The World Is A Free Motherhood

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.

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.

For the longest time, women’s role in society was very narrow and set in stone. Women weren’t given the chance to decide life for their own, and there was a very sharp distinction of gender roles. Women were viewed as inferior, weak, and dependant. They were expected to be responsible for the family and maintainance of the house. But as the 19th century began, so did a drastic change in society. Women started voicing their opinions and seeking change. Trying to break away from this ideology called “cult of domesticity” was a lengthy, burdensome, and demanding struggle.

To the question “Why the Woman Rebel?” Sanger wrote “Because I believe that deep down in woman’s nature lies slumbering the spirit of revolt” and “Because I believe that through the efforts of individual revolution will woman’s freedom emerge”. Both highlight how birth control was not a mere technique to personal freedom, but an avenue to power. These quotes emphasize Sanger’s belief that the birth control pill would unleash the spirit of freedom amongst women. She did not argue for the open distribution of contraceptive to promote personal freedom. However, she believed that limitation on family size would free women from the dangers of childbearing and give them the opportunity to become active outside the home. In addition, Document 1 acknowledges birth control’s ability to bring about radical social class change. Sanger includes her belief that women are “enslaved by the world machine…middle-class morality”. Her idea of social change not only involved embracing the liberation of woman, but also the working class. It is believed that the birth control campaign succeeded as it became “a movement by and for the middle class”. Birth control provided middle-class women the opportunity to plan families without the stress of balancing growing expenses for a child that was not planned for. In The Woman Rebel Sanger introduces birth control’s larger mission of power and opportunity for women while incorporating the basis of social class.

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).

"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

Nearly 70 years ago, one woman pioneered one of the most radical and transforming political movements of the century. Through the life that she led and the lessons she taught us, many know her as the “one girl revolution”. Though Margaret Sanger's revolution may be even more controversial now than during her 50-year career of national and international battles, her opinions can teach us many lessons. Due to her strong influence in history, our society has increased health awareness for women, made sexual protection a choice for all people, and also introduced family modification as a choice for mankind.

In Margaret Sanger’s speech, “The Children Era”, the women’s writer and activist argues that there should be certain qualifications one must follow before one is claimed a “parent.” Through emotionally connecting with mothers and comparing children to a garden, Sanger persuades the rich white citizens of NYC by stating all children should be brought into a welcomed home. Also, Sanger thinks there should be a termination to forced maternity and enslaved motherhood. Though Sanger is for children’s rights, she also thinks if a woman is not financially stable to take care of a child the government should make them abort the offspring. Sanger connects with the mothers by telling them there should be “Happiness for the unborn,”and by

Leading up to the 1920’s and many years after men provided and supported the family though supply of monetary value. Men were born into the right to vote, were able to enlist in the armed services, held positions of superiority in the work place and didn’t have to worry about cooking, cleaning or tending to the needs of the children. “..how to arrange the world so that women can be human beings, with a chance to exercise their infinitely varied gifts in infinitely varied ways, instead of being destined by the accident of their sex to one field of activity -housework and child-raising. ”(Chapman.2012) Although Chapman tends to gravitate towards urging a feminist mindset she also addresses what can be done for those who are content

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an influential feminist and social critic, encouraged women to be involved in the public sphere, and not be house servants who work for their husbands. In her 1898 work Women and Economics, she discusses the importance of financial equality and writes that “When women stand free as economic agents, they will… [... better fulfil their duties as wives and mothers and contribute] to the vast improvement in health and happiness of the human race.” Her writing projected that women were economically independent raise their children and fulfil their roles as wives better than those who were economically dependent on their husbands. At a time when there were “high rents and high costs of living,” additional income would help mothers ensure that their family had proper housing and the necessities they needed to live. Charlotte Perkins Gilman conveys that women who are economically independent will further humans by contributing more to their families.

These two pieces jumpstarted Sanger’s campaign for a woman’s right to access birth control. The Notably, Margaret Sanger debuted her tabloid---The Woman Rebel---in 1914. In regards to this, Sanger argued in “Why the Woman Rebel?” that deep down in every woman lies a spirit of revolt. Women in the early twentieth century were accustomed to listening to their husbands and having no voice of opinion. Women never felt the freedom of independence. The government ruled it illegal to distribute information on birth control, but that did not stop Sanger from rebelling against this law. When Sanger states, “…I believe that not until wage slavery is abolished can either woman’s or man’s freedom be fully attained,” she compared women to slaves, held down by the chains of restriction from gaining their own wages. Sanger argued for women’s freedom to make their own decisions. Falling into the child-bearing standard did not give women a choice on whether they wanted to be a part of the working class or to spend their lives as housewives. Publishing tabloids influenced many women across the country to reconsider their lives, but it was never easy for radical feminists to voice their opinion

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).

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.

Extremely successful academics, government officials, and authors such as Anne Marie Slaughter, who broke the glass ceilings and fought to prove women’s mettle but ultimately decided to pursue a more traditional family life in pursuit of her goals and happiness, fell victim to the very ideology that is threatening women today. Those reactions caused her to write her influential article “Why Women still can’t have it all.” Slaughters take on these events demonstrates the very essence of todays Femenist movement that is based on a bigoted set of beliefs that ostracize women that decide to take a more traditional approach to their lives. Furthermore, accounts such as Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s in her January 18, 2017 article, “Views on Abortion Strain

Regardless of one’s views on the topic of contraception, Margaret Sanger’s Woman and the New Race helped to break new ground through encouraging women to take control of their bodies. Early in her writing, Sanger brings up overpopulation and how women’s primary role as mothers have contributed to this issue. “While unknowingly laying the foundations of tyrannies and providing the human tinder for racial conflagrations, woman was also unknowingly creating slums, filling asylums with insane, and institutions with other defectives. She was replenishing the ranks of the prostitutes, furnishing grist for the criminal courts and inmates for prisons. Had she planned deliberately to achieve this tragic total of human waste and misery, she could hardly have done it more effectively.” This artfully formed passage shows the passion behind Sanger’s beliefs. While on the surface it may seem that she is attacking women, the point of her idea is to frame the passive nature of women in Western Society up to this point.