Margaret Sanger - "My Fight for Birth Control"

Anyone who is pro-choice and supports a woman's right to choose should know Margaret Sanger. Essentially, she is the reason Planned Parenthood exists, and women of low income and/or no health insurance today can get the necessary health benefits to stay healthy. Planned Parenthood provides women (and men, too!) with many services ranging from mammograms to pap smears, STD/STI testing and counseling. For the record, abortions account for 2-3% of their services. Perhaps that bears repeating; abortions account for 2-3% of the services provided by Planned Parenthood. As stated on the PPFA website, "more than 90 percent is preventive, primary care, which helps prevent unintended pregnancies through contraception, reduce the spread of sexually transmitted infections through testing and treatment, and screen for cervical and other cancers." With this in mind, doesn't that seem a little insane to stop funding for this organization when a majority of their services are NOT abortions? Let's go back to the beginning when this truly admirable woman make her mark in history.

In the 1880's, the Cornstock Law was in effect which was an attempt at controlling pornography and resulted in limited women's access to birth control due to the obscenity associated with pornography. Women were at a greater risk of potentially risky pregnancies. Margaret Sanger was a nurse and in the 1900 she worked at some of the worst slums in NYC. She assisted poor women in labor, where she became painfully aware of the negative impact women suffered as a result of poor health and welfare while they had no access to birth control. She witnessed illness and fatality of women due to unsafe abortions to avoid having more children. By law, Sanger was unable to educate these women on how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Eventually, she decided to take action and began to educate herself on birth control, overturn the Cornstock Law and lobby Congress to allow doctors to prescribe birth control.

In 1914 Sanger created a magazine called Woman Rebel which encouraged women to think for themselves, and promoted family planning. Under the Cornstock Law this information was illegal to send via mail. As a result, Sanger was charged with obscenity. She fled to England and returned to the United States when the charges were dropped. Upon her return to New York she founded the National Birth Control League which later became Planned Parenthood.

Sanger opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916 which was promptly shut down and Sanger was placed in a workhouse for 30 days. Upon her release, she reopened the clinic in her own home. Her lobbying and hard work resulted in the American Medical Association reversing the Cornstock Law, and permitting doctors to distribute birth control in 1936.

Margaret let the movement called "Voluntary Motherhood" which gave women to access to birth control as well as education on parenting "unter the most safe, humane and dignified conditions." It is unfortunate that while the idea behind the movement was a positive one, it was affiliated and combined with Darwin's theory (survival of the fittest) and eugenics to argue that birth control was necessary for the "unfit" to discontinue reproducing. At the time, the unfit were considered low income and immigrant populations as well as the "feeble minded" and criminals. With this argument, voluntary motherhood won the support of those needed to get things done.

Clearly, Planned Parenthood's stance has come a long way since the days of inception. Millions of people, regardless of age, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity or gender have benefited from the services and resources provided by this organization.

While I don't necessarily agree with the reason as to why the ball got rolling so to speak, I'm glad progress eventually moved past eugenics and now all who enter Planned Parenthood are accepted, guided and served with open arms.


[The information found for this entry can be credited to Women's Voices, Feminist Visions.]


*If you have found any information to be untrue, or feel there is some information that is pertinent and was missed, please feel free to comment.*
Image taken from: www.nndb.com
If you are just beginning to read my blog, here is the first post that briefly describes the purpose.