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