the stage in Boston, where A. M. Schlesinger Sr. will read her statement of protest, April 17, 1929.[175]

Advocates for birth control employed a variety of tactics. Some, such as Mary Dennett, preferred to work peacefully within the legislative system, and tried to amend the Comstock Act through lobbying. But Sanger chose to treat the undertaking as a battle for free speech, and repeatedly broke anti-obscenity laws, hoping to provoke arrest, which - she hoped - would lead to legal decisions in her favor.[176][177][178]

Sanger was exposed to free speech principles early in her career: in New York, Emma Goldman introduced Sanger to members of the Free Speech League, including Edward Bliss Foote and Theodore Schroeder.[179] Inspired by fellow free speech advocates, in 1914 she published The Woman Rebel with the express goal of triggering a legal challenge to the Comstock anti-obscenity laws banning dissemination of information about contraception.[180] The Free Speech League provided funding and advice to help Sanger with legal battles.[179]

One of the most formidable opponents to birth control in the 1920s was the Catholic Church, which often tried to prevent Sanger from giving speeches.[181][182] Catholics persuaded the Syracuse city council to ban Sanger from giving a speech in 1924; the National Catholic Welfare Conference lobbied against birth control; the Knights of Columbus boycotted hotels that hosted birth control events; the Catholic police commissioner of Albany prevented Sanger from speaking there; and several newsreel companies, succumbing to pressure from Catholics, refused to cover stories related to birth control.[183][184] Sanger turned some of the boycotted speaking events to her advantage by inviting the press, and the resultant news coverage often generated public sympathy for her cause.[185]

Numerous times in her career, local government officials prevented Sanger from speaking by shuttering a facility or threatening her hosts.[186] In Boston in 1929, city officials under the leadership of mayor James Curley threatened to arrest her if she spoke.[187][188][189] In response she stood on stage, silent, with a gag over her mouth, while Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. read a statement from Sanger:

> "... I have been gagged. I have been suppressed. I have been arrested numerous times. I have been hauled off to jail. Yet every time, more people have listened to me, more have protested, more have lifted up their own voices. As a pioneer fighting for a cause, I believe in free speech. As a propagandist I see immense advantages in being gagged. It silences me, but it makes millions of others talk and think the cause in which I live."[187][190]

Over the course of her career, Sanger was arrested several times for speaking or publishing prohibited information.[191]

### Eugenics

[edit]

Sanger's 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization, focused on eugenics.[192]

Further information: Eugenics in the United States

Eugenics was one of many social reform movements that swept America during the Progressive Era - which stretched from about 1890 to 1930. During the 1920s, when Margaret Sanger's work was accelerating, eugenics was a popular movement in the U.S., promoted by major organizations, led by intellectuals and scientists, and funded by corporate foundations.[193][194][195]

Eugenic beliefs in the early 1900s covered a wide spectrum: at one extreme were those who overtly claimed the white race was superior, and wanted to reduce the population of certain other ethnicities.[196] At the other extreme were altruists who wanted to improve the health and well-being of the entire human race.[196][197] Many eugenicists were somewhere between: they did not categorize ethnicities as superior or inferior; but the unhealthy or unfit traits they aimed to reduce included attributes such as illiteracy or low scores on IQ tests which - even if well-intended - often had the effect of targeting certain ethnicities.[196]

Sanger was surrounded by influential people who approved of eugenics, including close friends Havelock Ellis[198][199] and H. G. Wells,[200] and colleagues W. E. B. Du Bois[201][202] and Winston Churchill.[203][aa] Some associates of Sanger used eugenics to support their white supremacist beliefs, including Charles Davenport[205][206][207] and Lothrop Stoddard, a member of the KKK, and a founding board member of the ABCL who contributed an article to the Birth Control Review.[208][209]

Sanger found common ground between eugenics and her birth control movement: both endeavors would benefit if contraception were legal and readily available.[210] From her perspective as an activist struggling to develop support for her cause, Sanger viewed the eugenics movement as scientific, respectable, growing, international and popular.[211][212][213] Sanger adopted eugenics because it was an opportunity to advocate for the legalization of contraception - eugenics was a means to her end.[214][215][216][212] Whether she genuinely believed in eugenic principles is a matter of debate; several historians conclude that her belief was not sincere, and suggest that she joined with the eugenics movement simply to lend legitimacy to her birth control efforts.[214][217][218][216]

Her support of eugenics was first manifested in 1917, when she published an article on eugenics by Paul Popenoe in her periodical Birth Control Review.[219] From 1919 to 1921 she wrote several articles on the subject, leading to her 1922 book dedicated to eugenics, The Pivot of Civilization.[192]

#### Sanger's approach to eugenics

[edit]

Sanger adopted the fundamental eugenic goal of reducing the number of unfit people. In that group, she included people who were insane, syphilitic, "paupers, morons, feeble-minded, mentally and morally deficient persons"; and included "reckless" people that were incapable of restraining themselves from having an excessive number of offspring.[220][221][ab]

To reduce the number of unfit children, Sanger initially emphasized contraceptives, which set her apart from mainstream eugenicists, who preferred sterilization.[224][225][226][ac] However, when the U.S. Supreme court decided that involuntary sterilization was legal in 1927, she began to endorse voluntary sterilization (in addition to contraception).[228] She also began to support involuntary sterilizations for parents who were incapable of managing their own fertility and were likely to produce disabled children.[223][229][230] About 60,000 Americans were sterilized involuntarily between 1927 and WW II.[231][ad]

Sanger's approach to eugenics was heavily influenced by her feminism, which led her to deviate from mainstream eugenics in several ways:[232][233][192][234] She supported the right of fit parents to limit the size of their families; whereas mainstream eugenicists felt it was the duty of fit parents to have a large number of offspring.[211][226][ae] And Sanger believed that mothers - with some exceptions - should individually regulate their family size; whereas mainstream eugenicists believed government mandates should be employed.[232][236][af][ag]

Sanger's eugenic proposals did not target specific ethnicities: instead, her goal was to improve the health of the whole human race by reducing the reproduction of those who were considered unfit.[240][241][242][ah] When she used the word "race" in the context of eugenics, the word invariably meant the entire human race, rather than a specific ethnicity; when she used the word "unfit" she meant an inherited defect, not an ethnicity.[220][240][ai]. The consensus of scholars is that Sanger was not racist, but her collaboration with eugenicists indirectly assisted racist causes. Academic Dorothy Roberts wrote "Sanger did not tie fitness for reproduction to any particular ethnic group. It appears that Sanger was motivated by a genuine concern to improve the health of poor mothers she served rather than a desire to eliminate their stock".[240] Roberts' assessment is echoed by other scholars, including scholar Carole McCann,[247] historian Peter Engelman,[248] and biographer Ellen Chesler.[249]

Sanger had affiliated with eugenicists in the hope of gaining their support for her birth control movement - but her devotion was not reciprocated: the American Eugenics Society refused to accept any papers submitted by Sanger, most eugenicists ridiculed the birth control movement, and only a few would associate with her.[250][206] The reasons were that Sanger was a woman, she no academic credentials, and she insisted that mothers should have the power to decide if and when to have children - which ran contrary to the mainstream eugenics policy that fit women were required to produce abundant offspring.[211][217][250][aj]

## Legacy and honors

[edit]

This sign in the NoHo neighborhood of New York was present from 1993 to 2021.[252]

Sanger achieved her goal of improving the well-being of women around the world through family planning: contraception is now legal in the U.S., family planning clinics are commonplace, contraception is taught in medical schools, tens of millions of women have made use of Planned Parenthood services, and hundreds of millions of women around the globe have access to birth control pills.[253][254] As a result, Sanger is viewed today as an important first-wave feminist, and a founder and leader of the birth control movement.[255][256][257][ak]

Sanger's writings are curated by two universities: New York University's history department maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers Project,[258] and Smith College's Sophia Smith Collection maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers collection.[259]

Several biographers have documented Sanger's life, including David Kennedy, whose 1970 book Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger won the Bancroft Prize and the John Gilmary Shea Prize. Television films Portrait of a Rebel: The Remarkable Mrs. Sanger and Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story have portrayed Sanger's life[260][261] as well as two graphic novels.[262][263]

