Margaret Sanger

2 Life

Margaret Higgins Sanger (born Margaret Louise

Higgins, September 14, 1879 September 6, 1966, also
known as Margaret Sanger Slee) was an American birth
control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger
popularized the term birth control, opened the rst
birth control clinic in the United States, and established
organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood
Federation of America.

2.1 Early life

Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins in 1879 in
Corning, New York,[5] to Michael Hennessey Higgins, an
Irish-born stonemason and free-thinker, and Anne Purcell Higgins, a Catholic Irish-American. Michael Hennessey Higgins had emigrated to the USA at age 14 and
joined the U.S. Army as a drummer at age 15, during
the Civil War. After leaving the army, Michael studied
medicine and phrenology, but ultimately became a stonecutter, making stone angels, saints, and tombstones.[6]
Michael H. Higgins was a Catholic who became an atheist and an activist for womens surage and free public education.[7] Anne was born in Ireland. Her parents brought the family to Canada during the Potato
Famine. She married Michael in 1869.[8] Anne Higgins
went through 18 pregnancies (with 11 live births) in 22
years before dying at the age of 49. Sanger was the sixth
of eleven surviving children,[9] and spent much of her
youth assisting with household chores and caring for her
younger siblings.

Overview

Sanger used her writings and speeches primarily to promote her way of thinking. She was prosecuted for her
book Family Limitation under the Comstock Act in 1914.
She was afraid of what would happen, so she ed to
Britain until she knew it was safe to return to the US.
Sangers eorts contributed to several judicial cases that
helped legalize contraception in the United States. Due
to her connection with Planned Parenthood Sanger is a
frequent target of criticism by opponents of abortion.
Sanger, who has been criticized for supporting negative
eugenics, remains an admired gure in the American
reproductive rights movement.[2]
Supported by her two older sisters, Margaret Higgins atIn 1916, Sanger opened the rst birth control clinic in tended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute, bethe United States, which led to her arrest for distributing fore enrolling in 1900 at White Plains Hospital as a nurse
information on contraception. Her subsequent trial and probationer. In 1902, she married the architect William
appeal generated controversy. Sanger felt that in order Sanger and gave up her education.[10] Though she was
for women to have a more equal footing in society and to plagued by a recurring active tubercular condition, Marlead healthier lives, they needed to be able to determine garet Sanger bore three children, and the couple settled
when to bear children. She also wanted to prevent so- down to a quiet life in Westchester, New York.
called back-alley abortions,[3] which were common at the
time because abortions were usually illegal. She believed
that while abortion was sometimes justied it should gen- 2.2 Social activism
erally be avoided, and she considered contraception the
only practical way to avoid them.[4]
In 1911, after a re destroyed their home in Hastings-onIn 1921, Sanger founded the American Birth Control
League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In New York City, she organized
the rst birth control clinic staed by all-female doctors,
as well as a clinic in Harlem with an entirely AfricanAmerican sta. In 1929, she formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control, which
served as the focal point of her lobbying eorts to legalize
contraception in the United States. From 1952 to 1959,
Sanger served as president of the International Planned
Parenthood Federation. She died in 1966, and is widely
regarded as a founder of the modern birth control movement.

Hudson, the Sangers abandoned the suburbs for a new life

in New York City. Margaret Sanger worked as a visiting nurse in the slums of the East Side, while her husband worked as an architect and a house painter. Already imbued with her husbands leftist politics, Margaret Sanger also threw herself into the radical politics
and modernist values of pre-World War I Greenwich Village bohemia. She joined the Womens Committee of
the New York Socialist party, took part in the labor actions of the Industrial Workers of the World (including
the notable 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike and the 1913
Paterson Silk Strike) and became involved with local intellectuals, left-wing artists, socialists and social activists,
1

LIFE

advised her to remain abstinent. A few months later,

Sanger was called back to Sadies apartment only
this time, Sadie died shortly after Sanger arrived. She
had attempted yet another self-induced abortion.[15][16]
Sanger would sometimes end the story by saying, I threw
my nursing bag in the corner and announced ... that I
would never take another case until I had made it possible for working women in America to have the knowledge to control birth. Although Sadie Sachs was possibly a ctional composite of several women Sanger had
known, this story marks the beginning of Sangers commitment to spare women from the pursuit of dangerous
and illegal abortions.[16][17] Sanger opposed abortion, but
primarily as a societal ill and public health danger which
would disappear if women were able to prevent unwanted
pregnancy.[18]
Given the connection between contraception and
working-class empowerment, Sanger came to believe
that only by liberating women from the risk of unwanted
pregnancy would fundamental social change take place.
She launched a campaign to challenge governmental censorship of contraceptive information through
confrontational actions.
With sons Grant and Stuart, c. 1919

