Margaret Sanger
Her legacy... the controversy
and the dangerous procedures they were willing to endure to
terminate unwanted pregnancies, which led her to write "What Every Mother Should Know"
(1911–12) and "What Every Girl Should Know" (1912–13) for the socialist magazine New York Call. But, it was her work as a nurse, often called to attend ailing and dying women who underwent frequent childbirth, miscarriages
and self-induced abortions that
pushed her over the edge.
One episode, either real
or fictional, became
the symbol of what
Sanger wanted to
avoid: abortion
and denial of
access to con-
traceptive
information
as prohibited
on grounds of
obscenity by
the 1873 fed-
eral Comstock
law. By Sanger's
own account, she
was called to help a
woman named Sadie
Sachs after another self-
induced abortion made her
very sick. She had been warned that another pregnancy would endanger her life, but the only advice the doctor gave her was to “sleep on the roof.” She died that day. Revolted, Sanger threw out her nursing bag and devoted the rest of her life to changing Ame-ricans’ views on contraception, to dispense knowledge, and help the women most at risk: the working-class, poor, and immigrants.
To Sanger, abortion was a danger that would disappear with women’s ability to avoid unwanted pregnancy. In 1914, Sanger popularized the term "birth control" and proclaimed that each woman should be "the absolute mistress of her own body.” To confront governmental censorship on contraceptive information, she launched The Woman Rebel, a monthly news-letter which promoted contra-ception though, strangely, did not provide information regarding birth control methods. In August 1914, just as she was about to publish Family Limitation, another pamphlet containing, this time, detailed and precise information on various contraceptive methods,
she was indicted for violating postal obscenity laws by mailing The Woman Rebel. Facing arrest and trial, she fled to Europe.
In England, she associated with the British Neo-Malthusians, a school of beliefs that population would grow to an unsustainable level. It gave Sanger another justification for birth control to avoid over-population, and therefore poverty and famine. She also met Havelock Ellis, who had a tremendous influence on her with his thoughts on sexual liberation. Armed
with new knowledge, she
would take on the most enduring of all social and
legal battles for women’s rights: contraception.
Margaret Sanger’s career spans se-veral decades; therefore, it is diffi-cult to summarize it in just a few pages. In this issue of Ceres Maga-zine, we focused on what her ideals were, and how she put the wheel for contraception reforms in motion. In order to analyze her viewpoints and actions, both right and wrong, we will spread her story over se-veral of Ceres Magazine’s issues, hopefully offering a better under-standing on why she went to look for help in all the wrong places, along with her regrets for such associations. In the next issue, we discuss the opening of the first clinic, and why she is mistaken for a racist. We talk about her involve-ment with Eugenics, which was a very popular idea among the upper class, politicians, and scientists alike. I would recommend as a good informative read, Birth Control in America - The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David M. Kennedy, in which Sanger is depicted for who she was, a woman with conflicting ideas and motives, with no attempt to canonize her or give credit that she doesn’t deserve.
51 | Ceres Magazine | Oct/Nov 2015
(Part 1)
Sanger in 1922.
Photo source: https://sangerpapers.wordpress.com/2013/10/