Despite her involvement in the eugenics movement, Margaret Sanger’s main focus was to advocate for free and unrestricted access to contraceptives to benefit the impoverished citizens of New York.
A desire to limit the number of births was not new during the period from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries. Women would try exotic forms of birth control to prevent and space births as well as control the size of families. Some ways females would try to prevent births were by soaking sponges in vinegar, baking soda, green tea, raspberry leave, or white oak bark and inserting them. Another accepted idea was to sneeze, cough, or squat after sexual relations. At this time, the most used form of birth control was coitus interruptus, withdrawal,
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Eugenics came from an era where Social Darwinism was used to explain many social inequalities. Social Darwinism was created by Herbert Spencer and was based off of the work by Charles Darwin. Darwinism contains the ideas of survival of the fittest and the capability of an individual to survive in an environment. Spencer took Darwin’s idea and applied it to society, and explained that social inequalities came from the fact that the wealthy are genetically wired to be better off. Eugenicists noticed that government money was being funded towards the poor and degenerates. They didn’t understand this and they believed it was a waste of money because those people were destined to be impoverished. Eugenicists believed sterilization was the solution. Eugenicists believed anyone with the traits of poverty, feeble-mindedness-including manic depression, schizophrenia, alcoholism, rebelliousness, criminality, nomadness, and prostitution in their lives should be sterilized. Before WWII, eugenics was very popular in the United States. People such as Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were in support of eugenics. They both supported the sterilization of the feeble minded and insane, but did not support the killing of these people. Once Hitler’s atrocities had been discovered, the eugenics movement had a large decrease in popularity …show more content…
Starting in November of 1912, “What Every Girl Should Know” by Sanger was being published every Sunday in The Call, a commonly read socialist newspaper. Within her articles, Sanger covered puberty and the changes that occurred as a result, the functions of the reproductive system, and the causes and ways to prevent sexually transmitted diseases. At the time, the Comstock laws were in place which defined contraceptives obscene and made it illegal for information regarding contraceptives to be sent through the U.S Postal Service. For this reason, “What Every Girl Should Know” was no longer allowed to be published, the last article published was blank except for the words “What Every Girl Should Know. NOTHING! By order of the Post Office Department” (qtd. in Lader 37). Refusing to give up, Sanger prepared herself to fight the Comstock Laws and provide the women and girls of New York with information about contraceptives and their bodies. From 1913 to 1914, Sanger travelled to Paris. At this time in Europe, contraceptives were much more accepted and information was plentiful. Sanger spent her days researching and gathered a collection of information on the best and latest douches, sponges, suppositories, and pessaries. She also bought some of the devices to bring back with her to the United States. Having gathered enough research, Sanger headed back to the United States. In
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.
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
Thesis: Margaret Sanger changed the world by rallying for the availability and use of contraceptives for all women.
In the 1910s, Margaret Sanger, a woman’s rights activist, began to publish articles about birth control, finding National Birth Control League (NBCL). She opened a birth control clinic in New York in the year of 1916. The
Approximately 100 years ago, Margaret Sanger started a small clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, N.Y. Disadvantaged women with large families who could not sustain, would seek advice pregnancy avoidance and abortions that oftentimes were self-administered. Hence, the clinic educated women to use different forms of birth control. Shortly after opening, Sanger and two other women were arrested for violating a New York State law that prohibited contraception.
The early twentieth century was a turning point in American history-especially in regards to the acquisition of women's rights. While the era was considered to be prosperous and later thought to be a happy-go-lucky time, in actuality, it was a time of grave social conflict and human suffering (Parish, 110). Among those who endured much suffering were women. As Margaret Sanger found out, women, especially those who were poor, had no choice regarding pregnancy. The only way not to get pregnant was by not having sex- a choice that was almost always the husband's. This was even more true in the case of lower-class men for whom, 'sex was the poor man's only luxury' (Douglas, 31). As a nurse who assisted in delivering
"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
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
The eugenics movement began in the 20th century by a man named Francis Galton. As the cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton believed that eugenics was a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have more children (Carlson). This Galtonian ideal of eugenics is often thought of as positive eugenics. Eugenics can be defined as the outgrowth of human heredity aimed at "improving" the quality of the human stock (Allen and Bird). At the other end of the spectrum is what can be classified as negative eugenics and is presently in disrepute. Negative eugenics entails selective breeding in which the least able from the population is taken out of the reproduction pool to preserve humanity's best traits.
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,
A political factor that influenced Sanger during her birth control movement was the Comstock Laws. Comstock Laws were put in place by Anthony Comstock, a congressman who wanted to put a ban on spreading pornography through the U.S mail (Wardell, 1980, pg. 738). He soon broadened what the Comstock laws covered, to make it illegal to ship anything through the mail that had to do with contraceptives, even information. This was a constant battle for Sanger and she was arrested many times throughout her lifetime for breaking the Comstock laws. Margaret finally had her biggest victory over the Comstock laws in 1936 when she won in the case of U.S v. One Package of Japanese Pessaries. This ruling didn’t officially rule the Comstock Laws unconstitutional, but it did rule that contraceptives and information regarding them could be shared through the mail, a huge accomplishment for Sanger (Knowles, 2009, pg.8).
Women have been fighting for the same rights and privileges of men for over a hundred years. The majority of these rights dealing with the basic autonomy of their own bodies and the right to make decisions about reproduction. The role of women has been seen as homemaker, caretaker, and ultimately Mother. Having children and raising children is often seen as the primary job of women in the home. However, in the early 20th century having a great number of children became a public health concern among women who were having multiple births. The number of women who died during childbirth in 1900 was six to nine in every 1000, while one in five children died within their first five years. (Achievements in Public Health, 2000) This was not seen as an epidemic, however, except by one woman, Margaret Sanger. Sanger believed that women deserved the right to choose and control their reproduction while offering safe methods of birth control. This paper examines the life of Margaret Sanger, provide information about the barriers she encounters during her work, and give insight to the contributions she has made to public health.
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
Eugenics has always been given such a notoriously bad connotation, and rightfully so. Eugenics is essentially the belief in controlling the human population by means of improving the gene pool through different processes, and increasing the likelihood of traits which are generally more desirable to the whole of the species. Now that probably sounds familiar, doesn 't it? People commonly connect the eugenics movement with the Aryan belief that Hitler infamously believed in. In fact, Hitler wrote a letter to one of the eugenics movements leadings proprietors, Madison Grant, praising his writing of his book “The Passing of the Great Race” calling it “his bible”. In Hitler’s famous autobiography
Human beings have always been interested in success, in making sure they survive, and creating new tools and technology to enable them to reach these goals. So it should come as no surprise that eugenics follows this same guideline in human history. A term originally coined by Francis Galton, first cousin to Charles Darwin, eugenics simply means that the “best people” in society with the most “healthy” “normal” genes should continue to reproduce and pass on their “goodness” to the next generation, while the individuals with the “unhealthy” genes should be discouraged from having any children (Allen 2001:59). With movements beginning in the early 20th century, eugenicists and proponents of the eugenics movement, have taken particular interests in the heritability of social behaviors, implementing enforcement mechanisms such as military force, law, and forced medical procedures in order to maintain the well being of societies’ future generations. Although society today frowns upon many instances of eugenics in our history, it is still being practiced in the 21st century. Contemporary eugenics has become much more technologically advanced and individually focused through the means of prenatal diagnosis and preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Although these two approaches (past and present) to the eugenics movement are conducted in different ways, the motivations behind them are theoretically similar. In this paper, I will be summarizing the history of different