Sanger became estranged from her husband in 1913, and

the couples divorce was nalized in 1921.[19] In 1922 she
married her second husband, Noah Slee.[20]

In 1914 Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, an eightincluding John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and
page monthly newsletter which promoted contraception
Emma Goldman.[11]
using the slogan "No Gods, No Masters".[21][note 2][22]
Sangers political interests, emerging feminism and nurs- Sanger, collaborating with anarchist friends, popularized
ing experience led her to write two series of columns the term birth control as a more candid alternative
on sex education entitled What Every Mother Should to euphemisms such as family limitation[23] and proKnow (191112) and What Every Girl Should Know claimed that each woman should be the absolute mistress
(191213) for the socialist magazine New York Call. By of her own body.[24] In these early years of Sangers acthe standards of the day, Sangers articles were extremely tivism, she viewed birth control as a free-speech issue,
frank in their discussion of sexuality, and many New York and when she started publishing The Woman Rebel, one
Call readers were outraged by them. Other readers, how- of her goals was to provoke a legal challenge to the federal
ever, praised the series for its candor, one stated that the anti-obscenity laws which banned dissemination of inforseries contained a purer morality than whole libraries full mation about contraception.[25][26] Though postal authorof hypocritical cant about modesty.[12] Both were pub- ities suppressed ve of its seven issues, Sanger continued
lished in book form in 1916.[13]
publication, all the while preparing Family Limitation, anDuring her work among working-class immigrant other challenge to anti-birth control laws. This 16-page
women, Sanger met women who underwent frequent pamphlet contained detailed and precise information and
childbirth, miscarriages and self-induced abortions for graphic descriptions of various contraceptive methods. In
lack of information on how to avoid unwanted pregnancy. August 1914 Margaret Sanger was indicted for violating
Access to contraceptive information was prohibited on postal obscenity laws by sending the The Woman Rebel
system. Rather than stand trial, she
grounds of obscenity by the 1873 federal Comstock law through the postal
[27]
ed
the
country.
and a host of state laws. Seeking to help these women,
Sanger visited public libraries, but was unable to nd
information on contraception.[14] These problems were
epitomized in a (possibly ctional) story that Sanger
would later recount in her speeches: while Sanger was
working as a nurse, she was called to the apartment of a
woman, Sadie Sachs, who had become extremely ill due
to a self-induced abortion. Afterward, Sadie begged
the attending doctor to tell her how she could prevent
this from happening again, to which the doctor simply

Margaret Sanger spent much of her 1914 exile in England, where contact with British neo-Malthusians helped
rene her socioeconomic justications for birth control. She shared their concern that over-population led
to poverty, famine and war.[28] At the Fifth International
Neo-Malthusian Conference in 1922, she was the rst
woman to chair a session.[29] She organized the Sixth
International Neo-Malthusian and Birth-Control Confer-

2.4

American Birth Control League

ence that took place in New York in 1925.[30][31] Over- ning and birth control clinic at 46 Amboy Street in the
population would remain a concern of hers for the rest of Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, the rst of its
her life.[28]
kind in the United States.[35] Nine days after the clinic
During her 1914 trip to England, she was also profoundly opened, Sanger was arrested. Sangers bail was set at
inuenced by the liberation theories of Havelock Ellis, $500 and she went back home. Sanger continued seeing
under whose tutelage she sought not just to make sexual some women in the clinic until the police came a second
time. This time Sanger and her sister, Ethel Byrne, were
intercourse safer for women, but more pleasurable.
arrested for breaking a New York state law that prohibited
Early in 1915, Margaret Sangers estranged husband, distribution of contraceptives, Sanger was also charged
William Sanger, gave a copy of Family Limitation to a with running a public nuisance.[36] Sanger and Ethel went
representative of anti-vice politician Anthony Comstock. to trial in January 1917.[37] Byrne was convicted and senWilliam Sanger was tried and convicted, spending thirty tenced to 30 days in a workhouse but went on hunger
days in jail while attracting interest in birth control as an strike. She was force-fed, the rst woman hunger striker
issue of civil liberty.[32][33][34]
in the US to be so treated.[38] Only when Sanger pledged
that Byrne would never break the law, was she pardoned
after ten days.[39] Sanger was convicted; the trial judge
2.3 Birth control movement
held that women did not have the right to copulate
with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting
Main article: Birth control movement in the United States conception.[40] Sanger was oered a more lenient senSome countries in northwestern Europe had more liberal tence if she promised to not break the law again, but she
replied: I cannot respect the law as it exists today.[41]
For this, she was sentenced to 30 days in a workhouse.[41]
An initial appeal was rejected, but in a subsequent court
proceeding in 1918, the birth control movement won a
victory when Judge Frederick E. Crane of the New York
Court of Appeals issued a ruling which allowed doctors
to prescribe contraception.[42] The publicity surrounding
Sangers arrest, trial, and appeal sparked birth control activism across the United States, and earned the support
of numerous donors, who would provide her with funding and support for future endeavors.[43]
In February 1917 Sanger began publishing the monthly
periodical Birth Control Review.[note 3]

