Margaret Sanger : An Influential Women Of The 20th Century

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.

I. Introduction. There are many remarkable personalities in our history, which made revolutionary changes in women’s lives. Two of them were Margaret Sanger and Eleanor Roosevelt. They contributed immensely to change the women’s fates and lives and to position them equally with men. Margaret Sanger was born in 1879, in Corning, New York; she was sixth of eleven children of Michel Higgins, an Irish Catholic stonecutter, and religious Anne Purcell Higgins. Her mother went through eighteen pregnancies and died at the age of forty-eight. She studied nursing in White Plains and worked as nurse in one of the poorest neighborhood of New York. In 1902 Margaret Sanger married architect and radical William Sanger. She didn’t finish her studying. Margaret gave birth to three children. In 1912 Sanger’s family moved to Manhattan. All her life Margaret Sanger was a courageous, dedicated and persistent American birth control activist, advocate of eugenics, and the founder of the American Birth Control League. She was first woman opening the way to universal access to birth control.

As a Christian, Sanger developed her ethos by accepting the premise that illegitimate conception was immoral. However, she further argued that sexual intercourse was inevitable and that unintended pregnancy was the pressing issue in terms of what was moral. Her speech described the lack of public information on birth control as a way of oppressing women. This ignorance hindered women

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

On September 14, 1879 Margaret Sanger was born in Corning, New York. Although Sanger had ten siblings, Anne, her mother, had numerous of miscarriages. Sanger supposed that her mother’s pregnancies affected her health and played a part of her early death.

Sanger was born on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York, with the name of Margaret Higgins. From the very beginning Margaret Sanger was against large family households. She grew up in a very immense family of eleven siblings with her very religious mother, Anne Higgins, who was a hard working woman who pushed young Sanger into the Roman Catholic religion and her free minded father, Michael Higgins, who worked as a stonemason and put his best efforts in his family but would much rather talk about politics and drink. Margaret would only follow in her father’s footsteps wanting to speak of politics nevertheless she did strive for the strength of belief in something greater than herself. She could only imagine, although she knew somehow she was going to impact the world. Sanger attended St.mary's grade school in

     In addition to the articles she composed, Margaret Sanger decided to make sexual protection an option for all people. Previously, contraceptives and spermicides were only distributed to those who had information on the matter and access to them (Margaret 1). Sanger was past 80 when she saw the first marketing of a contraceptive pill, which she had helped develop, although legal change was slow. It took until 1965, a year before her death, for the Supreme Court to approve the use of contraception, but Sanger had accomplished a goal (Margaret 1). Now, contraceptives were available to all women, in all walks of life, regardless of their financial situations. In her mind, poor mental development was largely the result of poverty, overpopulation and the lack of attention to children. This was definitely one of the reasons why Sanger desired to make protection available to lower class citizens, along with the wealthy.

Margaret saw first hand the devastation of infant, child and maternal mortality while serving as a visiting nurse in the poverty stricken lower east side of New York City.  This mortality resulted from the culmination of self-induced or illegal abortions that ultimately ended up in infection, causing death to partakers.  Margaret saw a need in society for education on the topic of birth control to prevent such mortality.

Margaret Sanger, a New York and an active feminist, led the fight for contraceptives, which are methods or devices to prevent pregnancy. Sanger, whose mother at a young age because she had birthed eleven children, helped shape her into a very individualistic and assertive woman. She was a part of the Socialist party, while studying to be a nurse, and starting a family of her own. In 1912, she began to work in the slums with the poor immigrant women who lived there. Her experience in the slums with these women, helped shaped her strong opinion on why women should be in control of childbearing. This was not the only thing that shaped it, but helped further her outlook after she was a witness to her own mother’s death. Her final call to action though was the ghastly stories of self-induced abortions and the tales of more than horrific pregnancies.

Margaret Sanger was a New York based nurse and sex educator who became very influential during the Progressive Era. Sanger attributed her mother’s inability to recover from tuberculosis to several miscarriages and childbirths that she experienced. As a practicing nurse serving several poor immigrant women, she also witnessed problems, many births or illegal abortions caused.

Sanger went to attend nursing school in White Plains, New York. There Sanger saw lives of poor, immigrant women,

While also working as a nurse in a predominantly poor neighborhood, Margaret treated many women who had attempted to self-terminate pregnancies as well as those who had gone through illegal back-alley abortions.Around this time, Margaret started to dream of an easier and safer alternative, envisioning a pill that could be taken to prevent pregnancy from ever occurring, and thus saving these women from being forced to undergo unsafe and illegal operations. It is because of these beliefs that she began the fight to make birth control information and contraceptives widely available to

Although societies with rigorous rules such as the ancient Greeks practiced the use of birth control and the invention of modern contraceptive methods---such as condoms, diaphragms, and douches---have been around since the early 1800’s, birth control still did not prevail in the twentieth century and was highly controversial. Margaret Sanger gave people a new and radical ideology stating how birth control helped women in many more ways than their sexuality. Sanger published many literature pieces about her opinions on options and freedom for women in society. Several other women and doctors acknowledged her argument by broadcasting it during the Progressive Era. When the 1920’s came around,

Sanger made huge changes in how the society viewed women at that time period. She was influential to women who felt like their life revolved around giving birth only. She also gave many women birth control options which allowed them the freedom of sexuality in everyday life. Sanger advocated and fought for women's rights throughout her life. Her determination and hard work gave women social rights, which later led to their right to control their own body through birth control.She advocated repeatedly that without birth control women will never be free (Sanger).

Margaret Sanger, an active reproductive rights reformist and the mother of what we now know to be Planned Parenthood, grew up the sixth child of eleven in an Irish-American family in New York. Sanger witnessed her mother go through multiple miscarriages, leaving her concerned for her mother’s health. She later studied nursing at a variety of colleges. Sanger moved to New York City in the early twentieth century, taking her husband, William Sanger, and three children with her. Radical politics were growing popular in the area where they lived, changing the young couple’s mindset. Sanger later got involved in the Women’s Committee of the New York Socialist Party and Liberal Club.