Martin Luther King Jr. praised Sanger's work in his acceptance speech for the 1966 Margaret Sanger Award: "[Sanger] went into the slums and set up a birth control clinic, and for this deed she went to jail because she was violating an unjust law.... She launched a movement which is obeying a higher law to preserve human life under humane conditions.... Our sure beginning in the struggle for equality by nonviolent direct action may not have been so resolute without the tradition established by Margaret Sanger."[264][al]

Sanger has been recognized with numerous honors. Time magazine designated Sanger as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.[266] Between 1953 and 1963, Sanger was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 31 times.[267] In 1957, the American Humanist Association named her Humanist of the Year.[268] There is a bust of Sanger in the National Portrait Gallery, which was a gift from Cordelia Scaife May.[269] Smith College awarded Sanger an honorary doctorate degree in 1949.[270] 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".[271][am] In 1981, Sanger was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[272] In 1993, the United States National Park Service designated the Margaret Sanger Clinic - where she provided birth-control services in New York in the mid-twentieth century - as a National Historic Landmark.[273] Government authorities and other institutions have memorialized Sanger by dedicating several landmarks in her name, includin a room in Wellesley College's library,[274] and Margaret Sanger Square in New York City's Noho area.[252] There is a Margaret Sanger Lane in Plattsburgh, New York and an Allée Margaret Sanger in Saint-Nazaire, France. Her speech "The Children's Era", given in 1925, is listed as #81 in American Rhetoric's Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century.[275][276] Sanger, a crater in the northern hemisphere of Venus, is named after her.[277]

### Attacks from anti-abortion movement

[edit]

Following the legalization of abortion in 1973, Sanger has become a target of frequent attacks from opponents of abortion.[278][279][an] The attacks usually include falsehoods, and often attribute quotes to Sanger that are fabricated or presented out of context.[223][241][126][284][ao] Common falsehoods are: she was a racist, she was a proponent of abortion, she was a Nazi sympathizer, or she supported the KKK.[286][207][241][287][ap] Another persistent falsehood is that Sanger applied her birth control policies with the intention of suppressing the African American community.[288][aq]

Beginning in 2015, Planned Parenthood - hoping to improve relations with minority communities - took steps to distance itself from their founder: they removed Sanger's name from their annual awards, published an editorial repudiating Sanger's eugenic history, and removed Sanger's name from their family planning clinic in Manhattan.[295][am] Essayist Katha Pollitt and Sanger biographer Ellen Chesner criticized Planned Parenthood for succumbing to pressure from the anti-abortion movement.[297][298]

## Works

[edit]

### Books and pamphlets

[edit]

* Sanger, Margaret (1912). 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. Multiple editions published starting in 1914 by Max N. Maisel and Sincere Publishing, with the title What Every Mother Should Know, or how six little children were taught the truth[299]
* 
- (1914). Family Limitation. Originally published 1914 as a 16-page pamphlet; revised and expanded in several later editions, including Sanger, Maragaret (2017). Family Limitation. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 9781977520722.
* 
- (1916). What Every Girl Should Know.
* 
- (1916a). The Fight for Birth Control. LCCN 2003558097. Pamphlet.
* 
- (1917). The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief and Statement of Facts. Modern art printing Company. ISBN 9780598730961. Filed with court to support a legal battle.
* 
- (1920). Woman and the New Race. Truth Publishing. ISBN 9781414221984. Foreword by Havelock Ellis. Published in England with the title The New Motherhood.
* 
- (1921). Debate on Birth Control. Haldeman-Julius Company. LCCN 2004563524. Transcript of a debate between several prominent figures: Sanger, Theodore Roosevelt, Winter Russell, George Bernard Shaw, Robert L. Wolf, and Emma Sargent Russell.
* 
- (1922). The Pivot of Civilization. Brentanos. Retrieved November 1, 2024. Entire book reprinted, with analysis, in Sanger, Margaret (2001). Perry, M.W. (ed.). The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective: The Birth Control Classic. Inkling Books. ISBN 9781587420085. Retrieved February 6, 2025.
* 
-, ed. (1928). Motherhood in Bondage. Brentanos. LCCN 28028778. A collection of letter women wrote to Sanger; edited by Sanger.
* 
- (1931). My Fight for Birth Control. Farrar & Rinehart. LCCN 31028223. Memoir.
* 
- (1938). Margaret Sanger An Autobiography. New York: W. W. Norton. Republished starting in 1971 under a different title The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger. Dover. 2012. ISBN 9780486120836.

### Periodicals

[edit]

* The Woman Rebel – Seven issues published monthly from March 1914 to August 1914. Sanger was publisher and editor. Digital copies of all issues online here.
* Birth Control Review – Published monthly from February 1917 to 1940 (although some issues covered two or three months). Sanger was editor until 1929, when she resigned from the ABCL.[72] Digital copies of many volumes online here.

### Collections

[edit]

* Sanger, Margaret (2003). Esther Katz; Cathy Moran Hajo; Peter Engelman (eds.). The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 1900–1928. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0252027376. OCLC 773147056.
* 
- (2007). Esther Katz; Cathy Moran Hajo; Peter Engelman (eds.). The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 2: Birth Control Comes of Age, 1928–1939. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252031373.
* 
- (2010). Esther Katz; Cathy Moran Hajo; Peter Engelman (eds.). The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 3: The Politics of Planned Parenthood, 1939–1966. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252033728.
* 
- (2016). Esther Katz; Cathy Moran Hajo; Peter Engelman (eds.). The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 4: Round the World for Birth Control, 1920-1966. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252098802.
* "The Margaret Sanger Papers at Smith College". Smith College. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
* "The Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University". New York University. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
* McElderry (1976). McElderry, Michael J. (ed.). Margaret Sanger: A Register of Her Papers in the Library of Congress. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

### Speeches

[edit]

* Sanger, Margaret (1921a). "The Morality of Birth Control". Retrieved January 10, 2025.
* 
- (1925). "The Children's Era". Archived from the original on November 18, 2016. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
* 
- (1937). "Woman and the Future". Archived from the original on March 26, 2016. Retrieved January 10, 2025.

## References

[edit]

### Notes

[edit]