2.4 American Birth Control League

After World War I, Sanger shifted away from radical politics, and she founded the American Birth Control League
(ABCL) in 1921 to enlarge her base of supporters to include the middle class.[44] The founding principles of the
ABCL were as follows:[45]

This page from Sangers Family Limitation, 1917 edition, describes a cervical cap

policies towards contraception than the United States at

the time, and when Sanger visited a Dutch birth control
clinic in 1915, she learned about diaphragms and became
convinced that they were a more eective means of contraception than the suppositories and douches that she had
been distributing back in the United States. Diaphragms
were generally unavailable in the United States, so Sanger
and others began importing them from Europe, in deance of United States law.[11]

We hold that children should be (1) Conceived in love; (2) Born of the mothers conscious desire; (3) And only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of
health. Therefore we hold that every woman
must possess the power and freedom to prevent conception except when these conditions
can be satised.

After Sangers appeal of her conviction for the

Brownsville clinic secured a 1918 court ruling that
exempted physicians from the law prohibiting the distribution of contraceptive information to women (provided
it was prescribed for medical reason), she established
On October 16, 1916 Sanger opened a family plan- the Clinical Research Bureau (CRB) in 1923 to exploit

LIFE

Control Clinical Research Bureau (BCCRB), marking

the beginning of a schism that would last until 1938.[55]
Sanger invested a great deal of eort communicating with
the general public. From 1916 onward, she frequently
lectured (in churches, womens clubs, homes, and theaters) to workers, churchmen, liberals, socialists, scientists, and upper-class women.[56] She wrote several books
in the 1920s which had a nationwide impact in promoting the cause of birth control. Between 1920 and 1926,
567,000 copies of Woman and the New Race and The
Pivot of Civilization were sold.[57] She also wrote two autobiographies designed to promote the cause. The rst,
My Fight for Birth Control, was published in 1931 and
the second, more promotional version, Margaret Sanger:
An Autobiography, was published in 1938.
During the 1920s, Sanger received hundreds of thousands of letters, many of them written in desperation
by women begging for information on how to prevent
unwanted pregnancies.[58][59] Five hundred of these letters were compiled into the 1928 book, Motherhood in
Bondage.[60][61]

2.5 Planned Parenthood era

Sanger published the Birth Control Review from 1917 to
1929.[note 4]

