Margaret Sanger

• Born: September 14, 1879
• Birthplace: Corning, New York
• Died: September 6, 1966
• Place of death: Tucson, Arizona

American health educator

Through the establishment of low-cost birth control clinics, including the first such clinic in the United States, Sanger made birth control information and contraceptive devices available to American women of all social classes.

Areas of achievement Public health, women’s rights, social reform, education

Early Life

Margaret Sanger (SAN-gur) was the sixth of eleven children born to poor Irish parents. Her mother died at the age of forty, and Sanger always believed that her mother’s premature death was a consequence of excessive childbearing. During her mother’s illness, Sanger acted as a nurse and also helped care for her younger siblings. Sanger enjoyed a close relationship with her father, who worked as a headstone carver. Higgins advised his resourceful children to use their minds to make a contribution to the world and to try to leave it better than they found it.

As a young girl, Sanger formed the conclusion that poverty, illness, and strife were the fate of large families, whereas small families enjoyed wealth, leisure, and positive parental relationships. Being from a large family, Sanger always felt inferior, and she longed to be rich and comfortable.

After the death of her mother, Sanger decided to become a nurse. During her final training at a Manhattan hospital, she met an architect named William Sanger, who fell in love with her at first sight. Sanger married Bill Sanger in 1902 after a six-month courtship. Over the next few years, Bill continued his work as an architect and Margaret stayed home with their three children. Sanger’s restlessness and boredom in her role as a housewife led to her return to obstetrical nursing in 1912. She felt a need to regain her personal independence, and her mother-in-law agreed to move in and take care of the children. At the same time, Sanger began attending socialist meetings in Greenwich Village. She observed forceful speakers, such as Emma Goldman, who were rethinking the position of women and the future of worldwide political and economic systems. Sanger was considered a shy, delicate woman who rarely voiced her opinion at meetings.

Sanger’s speaking debut was as a substitute before a group of working women. Her topic was family health. The working women liked Sanger’s demeanor and believed what she said. Throughout her life, much of Sanger’s impact was attributable to her personal appearance: She was petite, feminine, and demure. Sanger invariably gained support after the publication of her picture in the newspaper. Although her appearance was described as Madonna-like, Sanger was single-minded, stubborn, and intolerant; she was also charming, personable, and energetic. Sanger’s personality was such that people either worshiped her or despised her.

Life’s Work

During her years as an obstetrical nurse, Sanger frequently made house calls to the Lower East Side of New York City to attend poor women who were giving birth or experiencing complications from self-induced abortions. These women were worried about the health and survival of the children they already had and were desperate to find a way to stop having more children. They would beg Sanger to tell them “the secret” of the rich women and would promise that they would not tell anyone else. Sanger would suggest coitus interruptus or the use of condoms, but she quickly realized that the women rejected initiating these methods, placing contraceptive responsibility on men. Sanger herself never believed in male-oriented contraceptives because she saw men as opponents, rather than partners, in the struggle for conception control.

A turning point in Sanger’s life occurred when she met a young mother of three named Sadie Sachs. Sanger was called to nurse Sachs during the sweltering summer of 1912. Sachs had attempted an abortion and was near death when Sanger was called to the apartment. Two weeks later, Sachs was finally out of danger. She believed that another pregnancy would kill her and she pleaded with the attending physician to help prevent another pregnancy. The doctor callously told Sachs that she could not expect to have her cake and eat it too. His only suggestion, jokingly added, was that she have her husband, Jake, sleep on the roof. After the doctor left, She turned to Sanger, who was more sympathetic than the doctor but who had no better suggestion for contraception. Sanger promised the anguished woman that she would return at a later date and try to provide helpful information. Sanger did not return, and three months later she was again summoned to the Sachs apartment. Sachs was in critical condition from another abortion attempt, and this time she died minutes after Sanger arrived. Sanger was burdened with guilt over her death and resolved that she would find out how to prevent conception so that other women would be spared the pain, suffering, and heartache of unwanted pregnancies.

After two years of research, including a trip to France, Sanger decided to publish a journal aimed at working women that would encourage them to rebel and to insist on reproductive freedom. It was at this time that Sanger coined the term “birth control.” In 1914, the first issue of The Woman Rebel was published. Although Sanger advocated that women limit births, she was prohibited by Anthony Comstock from explaining to women the precise methodologies for limiting births. Comstock was the head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, and Sanger had experienced problems with him several years earlier when she wrote articles for The Call, a labor publication. Sanger’s health-oriented column on venereal disease was aimed at adolescent girls, but Comstock refused to allow the column to be published. He had been instrumental in seeing that no obscene materials were distributed through the United States mail, and Comstock made it clear to publishers of The Call that he considered Sanger’s article obscene and that its publication would result in immediate revocation of their mailing permit. Both Sanger and Comstock wanted to protect America’s young people. Comstock sought to protect the young by distancing them from information on venereal disease, while Sanger thought that the protection of the young could best be achieved by exposing them to and educating them about the realities, dangers, and treatment of venereal disease.

Thousands of women responded to Sanger’s articles in The Woman Rebel, once again pleading for information about the prevention of pregnancy. Sanger wrote a pamphlet called Family Limitation that provided practical, straightforward information in language that women of all social classes could understand. Sanger included descriptions and drawings of suppositories, douches, sponges, and the cervical pessary. Sanger also advocated sexual fulfillment for women, which was a radical idea in the early 1900’s. After twenty refusals, Sanger found a printer for Family Limitation. With the help of friends, Sanger began distributing the pamphlet and was arrested immediately. The possibility of prison was overwhelming to Sanger at this time, so she sailed for Europe before she came to trial, leaving her husband and children behind. She settled in London and was accepted into the intellectual circle of people on the vanguard of sexual and contraceptive thought. Sanger discovered that the Netherlands, because of an emphasis on child spacing, had the lowest maternal death rate and infant mortality rate in the world. In addition, contraceptive clinics had been in operation for thirty years. When Sanger visited the Netherlands, she received trained instruction on the fitting and insertion of the diaphragm, which came in fourteen sizes. Sanger became convinced that she not only would have to overcome the restraint on free speech in the United States but also would have to provide women with access to trained people, preferably physicians, who could fit them with contraceptives.