1. ^ They became estranged in 1913, but the divorce was not finalized until 1921.[1]
2. ^ Sanger did not create the slogan "No Gods, No Masters"; it was originally used by anarchists before her.
3. ^ Seven issues of The Woman Rebel were published, all in 1914.[24]
4. ^ Other expressions considered were: conception control, family limitation, pregnancy prevention, limitation of offspring, regulation of reproduction, preventive arts, neo-Malthusianism, voluntary parenthood, and voluntary motherhood.[20]
5. ^ The Comstock Act prohibited anything that could be remotely considered obscene; the birth control movement wanted to create an exception for birth control information.
6. ^ Most copies of The Woman Rebel were distributed by a network of activists, not mailed.[30]
7. ^ The July issue of The Woman Rebel contained an article, written by an obscure activist, titled "In Defense of Assassination". President McKinley had been assassinated in 1901, so she felt the chance of conviction was high.[38]
8. ^ Sanger's son Grant was distraught, and blamed his mother for his sister's death, due to Sanger's long absence.[49]
9. ^ Location of first clinic: 46 Amboy Street, Brooklyn.[58]
10. ^ The high court ruling upheld Sanger's conviction, but declared that the anti-contraception law could not be applied to physicians. The court decision, by judge Frederick E. Crane, is People v. Sanger, 222 N.Y. 192, 195, 118 N.E. 637, 638 New York Appeals Court.[70]
11. ^ The exception only existed within New York state, because it was a state court decision.
12. ^ Caption at the bottom of this July 1919 issue reads: "Must She Always Plead in Vain? 'You are a nurse—can you tell me? For the children's sake—help me!' "
13. ^ Columbus Hill was a small section of the larger San Juan Hill neighborhood. Both neighborhoods were demolished in the 1950's to make room for the Lincoln Center. African Americans were leaving Columbus Hill in the 1920's, favoring Harlem instead.[111]
14. ^ The administration and finances were managed by white employees of the CRB and ABCL.[112]
15. ^ The issue contained seven articles by African American authors, and four by white authors.[120] Two representative articles are: Du Bois, W. E. B. (June 1932). "Black Folk and Birth Control". Birth Control Review. Vol. 16, no. 6\. pp. 166–167. Retrieved February 19, 2025.166-167&rft.date=1932-06&rft.aulast=Du+Bois&rft.aufirst=W.+E.+B.&rft_id=https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1000670632&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988"> And Schuyler, George (June 1932). "Quantity or Quality". Birth Control Review. Vol. 16, no. 6\. pp. 165–166. Retrieved February 19, 2025.165-166&rft.date=1932-06&rft.aulast=Schuyler&rft.aufirst=George&rft_id=https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1000672596&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
16. ^ Thirteeen years earlier, the September 1919 issue of Birth Control Review also contained articles by African American authors, under the rubric "The New Emancipation: Negroes' Need for Birth Control, As Seen By Themselves": Sanger, Margaret, ed. (September 1919). "The New Emancipation". Birth Control Review. Vol. 3, no. 9. Retrieved February 19, 2025.
17. ^ Biographer Ellen Chesler wrote "[Sanger] defined birth control as a right of the privileged, but as a duty or obligation of the poor. This argument was at the heart of scholar-activist Agela Davis's widely disseminated indictment of Sanger". Chesler 2007, p. 485\. Historian Cathy Hajo discusses the reluctance of the African American community to create birth control clinics: Hajo 2010, pp. 86–88; see also McCann 1994, pp. 146–147.
18. ^ Additional publications that conclude there was no racist intent include:
• Chesler 2007, p. 488\.
• Katz 2001.
• "The Demonization of Margaret Sanger". Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter (16). 1997. Retrieved November 27, 2016.
19. ^ In 1942, in correspondence about the Negro Project in 1942, Sanger wrote: "I think it is magnificent that we are in on the ground floor, helping Negroes to control their birth rate, to reduce their high infant and maternal death rate, to maintain better standards of health and living for those already born, and to create better opportunities for those who will be born. In other words, we're giving Negroes an opportunity to help themselves, and to rise to their own heights through education and the principles of a democracy."[122]
20. ^ Mary Dennett, Sanger's rival in the birth control movement, was also lobbying for changes to the Comstock Act through her organization, the Voluntary Parenthood League.[132]
21. ^ Mary Dennett was arrested and convicted of violating the Comstock act in 1929, and her successful federal appeal in 1930 contributed to the legal momentum culminating in the One Package decision.[134]
22. ^ The official cause of death was listed "abortion" for 2,700 women in 1930, accounting for 18% of maternal deaths that year.[157]
23. ^ In the first edition of Family Limitation she wrote: "If you are going to have an abortion, make up your mind to it in the first stages, and have it done. On the other hand, there is often a feeling of the strongest desire to continue with the pregnancy. It is for each woman to decide this for herself, but act at once, whichever way you decide."[165]
24. ^ In the 1918 8th edition of the pamphlet, Sanger changed the advice on abortion to a strong disapproval.[165]
25. ^ Sanger's views on abortion were expressed often. In 1916, when her first clinic opened, she told patients "that abortion was the wrong way - no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way - it took a little time, a little trouble, but it was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun."[166] In her 1918 article "Why Not Birth-Control Clinics in America?" she discussed medically necessary abortions: "The absurd cruelty of permitting thousands of women each year to go through abortions to prevent the aggravation of diseases for which they are under treatment assuredly cannot be much longer ignored by the medical profession."[167] In her 1920 book Woman and the New Race she wrote: "Family limitation will always be practiced ... either by birth control or by abortion.... The one means health and happiness - a stronger, better race. The other means disease, suffering, death."[168]
26. ^ Biographer Chesler states that there is evidence that, prior to 1932, the staff sometimes did refer patients to physicians outside the clinic for therapeutic abortions.[172]
27. ^ Churchill was a sponsor of the first ABCL conference in 1921.[204]
28. ^ Sanger's list of unfit traits was not strictly genetic; she, and other eugenicists of that era, included environmental factors that appeared (to them) to be passed-down between generations, such as poverty, immorality, and illiteracy.[222][221][223]
29. ^ Many eugenicists opposed birth control (for unfit parents) because they believed fit parents would make use it, thus reducing the number of fit offspring.[227]
30. ^ After the Nazi sterilization program was uncovered during WW II, there was a drastic reduction in involuntary sterilizations in the U.S..[231]
31. ^ Eugenic efforts were generally categorized as positive measures which encouraged parents to reproduce if they are deemed fit; and negative measures which discouraged parents from reproducing (via sterilization, contraception, abortion, or financial incentives) if they are deemed unfit.[235]
32. ^ Writings capturing Sanger's feelings on government regulation include: "eugenists [sic] 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. We maintain that a woman possessing an adequate knowledge of her reproductive functions is the best judge of the time and conditions under which her child should be brought into the world. We further maintain that it is her right, regardless of all other considerations, to determine whether she shall bear children or not, and how many children she shall bear if she chooses to become a mother."[237] And: "... we are convinced that racial regeneration .... must come from within. That is, it must be autonomous, self-directive, and not imposed from without.... this education ... must be based upon the needs and demands of the people themselves. An idealistic code of sexual ethics, imposed from above ... can never be of the slightest value in effecting any changes."[238]
33. ^ A rare instance where Sanger suggested government intervention was in her 1934 article "America Needs a Code for Babies", which appeared in a newspaper insert called American Weekly. Written when the New Deal was creating a vast number of agencies, regulations, and codes, it begins "Under the 'New Deal' everybody and everybody's business is now regulated, coded, and licensed ... Even a peanut stand must be licensed; is the producer and caretaker of an American baby less important?" The article then lists a variety of proposals, including one that requires couples to obtain a permit from the government before having a child. The article continues: "All that sounds highly revolutionary, and it might be impossible to put the scheme into practice. But for purposes of discussion... I do not pretend in the above suggestions to have arrived at the formulation of a workable baby code..."[239]
34. ^ Sanger did not use race, ethnicity, or religion to determine unfitness,[232] however, in her speech "The Morality of Birth Control" she defined unfit people to include those whose "whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers."[243]
35. ^ Sanger was not alone; other eugenicists that took a non-racist approach to eugenics included W. E. B. Du Bois, Gunnar Dahlberg, Theodosius Dobzhansky, J. B. S. Haldane, Herbert Spencer Jennings , and Hermann Joseph Muller.[244][245] Several prominent non-racist eugenicists signed the Eugenics manifesto in 1939, which stated: "[a] major hindrance to genetic improvement lies in those economic and political conditions which foster antagonism between different peoples, nations and 'races'. The removal of race prejudices and of the unscientific doctrine that good or bad genes are the monopoly of particular peoples or of persons with features of a given kind will not be possible, however, before those conditions which make for war and economic exploitation have been eliminated."[196][246]
36. ^ Some eugenicists began to support birth control in the 1930s,[217] but by then the eugenics movement was in decline.[251]
37. ^ Other activists considered as co-founders of the birth control movement are Emma Goldman and Mary Dennett.
38. ^ Martin Luther King Jr. was unable to attend the award ceremony, so his wife, Coretta Scott King, read the speech.[265]
39. ^ a b The Margaret Sanger Award and the Maggie Award have not been awarded since 2015. Comparable awards in 2024 are the Reproductive Health Icon Award and the Media Excellence Award, respectively.[296]
40. ^ The attacks come from several factions of the anti-abortion movement, including the religious right,[279] the African American community[279][280] and Republican politicians.[281] U.S. government officials that have repeated false claims about Sanger include Sen. Ted Cruz,[281] Rep. Louis Gohmert,[281]. Rep. William O'Brian[282] and Ben Carson.[283]
41. ^ An example of a quote frequently taken out of context is: "The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it" from her book Woman and the New Race. In that passage, she was discussing the high rate of infant death within poor families living in crowded conditions and suffering from malnutrition and disease. The full quote is "[to demonstrate] the immorality of large families ... it may be offered ... The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it [emphasis added]. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members. Moreover, the overcrowded homes of large families reared in poverty further contribute to this condition. Lack of medical attention is still another factor, so that the child who must struggle for health in competition with other members of a closely packed family has still great difficulties to meet after its poor constitution and malnutrition have been accounted for. The probability of a child handicapped by a weak constitution, an overcrowded home, inadequate food and care, and possibly a deficient mental equipment, winding up in prison or an almshouse, is too evident for comment."[285]
42. ^ Scholars have concluded that Sanger was not a racist,[288] nor a proponent of abortion,[126] nor associated with the Nazi party,[289][207] nor a supporter of the KKK.[282]
43. ^ Two U.S. Supreme court decisions related to abortion have referred to the false claim that Sanger intended to use birth control as a mechanism to achieve racist goals.[290][291][292] In Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, Clarence Thomas approvingly cited a friend of the court brief that contained falsehoods about Sanger.[293] And in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Samuel Alito cited a friend of the court brief which contained several false claims about Sanger.[294]