Main article: Planned Parenthood

In 1929, Sanger formed the National Committee on Fed-

this loophole.[11][46] The CRB was the rst legal birth

control clinic in the United States, staed entirely by
female doctors and social workers.[47] The clinic received
extensive funding from John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his
family, which continued to make anonymous donations
to Sangers causes in future decades.[48][49]
John D. Rockefeller Jr. donated ve thousand dollars to
her American Birth Control League in 1924 and a second time in 1925.[50] In 1922, she traveled to China, Korea, and Japan. In China she observed that the primary
method of family planning was female infanticide, and
she later worked with Pearl Buck to establish a family
planning clinic in Shanghai.[51] Sanger visited Japan six
times, working with Japanese feminist Kato Shidzue to Sangers Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau operated from
promote birth control.[52] This was ironic, since ten years this New York building from 1930 to 1973
earlier Sanger had accused Kat of murder and praised
eral Legislation for Birth Control in order to lobby for
an attempt to kill her.[53]
legislation to overturn restrictions on contraception.[62]
In 1926, Sanger gave a lecture on birth control to the That eort failed to achieve success, so Sanger ordered
womens auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, a diaphragm from Japan in 1932, in order to provoke a
New Jersey.[54] She described it as one of the weirdest decisive battle in the courts. The diaphragm was conexperiences I had in lecturing, and added that she had scated by the United States government, and Sangers
to use only the most elementary terms, as though I were subsequent legal challenge led to a 1936 court decitrying to make children understand.[54] Sangers talk was sion which overturned an important provision of the
well received by the group, and as a result, a dozen invi- Comstock laws which prohibited physicians from obtaintations to similar groups were proered.[54]
ing contraceptives.[63] This court victory motivated the
In 1928, conict within the birth control movement lead- American Medical Association in 1937 to adopt contraership led Sanger to resign as the president of the ABCL ception as a normal medical service and a key component
and take full control of the CRB, renaming it the Birth of medical school curriculums.[64]

5
This 1936 contraception court victory was the culmination of Sangers birth control eorts, and she took the
opportunity, now in her late 50s, to move to Tucson, Arizona, intending to play a less critical role in the birth control movement. In spite of her original intentions, she
remained active in the movement through the 1950s.[64]

Court case Griswold v. Connecticut, which legalized birth

control in the United States.[note 6] Sanger is buried in
Fishkill, New York, next to her sister, Nan Higgins, and
her second husband, Noah Slee.[70] One of her surviving
brothers was College Football Hall of Fame player and
Pennsylvania State University Head Football coach Bob
[71]
In 1937, Sanger became chairman of the newly formed Higgins.
Birth Control Council of America, and attempted to resolve the schism between the ABCL and the BCCRB.[65]
Her eorts were successful, and the two organizations 3 Views
merged in 1939 as the Birth Control Federation of
America.[66][note 5] Although Sanger continued in the role
of president, she no longer wielded the same power as 3.1 Sexuality
she had in the early years of the movement, and in 1942,
more conservative forces within the organization changed While researching information on contraception, Sanger
the name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, read treatises on sexuality including The Psychology of
Havelock Ellis and was
a name Sanger objected to because she considered it too Sex by the English psychologist
[72]
[67]
heavily
inuenced
by
it.
While
traveling in Europe in
euphemistic.
1914, Sanger met Ellis.[73] Inuenced by Ellis, Sanger
In 1946, Sanger helped found the International Com- adopted his view of sexuality as a powerful, liberating
mittee on Planned Parenthood, which evolved into the force.[74] This view provided another argument in favor
International Planned Parenthood Federation in 1952, of birth control, as it would enable women to fully enjoy
and soon became the worlds largest non-governmental sexual relations without fear of unwanted pregnancy.[75]
international womens health, family planning and birth Sanger also believed that sexuality, along with birth concontrol organization. Sanger was the organizations rst trol, should be discussed with more candor.[74]
president and served in that role until she was 80 years
old.[68] In the early 1950s, Sanger encouraged philan- Sanger opposed excessive sexual indulgence. She wrote
thropist Katharine McCormick to provide funding for bi- that every normal man and woman has the power to
ologist Gregory Pincus to develop the birth control pill control and direct his sexual impulse. Men and women
who have it in control and constantly use their brain cells
which was eventually sold under the name Enovid.[69]
thinking deeply, are never sensual.[76][77] Sanger said
that birth control would elevate women away from a position of being an object of lust and elevate sex away from
2.6 Death
purely being for satisfying lust, saying that birth control
denies that sex should be reduced to the position of sensual lust, or that woman should permit herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction.[78] Sanger wrote that masturbation was dangerous. She stated: In my personal experience as a trained nurse while attending persons aicted
with various and often revolting diseases, no matter what
their ailments, I never found any one so repulsive as the
chronic masturbator. It would not be dicult to ll page
upon page of heart-rending confessions made by young
girls, whose lives were blighted by this pernicious habit,
always begun so innocently.[79] She believed that women
had the ability to control their sexual impulses, and should
utilize that control to avoid sex outside of relationships
marked by condence and respect. She believed that
exercising such control would lead to the strongest and
most sacred passion.[80] However, Sanger was not opposed to homosexuality and praised Ellis for clarifying
the question of homosexuals... making the thing a
not exactly a perverted thing, but a thing that a person is
born with dierent kinds of eyes, dierent kinds of strucMargaret Sanger Square, at the intersection of Mott Street and tures and so forth... that he didn't make all homosexuals
Bleecker Street in Manhattan
pervertsand I thought he helped clarify that to the medical profession and to the scientists of the world as perSanger died of congestive heart failure in 1966 in Tucson, haps one of the rst ones to do that.[81] Sanger believed
Arizona, aged 86, about a year after the U.S. Supreme sex should be discussed with more candor, and praised