Sanger returned to the United States to stand trial, but the charges against her were dismissed. Anthony Comstock had died while she was away, and the mood of the people was now supportive of Sanger.

In October of 1916, Sanger opened the nation’s first birth control clinic. The clinic provided birth control and venereal disease information and birth control instruction. Most important, the clinic kept detailed medical records and case histories of patients. Although Sanger and her sister Ethel Byrne were imprisoned for their role in the new birth control clinic, public sentiment was in their favor. In the next few years, Sanger began publishing the Birth Control Review, a scientific, authoritative journal intended for health care professionals. In 1921, Sanger organized the first national birth control conference, which attracted physicians from all over the country.

Margaret and Bill Sanger were divorced in 1920, and in 1922 Margaret married a wealthy businessman named Noah Slee. Slee contributed many thousands of dollars to his wife’s cause but always stayed in the background of her life. Sanger was a national figure by this time and a frequent speaker who enthralled her audience. She traveled internationally and made a great impact on the birth control movements in both Japan and India. In her efforts to establish international unity, Sanger established a World Population Conference, and years later, in 1952, the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Throughout her career, Sanger lamented the absence of a safe, easy, effective contraceptive. She believed that some sort of contraceptive pill would best meet the needs of women, and she called such a pill her “holy grail.” When she discovered that scientists John Rock and Gregory Pincus were experimenting with hormonal methods of contraception, Sanger convinced Mrs. Stanley McCormick, a wealthy widow, to provide funding for Rock and Pincus to continue their research for a contraceptive pill.

Sanger continued to be an active force in the birth control movement until very late in her life. As a nursing home patient in Tucson, Arizona, she was irascible and stubborn and insisted that since she was rich and smart she would do exactly as she pleased. She did just that until she died in 1966 of arteriosclerosis, one week before her eighty-seventh birthday.

Significance

In her lifetime, Sanger was jailed eight times, yet she never relented in her efforts to promote, and democratize access to, birth control. The medical records of patients visiting Sanger’s birth control clinic provided the basis for the initial studies on the effects of child spacing on maternal health and marital satisfaction. These records also yielded information on the efficacy of various birth control methods for different groups of women.

Sanger’s early efforts to distribute contraceptive information were condemned by the church, the press, and the medical profession. Her belief that sex is a normal part of human life that requires a rational response led her to search for easy and safe contraceptives that would allow women to choose maternity while attaining freedom through control of their bodies. Sanger believed that in some way every unwanted child would be a social liability, and that a society should try to maximize its social assets by having children that are wanted by their parents. Sanger insisted that the best measure of the success of her work was in the reduction of human suffering.

Availability of contraceptive information and birth control devices has had widespread implications for Americans, both individually and collectively. Maternal death rates and infant mortality rates have declined, child spacing spans have increased, and total family size has decreased. Control of conception is a subject taught in classes throughout the country, and American women and men take for granted the fact that contraceptives are sold in drugstores and are easily obtained from physicians. As a result of the achievements of Sanger, control of conception has become a reality for many women throughout the world.

Further Reading

Chandrasekhar, Sripati.“A Dirty Filthy Book”: The Writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant on Birth Control and Reproductive Physiology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Includes essays by Sanger’s American and British predecessors who laid the foundation for her work. Provides an account of the Bradlaugh-Besant trial in 1877 and its impact on the British birth rate.

Davis, Tom. Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2005. Recounts how Planned Parenthood allied with members of the clergy, beginning with Sanger’s efforts to include clergymen in the organization’s efforts to dispense public information about contraceptives.

Douglas, Emily Taft. Pioneer of the Future. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. A thorough work documenting the milestones of Sanger’s life. Good in-depth account of research, events, and individuals who gave Sanger the basic knowledge, ideas, and encouragement from which to proceed.

Franks, Angela. Margaret Sanger’s Eugenic Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005. Describes Sanger’s ideas many of which are still debated about birth control, eugenics, sterilization, and population control.

Gray, Madeline. Margaret Sanger: A Biography of the Champion of Birth Control. New York: Richard Marek, 1979. Excellent, well-researched biography with one of the few in-depth examinations of Sanger’s later years, including her addiction to Demerol.

Kennedy, David M. Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970. Focuses on Sanger’s public career in the United States and illuminates American society in the years prior to 1945. Describes the social context in which Sanger worked and the attitudinal, behavioral, and institutional responses she evoked.

Sanger, Margaret. Margaret Sanger: An Autobiography. New York: Dover, 1971. A factual description of the life of the author without much insight and introspection. Describes people who influenced Sanger, including the C. V. Drysdales and Havelock Ellis in England, and Aletta Jacobs, birth control pioneer in the Netherlands.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Motherhood in Bondage. New York: Brentano’s, 1928. Reprint. New York: Pergamon Press, 1956. Composed of letters written to Sanger by women desperate to discover a method of preventing conception. Tragic, heart-wrenching accounts.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentano’s, 1920. Attempts to convince working-class women that control of reproduction is the key to a healthier, more satisfying life and a better world. Advocates rebellion to gain access to contraceptive information.