### Citations

[edit]

1. ^ Baker 2011, p. 126.
2. ^ a b c d Baker 2011, pp. 9–12.
3. ^ Sanger 1938, pp. 11–20.
4. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 27.
5. ^ Rosenberg 2008, p. 82.
6. ^ a b c Engelman 2011, p. 28.
7. ^ a b Engelman 2011, pp. 39–42.
8. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 29–30.
9. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 57–90.
10. ^ "Biographical Sketch". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Retrieved December 1, 2024.
11. ^ Kennedy 1970, pp. 15–18.
12. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 13-19. In addition to the federal Act, many states had laws with similar provisions. Enforcement of the laws was selective: condoms were widely available, but diaphragms and birth control manuals were not.
13. ^ Kennedy 1970, pp. 18–19. Kennedy points out that some materials on birth control were available in New York libraries in 1913. Sanger's description of the search: Sanger 1938, pp. 93–94.
14. ^ Kennedy 1970, pp. 16–18.
15. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 63\. Chesler concluded that Sachs may have been "an imaginative, dramatic composite" of several women; Engelman shares that view: Engelman 2011, p. 29\. Additional insight into the Sadie Sachs story can be found in:
• Baker 2011, pp. 49–51.
• Sanger 1917, p. 9\. A version of the story with the "threw my nursing bag" line.
16. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 29.
17. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 63–65.
18. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 65–71.
19. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 68–69.
20. ^ a b Engelman 2011, p. xviii.
21. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 66.
22. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 32.
23. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 30–42.
24. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 42.
25. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 97.
26. ^ Cox 2005, p. 76.
27. ^ Sanger, Margaret (1919a). Family Limitation (Ninth ed.). p. 12. Retrieved February 17, 2025. The first edition of Family Limitation had no illustrations; they were gradually added in subsequent editions.
28. ^ McCann 2010, pp. 750–51.
29. ^ Kennedy 1970, pp. 17–24.
30. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 44.
31. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 97-98.
32. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 42\. Five of seven issues.
33. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 99.
34. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 102–103.
35. ^ a b Engelman 2011, p. 45.
36. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 86–87.
37. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 85–87.
38. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 43.
39. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 103–105.
40. ^ a b Baker 2011, p. 268.
41. ^ Baker 2011, p. 178.
42. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 225, 235, 279.
43. ^ Kennedy 1970, p. 101.
44. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 30-31,48.
45. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 61, 93–94.
46. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 13–14, 111–117.
47. ^ Cox 2005, p. 55.
48. ^ Kennedy 1970, p. 127.
49. ^ a b Chesler 2007, pp. 133–134.
50. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 105–106.
51. ^ Baker 2011, p. 108\. For a detailed legal discussion, see Shechtman, Paul (August 23, 2024). "The Story of United States v. Margaret Sanger". New York Law Journal. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
52. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 126–128.
53. ^ Additional insight into the anti-obscenity laws can be found in:
• 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\. hdl:2027/uc1.b3921312.
• "Anthony Comstock Dies in His Crusade". Reading Eagle. Reading, Pennsylvania. September 22, 1915. p. 6.
54. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 80-91. Engelman used this photo for the cover of his book.
55. ^ Cox 2005, p. 56.
56. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 228, 261, 276.
57. ^ Baker 2011, p. 115.
58. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 528.
59. ^ Cox 2005, p. 7.
60. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 152–153.
61. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 80–91.
62. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 151–157.
63. ^ "First woman in US given English dose". The Seattle Star. January 27, 1917. p. 1. Retrieved November 16, 2014.
64. ^ "Mrs. Byrne pardoned; pledged to obey law;" (PDF). New York Times. February 2, 1917. Retrieved November 16, 2014.
65. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 91\. Original court decision at Baketel, Sheridan, ed. (May 1917). "A Birth Control Decision". The Medical Times. New York: 142. The judge wrote that women do not have "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception."
66. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 91.
67. ^ Cox 2005, p. 65.
68. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 101–103.
69. ^ Vullo, Maria (June 1, 2013). "People v. Sanger & the Birth of Family Planning in America" (PDF). Judicial Notice: A Periodical of New York Court History. 9 (1): 43–57.43-57&rft.date=2013-06-01&rft.aulast=Vullo&rft.aufirst=Maria&rft_id=https://history.nycourts.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Judicial-Notice-Issue-09_People-v-Sanger.pdf&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
70. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 159.
71. ^ McCann 2010, p. 751.
72. ^ a b "Birth Control Review History". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
73. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 192–193. Chesler writes that the word "race" in the title of the book means "not ... distinctions of color but ... in the generic sense, as 'in the human race'".
74. ^ McCann 1994, pp. 30–33, 48.
75. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 116–117.
76. ^ a b c Chesler 2007, pp. 192–193. In the book, Sanger created the concept of a "feminine spirit": an essence that was common to all women.
77. ^ Sanger 1920, p. 94.
78. ^ "The Passionate Friends: H. G. Wells and Margaret Sanger". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Retrieved January 23, 2025.
79. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 243-247. Slee was president of 3-in-One Oil company.
80. ^ Woodworth, Chistine (2012). "The Company She Kept". Alabama Review. 65 (3): 86. Retrieved February 18, 2025. In this photo Marion is selling: "Public Health Number", Birth Control Review, vol. 9, no. 8, March 1925.
81. ^ a b Levy, B.S. (2000). War and Public Health. American Public Health Association. p. 352\. ISBN 9780875530239. LCCN 00106713. Levy quotes Sanger from: Sanger 1922, p. 342.
82. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 130.
83. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 129-130.
84. ^ These principles were adopted at the first meeting of the ABCL in late 1921, and were published in "Birth control: What it is, How it works, What it will do". The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference. November 11, 1921. pp. 207–8.207-8&rft.date=1921-11-11&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988"> Also in Sanger, Margaret (December 1921). "The First American Birth Control Conference". The Birth Control Review. V (12): 18.
85. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 273–275.
86. ^ Baker 2011, p. 196.
87. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 196–97. See also Sanger 2007, p. 54.
88. ^ 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, 461–462\. ISBN 978-0684189369.461-462&rft.pub=Charles+Scribner's+Sons&rft.date=1988&rft.isbn=978-0684189369&rft.aulast=Harr&rft.aufirst=John+Ensor&rft.au=Johnson,+Peter+J.&rft_id=https://archive.org/details/rockefellercentu00harr&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
89. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 277, 293, 425, 558.
90. ^ Cox 2005, p. 77.
91. ^ Baker 2011, p. 275.
92. ^ Katō, Shizue (1984). Facing Two Ways: The Story of My Life. Stanford University Press. p. xxviii. ISBN 9780804712392. LCCN 83040621.
93. ^ Rodriguez 2023, p. 64.
94. ^ Rodriguez 2023, p. 28.
95. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 237-238.
96. ^ McCann 1994, pp. 177–8.
97. ^ a b c "Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau History". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
98. ^ a b Engelman 2011, p. 153.
99. ^ a b Baker 2011, p. 216.
100. ^ a b Engelman 2011, pp. 64–68.
101. ^ a b Engelman 2011, pp. 151–152. Sanger's description of KKK: Sanger 1938, pp. 361, 366–367.
102. ^ Baker 2011, p. 161.
103. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 382.
104. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 117–119.
105. ^ "Motherhood in Bondage". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. 1993. Retrieved February 11, 2025. Number of letters.
106. ^ a b c "Margaret Sanger and 'a Glorious Chain of Clinics'". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. 1995. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
107. ^ Robinson, Caroline (1972) [1930]. Seventy Birth Control Clinics: A survey and analysis including the general effects of control on size and quality of population. Arno. pp. 14–19\. ISBN 978-0405038754.14-19&rft.pub=Arno&rft.date=1972&rft.isbn=978-0405038754&rft.aulast=Robinson&rft.aufirst=Caroline&rft_id=https://archive.org/details/seventybirthcont0000robi/mode/2up&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988"> The 1972 edition is a reprint of the original 1930 edition.
108. ^ a b Chesler 2007, p. 296.