VIEWS

Ellis for his eorts in this direction. She also blamed control to poor black people.[90] Sanger wanted the NeChristianity for the suppression of such discussion.[81]
gro Project to include black ministers in leadership roles,
but other supervisors did not. To emphasize the benets of involving black community leaders, she wrote to
Gamble, We do not want word to go out that we want to
exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the
man who can straighten out that idea, if it ever occurs to
any of their more rebellious members. While New York
Universitys Margaret Sanger Papers Project, argues that
in writing that letter, Sanger recognized that elements
within the black community might mistakenly associate
the Negro Project with racist sterilization campaigns in
the Jim Crow South;"[91] Angela Davis erroneously used
the quote to support claims that Sanger intended to exterminate the black population.[92]

3.3 Freedom of speech

W. E. B. Du Bois served on the board of Sangers Harlem

clinic[82]

3.2

Race

She worked with eminent African American leaders and

professionals who saw a need for birth control in their
communities. In 1929, James H. Hubert, a black social
worker and leader of New Yorks Urban League, asked
Sanger to open a clinic in Harlem.[83] Sanger secured
funding from the Julius Rosenwald Fund and opened the
clinic, staed with black doctors, in 1930. The clinic
was directed by a 15-member advisory board consisting of black doctors, nurses, clergy, journalists, and social workers. The clinic was publicized in the AfricanAmerican press and in black churches, and it received
the approval of W. E. B. Du Bois, civil rights legend
and author of The Souls Of Black Folk, co-founder of the
NAACP and editor of its magazine, Crisis, whom Martin Luther King Jr. would eulogize as unsurpassed as
an intellect.[84][85][86][87] Sanger did not tolerate bigotry
among her sta, nor would she tolerate any refusal to
work within interracial projects.[88] Sangers work with
minorities earned praise from Martin Luther King, Jr.,
in his 1966 acceptance speech for the Margaret Sanger
award.[89]
From 1939 to 1942 Sanger was an honorary delegate of
the Birth Control Federation of America, which included
a supervisory rolealongside Mary Lasker and Clarence
Gamblein the Negro Project, an eort to deliver birth

Sanger opposed censorship throughout her career.

Sanger grew up in a home where orator Robert Ingersoll
was admired.[93] During the early years of her activism,
Sanger viewed birth control primarily as a free-speech issue, rather than as a feminist issue, and when she started
publishing The Woman Rebel in 1914, she did so with the
express goal of provoking a legal challenge to the Comstock laws banning dissemination of information about
contraception.[26] In New York, Emma Goldman introduced Sanger to members of the Free Speech League,
such as Edward Bliss Foote and Theodore Schroeder, and
subsequently the League provided funding and advice to
help Sanger with legal battles.[94]
Over the course of her career, Sanger was arrested at
least eight times for expressing her views during an
era in which speaking publicly about contraception was
illegal.[95] Numerous times in her career, local government ocials prevented Sanger from speaking by shuttering a facility or threatening her hosts.[96] In Boston in
1929, city ocials under the leadership of James Curley threatened to arrest her if she spoke. In response she
stood on stage, silent, with a gag over her mouth, while
her speech was read by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr.[97]

3.4 Eugenics
After World War I, Sanger increasingly appealed to the
societal need to limit births by those least able to aord
children. The auent and educated already limited their
child-bearing, while the poor and ignorant lacked access
to contraception and information about birth-control.[98]
Here she found an area of overlap with eugenicists.[98]
She believed that they both sought to assist the race toward the elimination of the unt. They diered in that
eugenists imply or insist that a womans rst duty is to
the state; we contend that her duty to herself is her duty
to the state.[99] Sanger was a proponent of negative eugenics, which aims to improve human hereditary traits

