Rhetorical Analysis Of Speech : The Children's Era

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.

In America, the twentieth century marked the beginning of a pivotal age that contained many social and political reforms for women. Feminists around the country each presented unique ideas for women’s rights, most of them through influential writings and speeches. Margaret Sanger was an undeniably significant contributor who made a huge impact on the future of women’s civil liberties. A nurse with a prolific writing career, Sanger delivered her speech “The Children’s Era” in 1925, a text that advocates for the use of contraceptives to improve the lives of mothers and children. Throughout the speech, she employs the use of analogies to provide clarity to her purpose and deliver a lasting message that women’s bodies must be controlled if they are to effectively fulfill their maternal obligations. Sanger also incorporates two of the Aristotelian appeals, logos and pathos, to accentuate the plight that mothers and children must face despite an accessible solution. The careful application of diction throughout her speech also emphasizes her three main rhetorical strategies. These rhetorical devices support Sanger’s overall message of maternal empowerment and convince her hesitant audience to fully accept her progressive ideals.

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

In the article, “Toddlers in Tiaras” by Skip Hollandsworth, the author’s main focus is to make the audience aware of the dangers involved in child pageantry, and how it can negatively impact the children who participate. People who enter their kids in these events don’t think to consider the consequences that result from pageant lifestyle. By incorporating strategies of ethos, pathos, and logos, he is able to make an effective point of argument to persuade the audience.

Relevance Statement: According to the CDC, 62% of women of reproductive age are currently using a contraceptive. This number has drastically risen over the years as a result of advanced medicine and availability to all women. This would not have been possible without the work and dedication of Margaret Sanger.

In 1917, Margaret Sanger was arrested for distributing contraception pessirie to a immigrant women. Margaret Sanger, was a nurse, mother, sex educator, writer and most importantly an activist. Sanger, fought for women’s rights which one of the main one was to legalize birth control in America. During the process of fighting Sanger establish the American Birth Control League, now called Planned Parenthood. Sanger fund money to Grisworld the created of the hormonal birth control pill the dream of Sanger. Sanger, “wanted to have it all, and was birth control as the necessary condition for the resolution of their often conflicting needs.” (Chesler 25). Birth control has always been a colossal issue since it was invention in the 1960s by Griswold and has remained and extraordinarily controversial topic since. Therefore, if teenagers get their parent’s consent for birth control, teens will still manage to get their way and have sex, parent will think they are unhealthy, and last some parent would want their female teenager conserve until marriage. Meanwhile, if they do not get the parental consent, teenage will be encouraged to be more sexually active, female teenage will know they are safe on not getting pregnant, and it will encourage female be promiscuous.

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

Children. They are a soft spot in nearly everyone’s hearts, and when it comes to the topic of making sure they are protected and cared for, the utmost time often gets invested. This has been true throughout most of history, where children were, and still are, protected with their own set of rights and laws. However, in the 1920s, Margaret Sanger was one of the more prominent people fighting for the rights for children and mothers alike. Pioneer of Planned Parenthood and advocate for women’s rights, Sanger was often under harsh speculation at the time of her existence. Where most people were conservative, and a high population of people were religion oriented, Sanger went against the grain and fought for the idea of birth control, abortion for mothers, and for every child to be given the right to be born in to a family that could more than adequately care for them. Having been under harsh penalty of the law and escaping to Europe until charges on her were dropped, Sanger was no stranger to controversy. In 1925, she delivered a speech in New York to a conference called “The Children’s era” to pose her rather outlandish ideas on how to make this era for the children. Despite the underlining message being seen as positive, her overall address was ineffective in delivery due to her over use of pathos, the extensive, muddled out metaphors damaging her credibility, and lack of sufficient evidence to back up her claims.

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

     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

In 1916 Margaret Sanger opened the first clinic in Brooklyn, New York to provide contraceptives to women. The clinic was highly controversial and faced many issues due to birth control’s illegal nature at this time. Sanger continued in her efforts and in 1923 she started the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in Manhattan and the American Birth Control League, which joined to become Planned Parenthood Federation of America (Planned Parenthood). Since it’s creation, Planned Parenthood

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.

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,

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