109. ^ McCann 1994, pp. 150–154, Bigotry: p. 153. See also Sanger 2003, p. 45.
110. ^ a b c d e Muigai, Wangui (Spring 2010). "Looking Uptown: Margaret Sanger and the Harlem Branch Birth Control Clinic". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Retrieved January 23, 2025.
111. ^ a b c McCann 1994, pp. 139–140.
112. ^ a b c d McCann, Carole (2006). "What Perspectives Did African American Advocates Bring to the Birth Control Movement and How Did Those Perspectives Shape the History of the Harlem Branch Birth Control Clinic? - Introduction"". Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000. Alexander Street Press. Retrieved February 19, 2025.
113. ^ Roberts 1998, pp. 86–88.
114. ^ Hajo 2010, pp. 84–86.
115. ^ McCann 1994, p. 141.
116. ^ a b Engelman 2011, p. 160.
117. ^ Klapper, Melissa R. (2014). Ballots, Babies, and Banners of Peace: American Jewish Women's Activism, 1890–1940. NYU Press. pp. 137–138\. ISBN 978-1479850594.137-138&rft.pub=NYU+Press&rft.date=2014&rft.isbn=978-1479850594&rft.aulast=Klapper&rft.aufirst=Melissa+R.&rft_id=https://books.google.com/books?id=eIITCgAAQBAJ&pg;=PA137&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
118. ^ Hajo 2010, p. 85.
119. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 200–202.
120. ^ a b McCann, Carole (2006). "What Perspectives Did African American Advocates Bring to the Birth Control Movement and How Did Those Perspectives Shape the History of the Harlem Branch Birth Control Clinic? - Document 17A: George S. Schuyler, "Quantity or Quality"". Women and Social Movements in the United States 1600-2000. Alexander Street Press. Retrieved February 19, 2025.
121. ^ a b Engelman 2011, pp. 175–177.
122. ^ a b c Katz 2001.
123. ^ Sanger, Margaret (December 10, 1939). "Letter from Margaret Sanger to Dr. C.J. Gamble". Letter to Clarence Gamble. Smith Libraries Exhibits (libex.smith.edu). p. 2\. Archived from the original on April 12, 2023. Retrieved December 13, 2024.
124. ^ Davis, Angela (2011) [1982]. "Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights". Women, Race, & Class. Knopf Doubleday. pp. 212–216\. ISBN 9780307798497. Retrieved January 20, 2025.212-216&rft.pub=Knopf+Doubleday&rft.date=2011&rft.isbn=9780307798497&rft.aulast=Davis&rft.aufirst=Angela&rft_id=https://books.google.com/books?id=74QzFiv1w10C&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988"> However, in the same book, Davis argued that when some members of the black community equated birth control with black genocide, that was inaccurate, perhaps even paranoid (p. 203). The chapter on birth control, titled "Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights", was originally published in 1982.
125. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 484–489.
126. ^ a b c Gandy, Imani (August 20, 2015). "How False Narratives of Margaret Sanger Are Being Used to Shame Black Women". Rewire News Group. Retrieved January 14, 2025.
127. ^ Roberts 1998, pp. 78–79.
128. ^ Gordon 2002, p. 235\. Gordon wrote: "Sanger genuinely wanted this to be a project for black uplift, and she meant to avoid the substance as well as the appearance of trying to reduce the black population".
129. ^ Valenza 1985.
130. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 291–292.
131. ^ a b "National Committee on Federal Legislation on Birth Control". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project.
132. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 111–122.
133. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 371–373.
134. ^ a b Engelman 2011, pp. 167–169.
135. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 372–377.
136. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 169–170.
137. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 374.
138. ^ Upham, J.H.J. (1943). "The Teaching of Contraceptive Measures in Medical Colleges". Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges. 18: 307–312.307-312&rft.date=1943&rft.aulast=Upham&rft.aufirst=J.H.J.&rft_id=https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:71729662&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
139. ^ "Birth Control Council of America History". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Retrieved January 24, 2025..
140. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 393.
141. ^ a b c "International Planned Parenthood Federation History". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Retrieved January 26, 2025.
142. ^ "About Us". International Planned Parenthood Federation. Retrieved January 29, 2025.
143. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 410, 423–427, 437.
144. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 433–436, 443–446, 450–457.
145. ^ a b Eig 2014.
146. ^ Eig 2014, p. 312.
147. ^ a b "The Heart to go to Japan". New York University: The Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Spring 1996. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
148. ^ Tipton, Elise K. (September 1997). "Ishimoto Shizue: The Margaret Sanger of Japan". Women's History Review. 6 (3): 337–355\. doi:10.1080/09612029700200151. ISSN 0961-2025.337-355&rft.date=1997-09&rft_id=info:doi/10.1080/09612029700200151&rft.issn=0961-2025&rft.aulast=Tipton&rft.aufirst=Elise+K.&rft_id=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09612029700200151&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
149. ^ a b Cleere, Jan (June 24, 2022). "The Tucson history of Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood founder". Arizona Daily Star.
150. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 303–304.
151. ^ Johnson, J.W. (2005). Griswold V. Connecticut: Birth Control and the Constitutional Right of Privacy. University Press of Kansas. p. 223\. ISBN 9780700613779. LCCN 2004025497.
152. ^ "Margaret Sanger is Dead at 82; Led Campaign for Birth Control (Obituary)". New York Times. September 7, 1966. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
153. ^ Baker 2011, p. 307.
154. ^ a b Engelman 2011, p. 82\. Flyer is reprinted in Sanger 1931, p. 155.
155. ^ Lewis, Karen J. (January 2, 2001). Abortion Law Development: A Brief Overview (PDF). Report for Congress, Order Code # 95-724 A (Report). Congressional Research Service - The Library of Congress. p. CRS-2. Retrieved January 19, 2025.
156. ^ Garrow, D.J. (1998). Liberty and Sexuality: The Right to Privacy and the Making of Roe V. Wade. University of California Press. pp. 271–272\. ISBN 9780520213029. LCCN 97052173.271-272&rft.pub=University+of+California+Press&rft.date=1998&rft_id=info:lccn/97052173&rft.isbn=9780520213029&rft.aulast=Garrow&rft.aufirst=D.J.&rft_id=https://books.google.com/books?id=dol7vaFd-ugC&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988"> Garrow obtained his estimates from data collected by Alan Frank Guttmacher and Frederick J. Taussig.
157. ^ Gold, Rachel Benson (March 1, 2003). "Lessons from Before Roe: Will Past be Prologue?". Guttmacher Institute. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
158. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 119, 144.
159. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 63.
160. ^ Reagan, L.J. (2022). When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973, with a New Preface. University of California Press. pp. 14–15, 140. ISBN 9780520387423. Retrieved January 31, 2025.14-15,+140&rft.pub=University+of+California+Press&rft.date=2022&rft.isbn=9780520387423&rft.aulast=Reagan&rft.aufirst=L.J.&rft_id=https://books.google.com/books?id=4cxwEAAAQBAJ&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988"> Efforts to legalize abortion began earlier, in the 1930s, in Europe.
161. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 84–86, 112.
162. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 271.
163. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 2.
164. ^ a b Engelman 2011, pp. 44–45.
165. ^ a b "Margaret Sanger Answers Questions on Abortion". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Spring 2012. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
166. ^ Sanger 1938, p. 217.
167. ^ Sanger, Margaret (March 1919). "Why Not Birth Control Clinics in America?". American Medicine: 164–167. Retrieved January 10, 2025.164-167&rft.date=1919-03&rft.aulast=Sanger&rft.aufirst=Margaret&rft_id=https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/woman-and-the-new-race/why-not-birth-control-clinics-in-america&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">`{{cite journal}}`: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
168. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 119.
169. ^ Sanger, Margaret (January 27, 1932). "The Pope's Position on Birth Control". The Nation. 135 (3473): 102–104. Retrieved January 29, 2025.102-104&rft.date=1932-01-27&rft.aulast=Sanger&rft.aufirst=Margaret&rft_id=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/popes-position-birth-control/&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
170. ^ a b Chesler 2007, pp. 300–302.
171. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 300.
172. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 301.
173. ^ "History of Planned Parenthood". Planned Parenthood. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
174. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 302-303. Baker based her opinion on Sanger's strong belief that women had a right to control their own bodies.
175. ^ "Iconoclasts gag Mrs. Sanger". Brooklyn Eagle. New York. April 18, 1929. p. 18. Retrieved February 10, 2025.
176. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 58, 104, 148. Contrasting the two approaches.
177. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 23–74. Chapter 2 - "Birth Control and Free Speech" - describes how advocacy of free speech was at the heart of the birth control movement.
