Birth Control Is A Powerful Tool

Margaret Sanger was a controversial and historical nurse. She lived during a time of revolutionary change when the women’s rights movement was in full motion. Born in 1879, to a large impoverished family, she was the sixth of eleven children. Sanger was part of a family of devoted Catholics. During that time it was a common practice for women to birth as many children as possible. As a result, she was a witness to the effects of diseases, miscarriages, and multiple pregnancies that eventually led to her mother’s premature death. This had a significant impact on her ideologies. She eventually became known for advocating women’s reproductive rights and founding what is now known as Planned Parenthood.

Margaret Sanger was, at large, a birth control activist, but this speech was more about the questioning of birth control corrupting morality in women. People must remember, in the day and age

"A free race cannot be born" and 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"(Sanger A 35). Margaret Sanger (1870-1966)said this in one of her many controversial papers. The name of Margaret Sanger and the issue of birth control have virtually become synonymous. Birth control and the work of Sanger have done a great deal to change the role of woman in society, relationships between men and woman, and the family. The development and spread of knowledge of birth control gave women sexual freedom for the first time, gave them an individual

Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement highlighted a variety of important issues. These issues include women’s right to make decisions privately versus the right of a community to regulate moral behavior; the ethnic demographics of the American people; the ability of women to control their own physical destinies by limiting family size; and the idea that small families were the way to keep the American dream alive. The debate over birth control spoke to personal and political issues, which poses the question: Was birth control merely a matter of individual choice, or was it about power, wealth, opportunity and similar issues? Birth control was not merely a technique to expand the realm of personal freedom; it grew out of a radical

Founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, in her speech at the 1925 birth control conference, The Children’s Era, explains the downfalls in American society when it comes to raising children. Through this speech, Sanger is trying to further promote her nonprofit organization and display the benefits of birth control. She appears to show compassionate characteristics towards children, more specifically the future American children, as she adopts an urgent tone to encompass her listeners into her ultimate goal, widespread, effective birth control methods.

In order to break free from the shackles of predestined breeding, Sanger suggests that women “assert their right to voluntary motherhood.” Through thinking on their own, women can be in command of their own bodies and in turn determine how to live their lives. While this may seem absurd to a modern mind, this was truly innovative and dangerous for Sanger to suggest. She was challenging traditions that dated back hundreds of years. “Even as birth control is the means by

Margaret Sanger’s hard work to legalize and promote contraception was rooted in her belief that those who were impoverished should not procreate. In her book My Fight for Birth Control, Sanger claims, “I associate poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, quarreling, fighting, debts, and jails with large families” (Planned Parenthood). Sanger set out to “sterilize the unfit” and make known methods to control the population (Planned Parenthood). Many of her colleagues were racist and believed contraception should be used for the purpose of maintaining

Mike Wallace states before the interview that this interview is unrehearsed, uncensored interview on the issue of Birth Control. Mr. Wallace describes Margaret Sanger as a women who violated conventions and changed powerful oppositions to lead the Birth Control Movement in the United States. Even though he states her accomplishments or contribution to society Wallace does not forget the mentions that she was thrown into jail not once but eight different time for this cause. Mr. Wallance explain that this interview it the hear Margaret’s answer for her views on if Birth Control is a sin and why she fought for this movement.

Thesis: Margaret Sanger changed the world by rallying for the availability and use of contraceptives for all women.

Today, the availability of birth control is taken for granted. There was a time, not long passed, during which the subject was illegal (“Margaret Sanger,” 2013, p.1). That did not stop the resilient leader of the birth control movement. Margaret Sanger was a nurse and women’s activist. While working as a nurse, Sanger treated many women who had suffered from unsafe abortions or tried to self-induce abortion (p.1). Seeing this devastation and noting that it was mainly low income women suffering from these problems, she was inspired to dedicate her life to educating women on family planning—even though the discussion of which was highly illegal at the time (p.1). She was often in trouble with

     Although she had met her goal of legalizing birth control, Margaret Sanger still desired to assist women who were already pregnant but didn’t wish to keep the child. After returning from a national tour in 1916, Sanger opened the nation's first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn (Katz 1). This, however, was a minor advancement considering that the clinic was raided in its first nine days of operation and she was taken to prison. The

Margaret Sanger starts by arguing that controlling reproduction by practicing birth control would lead to women's freedom. Once she reproduces she cannot get away with the responsibility handed upon her which causes her to sacrifice her freedom for a long period of time. Only she has the choice of freeing her from the burden of being a mother. A free country cannot be born with a mother who has the responsibility of a child. Women cannot be considered free until she controls her own body and has the choice to become a mother or not (Sanger).

Many also believed it was the man’s decision as to how many children his wife should have. Sanger continued her quest opening a birth-control clinic in Brooklyn, New York, in 1916; one year later, the authorities arrested her for giving contraceptives to immigrant women (Bowles, 2011). At first glance it appears that Sanger had good intentions. “Others criticized her for involvement with eugenics, which was a scientific movement in which its practitioners advocated the notion that all mental and physical "abnormalities" were linked to hereditary and, with selective breeding, could be eliminated. They questioned whether or not Sanger's insistence on birth control and abortion was in fact a way to limit the growth of ethnic populations” (Bowles, 2011). “Of course, her activism put her directly at odds with law-enforcement officials and the Catholic Church, but little discussed is the actual extent to which her early Marxism guided much of what she managed to achieve. Her good friends included ultra-radicals like John Reed and Emma Goldman, and the truth is that Margaret’s feminism, and her support for eugenic ‘sexual science’, were both simply part-and-parcel of her own unique Marxist vision. Humanitarianism, per se, had little to do with what motivated Margaret Sanger” (Spooner, 2005). Sanger’s actions and motivations are a controversial topic that have been analyzed and debated for years. “According to her New York Times obituary,

The Birth Control Movement of 1912 in the United States had a significant impact on Women’s Reproductive Rights. Women in the 1800s would frequently die or have complications during or after childbirth. Even if the woman would have died, they would still have a great amount of children. As the years progressed into the 1900s, the amount of children being born dropped. Because of this, birth control supplements were banned, forcing women to have a child that she was not prepared for or did not want to have in the first place.

Margret Sanger, writer of the essay “The Right to One’s Body” will be the author for this primary review. Sanger, as described by biography.com, was “… an early feminist and women’s rights activist who coined the term ‘birth control’ and worked towards its legalization” (“Margaret Sanger”). Margret was also responsible for the creation of the first planned parenthood center, and later was a founding member of the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Margret most notably belonged to the birth control movement, as she was a nurse working with women who were directly affected by the lack of child care options at the time. She continued her activism as