Margaret Sanger

Rhiannon Lambson

December 6, 2018

History 1700

Cassandra Clark
 Lambson 1

Margaret Sanger was a defendant for sex education and birth control for low income

women of America. She grew up in a home being one of eleven children where she experienced

the devastating effects of what too frequent childbearing can have on the family. She then

became a nurse where she noticed the educational inequality between upper and lower class

women. This fueled her to mend the gap and ensure that all women had access to sex education

and birth control regardless of financial status. Margaret Sanger was one of the biggest advocates

for the education of birth control with her persistence in sex education for low income women by

opening up clinics, manufacturing magazines, and by giving low income women a voice in the

contraceptive movement.

On October 16, 1916 Margaret’s first free family planning and birth control clinic was

opened in Brownsville, New York. Nine days after the clinic was opened Margaret was arrested

for distributing pamphlets with information on contraception which was illegal under the

Comstock Act. This did not stop Sanger from pursuing the idea of a free clinic. On November

11, 1921 the first Birth Control Conference was founded. The purpose of the three day

conference was “to gather scientists, physicians, demographers, eugenicists, social workers, birth

control advocates and socialites to discuss the ramifications of birth control and its potential to

improve the quality of life throughout society.”1 At the end of the conference The American

Birth Control League (ABCL) was made and is now formally known as Planned Parenthood

Federation since 1942. The purpose of the ABCL was to promote the funding of clinics to

educate the public on the dangers of uncontrolled procreation. “The staff and board of directors

1
Grimaldi, Jill. "The First American Birth Control Conference." Margaret Sanger Papers Project.
March 20, 2017. (accessed December 06, 2018)
https://sangerpapers.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/the-first-american-birth-control-conference/
 Lambson 2

of the ABCL grew directly out of The Birth Control Review, the monthly journal Sanger

launched in 1917”.2

The Birth Control Review was a lay magazine that formulated after she first published

the Woman Rebel. The Woman Rebel was an eight page long newspaper that was first published

in 1914.3 The topics written about were of women's issues that included: motherhood,

prostitution, and contraceptives. The spreading on this kind of content was seen as “illicit” and

“illegal” according to the Comstock Act. After three months of publishing Margaret was

formally charged and could have faced up to twenty years of prison. Her charges were dropped

in November of 1915. Sanger then reissued a new line of magazines, in 1917, which was the

Birth Control Review series. In the series she writes to women of the methods they can use to

prevent pregnancy like using a fountain syringe or douching after intercouse with certain

combinations of drugstore chemicals, homemade vaginal suppositories, sponges, and condoms.4

She also spoke out to the younger women about menstruation and the changes her body will go

through during different stages, love, and lust.5 Sanger found it to be important for women to

learn of these methods because of the large families they were producing, but not being able to

afford and manage. With the knowledge she provided she hoped to decrease the number of

unwanted pregnancies and help women in poverty have a say in when they would procreate.

2
"Birth Control Organizations." NYU. (accessed December 06, 2018)
https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/aboutms/organization_abcl.php.
3
Horwitz, Rainey, "The Woman Rebel (1914)". Embryo Project Encyclopedia (2018-05-16). ISSN: 1940-
5030 http://embryo.asu.edu/handle/10776/13063.
4
Sanger, Margaret H. "Family Limitation." 1917. Manuscript.
https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:2577621$1i. (accessed November 9, 2018)
5
Sanger, Margaret H. "What Every Girl Should Know." 1920. Manuscript.
http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/AmRad/whateverygirl1920.pdf. (accessed November 9, 2018)
 Lambson 3

Women seeking answers on how to end the cycle of never ending childing bearing would

reach out to Sanger. In one of Margaret's books, Motherhood in Bondage, she published some of

the 250,00 letters she had received from women.6 In these letters women speak about how many

children they have and the income they have to try and live off of, how when they become

pregnant they hope the lose the baby, and all of the women speak of how close in age the

children are and how they cant stop the cycle. Margaret spoke to these women and gave them a

voice that helped them fight for a more permanent solution, The Pill. In 1950, Sanger and her

close friend Katharine McCormick sought out the creation of an oral contraceptive that was

“safe, dependable, affordable, and controlled by women”.7 Sanger and McCormick went looking

at Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology where they found testing of an oral

contraceptive which later was further developed by Russell Marker and Gregory Pincus and led

to the first oral contraceptive. The oral contraceptive was not immediately released, but finally in

1960 the FDA approved Enovid to be sold and used and by 1965 one in four married women

were on The Pill.

Margaret Sanger was a nurse who saw the inequality of education that lower income

women had when it came to the prevention and control of family planning. She dedicated her life

to ensure women learned how to protect themselves and their children from experiencing lives of

poverty because careless procreation. She established free clinics that have had lasting effects on

the education of sexual conduct, the treatment, and help that is needed. She gave women the

knowledge they needed to self educate and to be able to choose when and how they would create

6
Sanger, Margaret H. "Motherhood in Bondage." “I Am Almost a Prisoner”: Women Plead for
Contraception. 1928. Manuscript. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5083/. (accessed November 9,
2018)
7
"The Birth Control Pill A History." Planned Parenthood. June 2015. (accessed December 6,
2018). https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/1514/3518/7100/Pill_History_FactSheet.pdf.
 Lambson 4

a family. Sanger gave women a voice and helped them be heard by finding a more permanent

and long lasting solution to the problem, The Pill. All of the work, material, and research

Margaret Sanger created in her lifetime for the education of women, will go on for lifetimes to

come.
 Lambson 5

Bibliography

PRIMARY SOURCES

Sanger, Margaret H. "The Case For Birth Control A Supplementary Brief and Statement

of Facts." May, 1917. Manuscript. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54599/54599-h/54599-h.htm.

(accessed November 10, 2018).

Sanger, Margaret H., and Winter Russell. "Debate on Birth Control." December 12, 1920.

Speech. http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/AmRad/debatebirthcontrol.pdf. (accessed November 9,

2018).

Sanger, Margaret H. "Family Limitation." 1917. Manuscript.

https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:2577621$1i. (accessed November 9, 2018).

Sanger, Margaret H. "What Every Girl Should Know." 1920. Manuscript.

http://archive.lib.msu.edu/DMC/AmRad/whateverygirl1920.pdf. (accessed November 9, 2018).

Sanger, Margaret H. "Motherhood in Bondage." “I Am Almost a Prisoner”: Women

Plead for Contraception. 1928. Manuscript. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5083/. (accessed

November 9, 2018).

Sanger, Margaret H. "The Morality of Birth Control." November 18, 1921. Speech.

http://gos.sbc.edu/s/sanger1.html. (accessed November 9, 2018).

"Margaret Sanger's Birth Control Review Archives." Birth Control Review by Margaret

Sanger. http://birthcontrolreview.net/. (accessed December 06, 2018).

 Lambson 6

SECONDARY SOURCES

Grimaldi, Jill. "The First American Birth Control Conference." Margaret Sanger Papers Project.

March 20, 2017. https://sangerpapers.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/the-first-american-birth-

control-conference/ (accessed December 06, 2018)

"Birth Control Organizations." NYU.

https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/aboutms/organization_abcl.php. (accessed December 06,

2018)

Horwitz, Rainey, "The Woman Rebel (1914)". Embryo Project Encyclopedia (2018-05-16).

ISSN: 1940-5030 http://embryo.asu.edu/handle/10776/13063. (accessed December 06, 2018)

"The Birth Control Pill A History." Planned Parenthood. June 2015.

https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/1514/3518/7100/Pill_History_FactSheet.pdf. (accessed

December 6, 2018).