178. ^ Gorton 2024. Book describes the rivalry between Sanger and Dennett.
179. ^ a b Engelman 2011, pp. 23–24, 27–29, 41–43.
180. ^ McCann 2010, pp. 750–751.
181. ^ Kennedy 1970, pp. 146–151.
182. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 147–149. Other opponents of birth control included the medical establishment and various governmental individuals and agencies..
183. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 147–148.
184. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 220.
185. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 148.
186. ^ Kennedy 1970, p. 149.
187. ^ a b Chesler 2007, pp. 219–220.
188. ^ Melody, Michael E.; Peterson, Linda M. (1999). Teaching America about sex: marriage guides and sex manuals from the late Victorians to Dr. Ruth. New York London: New York University Press. p. 53\. ISBN 978-0-8147-5532-7.
189. ^ Davis, Tom (2005). Sacred work: Planned Parenthood and its clergy alliances. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press. p. 213\. ISBN 978-0-8135-3493-0.
190. ^ "Sanger, Censorship, and the Catholic Church – The Latest Battle in a Long War". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. 1993. Retrieved February 14, 2025. Statement in writing, from Sanger, 1929, while she was on stage in Boston wearing a gag over her mouth.
191. ^ "Every Child a Wanted Child (Obituary)". Time. Vol. 88, no. 12\. September 16, 1966. p. 96. That source states eight total arrests in her life. Arrests related to free speech include:
• 1914 arrest for mailing obscene material. Chesler 2007, p. 99\.
• 1916 arrest in New York for distributing contraceptive pamphlet. Cox 2005, p. 7\.
• 1916 arrest in Oregon for distributing obscene material. Engelman 2011, p. 66\.
• 1921 arrest for obscene speech at a meeting. Engelman 2011, pp. 125–126.
192. ^ a b c Baker 2011, p. 162\. "In The Pivot of Civilization [Sanger] embraced eugenics as a female cause with a female solution".
193. ^ Leonard 2005, pp. 215–218.
194. ^ Beasley, Stephanie (October 1, 2021). "Top global foundations mount effort to confront legacies of eugenics". Devex. Retrieved February 4, 2025. Major U.S. philanthropies that supported eugenics included Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Kellogg and Sage.
195. ^ Additional insight into the popularity of eugenics in that era can be found in:
• Engelman 2011, pp. 130–132.
• Baker 2011, pp. 140–147.
• Chesler 2007, pp. 215–218.
196. ^ a b c d Paul 1984, pp. 582–589.
197. ^ Kevles, Daniel (1985). In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp. 164–175\. ISBN 978-0-520-05763-0.164-175&rft.pub=University+of+California+Press&rft.date=1985&rft.isbn=978-0-520-05763-0&rft.aulast=Kevles&rft.aufirst=Daniel&rft_id=https://books.google.com/books?id=8esnhRxBomMC&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988"> Describes reform eugenicists who believed that genetics could not distinguish races; and doubted that sterilization would have much impact.
198. ^ McCann 1994, p. 104.
199. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 48.
200. ^ "The Passionate Friends: H. G. Wells and Margaret Sanger". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. 1996. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
201. ^ Lombardo 2011, p. 72-76.
202. ^ Levering, Lewis David (2001). W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919–1963. Owl Books. p. 223\. ISBN 978-0-8050-6813-9..
203. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 131, 134. Contains a list of notable eugenicists.
204. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 200.
205. ^ Gillette, Aaron (2007). Eugenics and the Nature-Nurture Debate in the Twentieth Century. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 123–124\. ISBN 9780230608900.123-124&rft.pub=Palgrave+Macmillan&rft.date=2007&rft.isbn=9780230608900&rft.aulast=Gillette&rft.aufirst=Aaron&rft_id=https://books.google.com/books?id=8rSHDAAAQBAJ&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">.
206. ^ a b Chesler 2007, p. 217.
207. ^ a b c "The Sanger-Hitler Equation". NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. 2002. Retrieved January 25, 2025.
208. ^ Gordon 2002, p. 197.
209. ^ Carey, Jane (2012). "The Racial Imperatives of Sex: birth control and eugenics in Britain, the United States and Australia in the interwar years". Women's History Review. 21 (5). Routledge: 733–752\. doi:10.1080/09612025.2012.658180.733-752&rft.date=2012&rft_id=info:doi/10.1080/09612025.2012.658180&rft.aulast=Carey&rft.aufirst=Jane&rft_id=https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2012.658180&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988"> Stoddard contributed an article to Birth Control Review, "Population Problems in Asia", in 1922.
210. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 97–98, 130–133.
211. ^ a b c Engelman 2011, pp. 131, 134.
212. ^ a b Baker 2011, pp. 143–147.
213. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 196.
214. ^ a b Engelman 2011, pp. 130, 132.
215. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 483–484.
216. ^ a b Reed 1978, pp. 131, 134–135.
217. ^ a b c McCann 1994, pp. 100–101.
218. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 146–147.
219. ^ Baker 2011, p. 145.
220. ^ a b Engelman 2011, pp. 133–134, 166. "It is important to note that Sanger understood 'unfit' to indicate 'physical or mental defects.' She wrote that 'if unfit refers to race or religions, then that is another matter which I frankly deplore.'" (p 133).
221. ^ a b Baker 2011, p. 147.
222. ^ McCann 2010, p. 101.
223. ^ a b c Engelman 2011, p. 134.
224. ^ Engelman 2011, pp. 97–98, 131.
225. ^ Baker 2011, p. 165.
226. ^ a b Roberts 2009, p. 201.
227. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 54
228. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 222–223.
229. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 216.
230. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 223–224.
231. ^ a b Reilly, P.R. (2015). "Eugenics and Involuntary Sterilization: 1907-2015". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. 16 (351): 68. doi:10.1146/annurev-genom-090314-024930. Retrieved February 6, 2025.
232. ^ a b c Engelman 2011, p. 133.
233. ^ Cooper 2023. "A lifelong campaigner for women’s rights, she gradually abandoned her anarchist and socialist convictions in favor of a distinctly feminist version of eugenics. Frustrated with the lack of interest in women’s reproductive autonomy among feminists and labor activists, Sanger turned to the science of eugenics."
234. ^ McCann 2010, p. 101\. "Sanger's articulation of eugenics was a contradictory mix of adherence to the dominant American version of this ideology and resistance to it."
235. ^ Wilkinson, Stephen A. (2010). "On the distinction between positive and negative eugenics". In Matti Häyry (ed.). Arguments and analysis in bioethics. Amsterdam: Rodopi. pp. 115–128\. doi:10.1163/9789042028036_011. ISBN 978-90-420-2803-6.115-128&rft.pub=Rodopi&rft.date=2010&rft_id=info:doi/10.1163/9789042028036_011&rft.isbn=978-90-420-2803-6&rft.aulast=Wilkinson&rft.aufirst=Stephen+A.&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
236. ^ Cox 2005, p. 80.
237. ^ Sanger 1919, pp. 11–12. sfn error: multiple targets (2×): CITEREFSanger1919 (help)
238. ^ Sanger, Margaret (1921). "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda" (PDF). Birth Control Review. Vol. 5, no. 10\. The New York Women's Publishing Company. p. 5 - via The Margaret Sanger Papers Project.
239. ^ Sanger, Margaret (May 27, 1934). "America Needs a Code for Babies". The Washington Herald (American Weekly insert). Washington DC. Retrieved January 16, 2025.
240. ^ a b c Roberts 1998, p. 81\. "Even in her most eugenical book, The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger did not tie fitness for reproduction to any particular ethnic group. It appears that Sanger was motivated by a genuine concern to improve the health of poor mothers she served rather than a desire to eliminate their stock. Sanger believed that all their afflictions arose from their unrestrained fertility, not their genes or racial heritage. For this reason, I agree that Sanger’s views were distinct from those of her eugenecist colleagues. Sanger nevertheless promoted two of the most perverse tenets of eugenic thinking: that social problems are caused by reproduction of the socially disadvantaged and that their childbearing should therefore be deterred."
241. ^ a b c Katz 1995, pp. 43–47.
242. ^ Additional insight into the non-racist nature of Sanger's eugenic policies can be found in:
• Chesler 2007, pp. 195–6.
• Engelman 2011, pp. 133, 135.
• Baker 2011, p. 162\.
• McCann 1994, pp. 13, 16–21, 117.
• Valenza 1985.
243. ^ Sanger 1921a.
244. ^ Paul 1984, pp. 582–589. List of several "left" eugenicists on p. 582; list of some that signed the Eugenics manifesto on p 583.
245. ^ Lombardo 2011, p. 72-76. Du Bois.
246. ^ "Social Biology and Population Improvement" (PDF). Nature. 144: 521-522. September 16, 1939. Retrieved February 7, 2025. Commonly referred to as the "eugenics manifesto".
247. ^ McCann 1994, p. 117\. McCann writes that Sanger stressed limiting the number of births, and to live within one's economic ability to raise and support healthy children, which in her view would lead to a betterment of society and the human race: "although Sanger articulated birth control in terms of racial betterment ... she always defined fitness in individual rather than racial terms."
248. ^ Engelman 2011, p. 135\. Engelman concluded that Sanger was not a racist, but added: "Sanger quite effortlessly looked the other way when others spouted racist speech. She had no reservations about relying on flawed and overtly racist works to serve her own propaganda needs."
249. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 15\. "Margaret Sanger was never herself a racist, but she lived in a profoundly bigoted society, and her failure to repudiate prejudice unequivocally - especially when it was manifest among proponents of her cause - has haunted her ever since."
250. ^ a b Baker 2011, p. 164.
251. ^ Leonard 2005, pp. 219–220.
252. ^ a b "Margaret Sanger Square". The Village View. Retrieved February 16, 2025. The street sign designating "Margaret Sanger Square" was placed in 1993 at the intersection of Bleeker Street & Mott St (the location of Planned Parenthood's Manhattan birth control clinic) but was removed in 2021.
253. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 445, 482.
254. ^ Planned Parenthood usage estimated from data in:
• "By the Numbers" (PDF). Planned Parenthood. April 2024. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
• "Birth Control Has Expanded Opportunity for Women - In Economic Advancement, Educational Attainment, and Health Outcomes" (PDF). Planned Parenthood. June 2015. Retrieved January 12, 2025.
255. ^ Waylen, Georgina (2013). The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics. Oxford University Press USA. p. 223\. ISBN 9780199751457. Retrieved February 1, 2025. First wave feminist.
256. ^ Baker 2011, p. 70.
257. ^ Chesler 2007, pp. 144, 149, 245.
258. ^ "The Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University". New York University. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
259. ^ "The Margaret Sanger Papers at Smith College". Smith College. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
260. ^ "Portrait of a Rebel: The Remarkable Mrs. Sanger". IMDb.com. April 22, 1980.
261. ^ Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story – 1995 television film directed by Paul ShapiroPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback.
262. ^ "The Margaret Sanger Story". Comics.org. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
263. ^ "Our Lady of Birth Control: A Cartoonist's Encounter with Margaret Sanger". Comics.org. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
264. ^ Planned Parenthood Federation of America (2004). "The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Upon Accepting the Planned Parenthood Sanger Award". Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
265. ^ "Mrs. King receives award for husband". The Afro American. May 21, 1966. Retrieved January 27, 2025.
266. ^ "TIME 100 Persons Of The Century". Time. Vol. 153, no. 23\. June 14, 1999.
267. ^ "Nomination Database". Nobel Prize. April 2020. Retrieved January 23, 2025.
268. ^ "Annual Humanist Awardees". August 12, 2023. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
269. ^ Lauren Hodges (August 27, 2015). "National Portrait Gallery Won't Remove Bust of Planned Parenthood Founder : The Two-Way". NPR. Retrieved June 30, 2016.
270. ^ Chesler 2007, p. 412.
271. ^ "Rockefeller 3d Wins Sanger Award". The New York Times. October 9, 1967. Archived from the original on November 6, 2012. Retrieved February 14, 2011.
272. ^ "Sanger, Margaret". National Women's Hall of Fame. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
273. ^ "National Historic Landmark Program". National Park Service, National Historic Landmarks Program. September 14, 1993. Archived from the original on March 18, 2012. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
274. ^ "Friends of the Library Newsletter" (PDF). Wellesley.edu. Archived from the original (PDF) on June 17, 2015. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
275. ^ Michael E. Eidenmuller (February 13, 2009). "Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century by Rank". American Rhetoric. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
276. ^ "Margaret H Sanger—Women's Political Communication Archives". Archived from the original on November 18, 2016. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
277. ^ "Venus – Sanger". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. USGS. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
278. ^ Baker 2011, pp. 3–4.
279. ^ a b c Cooper 2023.
280. ^ Dobbins-Harris, Shyrissa (2017). "The Myth of Abortion as Black Genocide: Reclaiming our Reproductive Cycle". National Black Law Journal. 26 (1).
281. ^ a b c Sorkin, Amy Davidson (October 28, 2015). "Ted Cruz Vs. Margaret Sanger's Portrait". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
282. ^ a b Wirestone, Clay (March 18, 2015). "NH Rep. Bill O'Brien says Margaret Sanger was active participant in KKK". PolitiFact (The Poynter Institute). Retrieved January 28, 2025.
283. ^ Kelly, Amita (August 14, 2015). "Fact Check: Was Planned Parenthood Started To 'Control' The Black Population?". NPR. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
284. ^ Examples of fact-checkers debunking falsehoods related to Sanger:
• "Fact Check: Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger's 1939 quote on exterminating Black population taken out of context". Reuters. May 9, 2022. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
• "Fact Check: Fabricated quote about 'human weeds' attributed to Planned Parenthood founder". Reuters. June 2, 2022. Retrieved January 25, 2025.
• Robinson, Lori (November 1, 2011). "Cain's False Attack on Planned Parenthood". Annenberg Public Policy Center. Retrieved January 25, 2025.
• "Did Margaret Sanger Decry Slavs and Jews as 'Human Weeds'?". Snopes. July 31, 2015. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
• Ibrahim, Nur (September 13, 2023). "Margaret Sanger Did Not Advocate 'Exterminating the Negro Population'". Snopes. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
285. ^ Sanger 1920, pp. 62–63.
286. ^ "Opposition Claims About Margaret Sanger" (PDF). Planned Parenthood. April 2021. Retrieved January 5, 2025.
287. ^ "The Truth about Margaret Sanger". Planned Parenthood Affiliates of New Jersey. Archived from the original on March 17, 2010. Retrieved January 10, 2025.
288. ^ a b Sanger was a eugenicist, but scholars have concluded that Sanger was not racist and did not target minority communities. See Chesler 2007, pp. 15, 195–6; Cooper 2023, pp. 60–73; Engelman 2011, pp. 133, 135; Katz 1995, pp. 43–47; McCann 1994, pp. 13, 16–21, 117; Roberts 1998, p. 81; and Valenza 1985. For additional details, see the Eugenics section of this article.
289. ^ O'Brien, Gerald V. (2013). "Margaret Sanger and the Nazis: How Many Degrees of Separation?". Social Work. 58 (3): 285–287\. doi:10.1093/sw/swt026. ISSN 0037-8046.285-287&rft.date=2013&rft_id=info:doi/10.1093/sw/swt026&rft.issn=0037-8046&rft.aulast=O'Brien&rft.aufirst=Gerald+V.&rft_id=https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/swt026&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
290. ^ Lombardo, Paul A. (2023). "A Vigorous Campaign against Abortion": Views of American Leaders of Eugenics v. Supreme Court Distortions". Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. 51 (3): 473–479\. doi:10.1017/jme.2023.90. PMID 38088609.473-479&rft.date=2023&rft_id=info:doi/10.1017/jme.2023.90&rft_id=info:pmid/38088609&rft.aulast=Lombardo&rft.aufirst=Paul+A.&rft_id=https://doi.org/10.1017%2Fjme.2023.90&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
291. ^ Murray, Melissa (June 28, 2022). "Thomas and Alito Are Appropriating Racial Justice to Push a Radical Agenda". Mother Jones. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
292. ^ Seigel, Reva (February 14, 2024). "Abortion-Eugenics Discourse in Dobbs: A Social Movement History". Journal of American Constitutional History - Abortion Symposium. 2 (1). University of Wisconsin Law School. Retrieved January 28, 2025.
293. ^ Thomas L. Brejcha; et al. "Brief of the Restoration Project; Pastor Joseph Parker of Greater Turner Chapel A.M.E. Church; ... in Support of Petitioners" (PDF). U.S. Supreme Court. This brief is cited in Thomas' concurring opinion as "Brief for Restoration Project et al. as Amici Curiae 5–6". In his concurring opinion, Thomas singled-out by Sanger by name, and connected Sanger to eugenics, and eugenics to racism.
294. ^ Mathew D. Staver; et al. "Brief for Amici Curiae African American, Hispanic, Roman Catholic and Protestant Religious and Civil Rights Organizations and Leaders Supporting Petitioners" (PDF). U.S. Supreme Court. The brief is cited by Alito in footnote 41 of the Dobbs decision.
295. ^ Stewart, Nikita (July 21, 2020). "Planned Parenthood in N.Y. Disavows Margaret Sanger Over Eugenics". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 14, 2025. The Times article is discussing a press release issued by the New York City affiliate: "Planned Parenthood of Greater New York Announces Intent to Remove Margaret Sanger's Name from NYC Health Center". Planned Parenthood of Greater New York. July 21, 2020. Retrieved January 29, 2025. A year later, the president of the national Planned Parenthood organization published an editorial: Johnson, Alexis McGill (April 17, 2021). "I'm the Head of Planned Parenthood. We're Done Making Excuses for Our Founder". Opinion. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
296. ^ Graham, Ruth (July 24, 2020). "Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger Problem". Slate. Retrieved January 15, 2025.
297. ^ Chesner, Ellen (April 20, 2021). "Defending Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood's Founder (Letter to the Editor)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 8, 2025.
298. ^ Pollitt, Katha (August 20, 2020). "Canceling Margaret Sanger Only Helps Abortion Opponents". The Nation (published September 7, 2020). ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved January 14, 2025.
299. ^ Coates 2008, p. 48.

