Margaret Sanger

Title

Margaret Sanger

Subject

Birth control

Description

Nurse who risked her freedom to open birth control clinics and laid the path for reproductive rights

Creator

Amy French

Source

Image: Library of Congress

Birth Date

1879

Birthplace

Corning, New York, USA

Death Date

1966

Occupation

Nurse, sex educator

Biographical Text

Sanger was a birth control advocate, sex educator, and nurse. After witnessing high childbirth mortality rates among the working classes and seeing the economic burden that large families placed on the lower-economic classes, she openly advocated that birth control information should be legal. She opened the first birth control clinic in the US , after which she was arrested for distributing contraceptives. Sanger argued that knowledge of birth control would lead to greater social equality. She founded the American Birth Control League, which later became Planned Parenthood.

Bibliography

Baker, Jean H. Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion, (Macmillan, 2011).

Chesler, Ellen. Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement in America. (New York: Simon Schuster, 1992).

Kennedy, David. Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger. Yale University Press, 1970).

McCann, Carole Ruth. Birth Control Politics in the United States, 1916–1945. (Cornell University Press, 1994).

Margaret Sanger Papers Project:http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/

Files

640px-MargaretSanger-Underwood.LOC.jpg
Date Added
June 12, 2014
Collection
Reform (Social or Labor)
Item Type
Person
Tags
,
Citation
Amy French, “Margaret Sanger,” Women Who Dared, accessed March 29, 2024, https://womenwhodared.omeka.net/items/show/38.