### Sources

[edit]

* Baker, Jean (2011). Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 978-1-4299-6897-3. OCLC 863501288, 1150293235.
* Chesler, Ellen (2007), Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America, New York: Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-1-4165-4076-2. Originally published in 1992 (Simon and Schuster ISBN 9780671600884), it was republished in 2007 with a new afterward.
* Coates, Patricia (2008), Margaret Sanger and the Origin of the Birth Control Movement, 1910–1930: The Concept of Women's Sexual Autonomy, Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, ISBN 978-0-7734-5099-8
* Cooper, Melinda (January 1, 2023). "The Anti-Abortion Movement and the Ghost of Margaret Sanger". Dissent. 70 (Winter 2023): 60–73\. doi:10.1353/dss.2023.0031. Retrieved January 20, 2023.60-73&rft.date=2023-01-01&rft_id=info:doi/10.1353/dss.2023.0031&rft.aulast=Cooper&rft.aufirst=Melinda&rft_id=https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-anti-abortion-movement-and-the-ghost-of-margaret-sanger&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
* Cox, Vicki (2005). Margaret Sanger: Rebel for Women's Rights. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4381-0759-2. OCLC 613206381.
* Eig, Jonathan (2014). The birth of the pill: how four crusaders reinvented sex and launched a revolution. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-07372-0.
* Engelman, Peter (2011). A History of the Birth Control Movement in America. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. ISBN 978-0-313-36510-2. OCLC 728097821.
* Gordon, Linda (2002). The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth Control Politics in America. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 9780252027642. Retrieved February 4, 2025.
* Gorton, Stephanie (2024). The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America. HarperCollins. ISBN 9780063036314.
* Hajo, Cathy (2010), Birth control on main street: organizing clinics in the United States, 1916–1939, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ISBN 978-0-252-07725-8
* Katz, Esther (1995). "The Editor as Public Authority: Interpreting Margaret Sanger". The Public Historian. 17 (1): 41–50\. doi:10.2307/3378350. ISSN 0272-3433. JSTOR 3378350. PMID 11640051.41-50&rft.date=1995&rft_id=info:pmid/11640051&rft.issn=0272-3433&rft_id=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3378350#id-name=JSTOR&rft_id=info:doi/10.2307/3378350&rft.aulast=Katz&rft.aufirst=Esther&rft_id=https://online.ucpress.edu/tph/article/17/1/41/88704/The-Editor-as-Public-Authority-Interpreting&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
* Katz, Esther, ed. (2001). "Birth Control or Race Control? Sanger and the Negro Project". Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter (28). NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Retrieved January 23, 2025.
* Kennedy, David (1970). Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-01202-6. OCLC 70781307.
* Leonard, Thomas C. (2005). "Eugenics and Economics in the Progressive Era" (PDF). Journal of Economic Perspectives. 19 (4). Retrieved January 29, 2022.
* Lombardo, Paul A. (2011). A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era. Indiana University Press. pp. 72–75\. ISBN 9780253222695.72-75&rft.pub=Indiana+University+Press&rft.date=2011&rft.isbn=9780253222695&rft.aulast=Lombardo&rft.aufirst=Paul+A.&rft_id=https://books.google.com/books?id=FAB-6RzKAQIC&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
* McCann, Carole (1994). Birth control politics in the United States, 1916-1945. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-8612-8. OCLC 988564989.
* McCann, Carole (2010). "Women as Leaders in the Contraceptive Movement". In O'Connor, Karen (ed.). Gender and Women's Leadership: A Reference Handbook. Vol. 2\. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Reference. ISBN 978-1-84972-763-1. OCLC 568741234.
* Paul, Diane B. (1984). "Eugenics and the Left". Journal of the History of Ideas. 45 (4). University of Pennsylvania Press. doi:10.2307/2709374. Retrieved February 7, 2025.
* Reed, James (1978). From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830. Basic Books. ISBN 9780465025824. LCCN 77074571.
* Roberts, Dorothy (1998). Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Knopf Doubleday. ISBN 9780679758693. LCCN 97002383.
* Roberts, Dorothy (2009). "Margaret Sanger and the Racial Origins of the Birth Control Movement". In Baum, Bruce (ed.). Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity. Duke University Press. pp. 198–213\. ISBN 9780822392156.198-213&rft.pub=Duke+University+Press&rft.date=2009&rft.isbn=9780822392156&rft.aulast=Roberts&rft.aufirst=Dorothy&rft_id=https://books.google.com/books?id=UsI1jv3hicAC&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
* Rodriguez, Sarah Mellors (2023). Reproductive realities in modern China: birth control and abortion, 1911–2021. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-009-02733-5. OCLC 1366057905.
* Rosenberg, Rosalind (2008), Divided Lives: American women in the twentieth century, New York: Hill and Wang, ISBN 978-0-8090-1631-0
* Sanger, Margaret (1919). "Birth Control and Racial Betterment". Birth Control Review. Vol. 3, no. 2\. The New York Women's Publishing Company. pp. 11–12 - via The Margaret Sanger Papers Project.11-12&rft.date=1919&rft.aulast=Sanger&rft.aufirst=Margaret&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">
* Valenza, Charles (1985), "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?", Family Planning Perspectives, 17 (1), Guttmacher Institute: 44–46, doi:10.2307/2135230, JSTOR 2135230, PMID 388436244-46&rft.date=1985&rft_id=info:pmid/3884362&rft_id=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2135230#id-name=JSTOR&rft_id=info:doi/10.2307/2135230&rft.aulast=Valenza&rft.aufirst=Charles&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:Margaret+Sanger" class="Z3988">

## External links

[edit]

Margaret Sanger at Wikipedia's sister projects

* Media from Commons
* Quotations from Wikiquote
* Texts from Wikisource

* Works by Margaret Sanger at Project Gutenberg
* Works by or about Margaret Sanger at the Internet Archive
* Works by Margaret Sanger at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
* Works by Margaret Sanger at Open Library
* Wallace, Mike (September 21, 1957). "Interview with Margaret Sanger (video recording)". Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas Austin.

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*[div.]: divorced
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