7
asserted that eugenics alone was not sucient,
and that birth control was essential to achieve her
goals.[104][105][106]
In contrast with eugenicist William Robinson, who advocated euthanasia for the unt,[note 7] Sanger wrote, we [do
not] believe that the community could or should send to
the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from
irresponsible and unintelligent breeding.[107] Similarly,
Sanger denounced the aggressive and lethal Nazi eugenics program.[103] In addition, Sanger believed the responsibility for birth control should remain in the hands of
able-minded individual parents rather than the state, and
that self-determining motherhood was the only unshakable foundation for racial betterment.[104][108]
Sanger also supported restrictive immigration policies.
In A Plan for Peace, a 1932 essay, she proposed a
congressional department to address population problems. She also recommended that immigration exclude
those whose condition is known to be detrimental to
the stamina of the race, and that sterilization and segregation be applied to those with incurable, hereditary
disabilities.[102][103][109]

4 Legacy

Her 1920 book endorsed negative eugenics

Sangers story has been the subject of several biographies, including an award-winning biography published
in 1970 by David Kennedy, and is also the subject of
several lms, including Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story.[110] Sangers writings are curated by
two universities: New York University's history department maintains the Margaret Sanger Papers Project,[111]
and Smith College's Sophia Smith Collection maintains
the Margaret Sanger Papers collection.[112]

Sanger has been recognized with several honors. In 1957,

through social intervention by reducing the reproduction the American Humanist Association named her Humanof those who were considered unt.[100]
ist of the Year. Government authorities and other instiIn The Morality of Birth Control, a 1921 speech, she tutions have memorialized Sanger by dedicating several
divided society into three groups: the educated and in- landmarks in her name, including a residential building
formed class that regulated the size of their families, the on the Stony Brook University campus, a room in Welles[113]
and Margaret Sanger Square in
intelligent and responsible who desired to control their ley Colleges library,
[114]
New
York
Citys
Noho
area.
In 1993, the Margaret
families in spite of lacking the means or the knowledge,
she
provided
birth control services
Sanger
Clinicwhere
and the irresponsible and reckless people whose reliin
New
York
in
the
mid
twentieth
centurywas desiggious scruples prevent their exercising control over their
National
Historic
Landmark
by the National
nated
as
a
numbers. Sanger concludes, There is no doubt in the
[115]
Park
Service.
In
1966,
Planned
Parenthood
began isminds of all thinking people that the procreation of this
[101]
Margaret
Sanger
Awards
annually
to
honor
insuing
its
group should be stopped.
dividuals of distinction in recognition of excellence and
Sangers eugenic policies included an exclusionary im- leadership in furthering reproductive health and repromigration policy, free access to birth control methods, ductive rights.[116] The artwork The Dinner Party feaand full family planning autonomy for the able-minded, tures a place setting for Sanger.[117] Her speech Chilas well as compulsory segregation or sterilization for the drens Era, given in 1925, is listed as #81 in Ameriprofoundly retarded and those with chronic criminal can Rhetorics Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century
behavior.[102][103]
(listed by rank).[118][119] There is also a bust of her in the
Although Sanger supported negative eugenics, she National Portrait Gallery, which was a gift from Cordelia

5 WORKS

Scaife May.[120][121]
Sanger was also an inspiration for Wonder Woman, a
comic book character introduced by William Marston in
1941. Marston was inuenced by early feminist thought
while in college, and later formed a romantic relationship
with Sangers niece, Olive Byrne.[122][123] According to
Jill Lepore, several Wonder Women story lines were at
least in part inspired by Sanger, like the characters involvement with dierent labor strikes and protests.[123]
Due to her connection with Planned Parenthood, many
who are opposed to abortion frequently condemn Sanger
by criticizing her views on racial supremacy, birth control,
and eugenics.[124][125][note 8] In spite of such controversies,
Sanger continues to be regarded as a force in the American reproductive rights movement and womans rights
movement.

Works

Books and pamphlets

What Every Mother Should Know Originally published in 1911 or 1912, based on a series of articles Sanger published in 1911 in the New York Call,
which were, in turn, based on a set of lectures Sanger
gave to groups of Socialist party women in 1910
1911.[126] Multiple editions published through the
1920s, by Max N. Maisel and Sincere Publishing,
with the title What Every Mother Should Know, or
how six little children were taught the truth ... Online
(1921 edition, Michigan State University)

Blue Book series by Haldeman-Julius Co. Online

(1921, Michigan State University)
The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Brentanos. Online
(1922, Project Gutenberg); Online (1922, Google
Books)
Motherhood in Bondage, 1928, Brentanos. Online
(Google Books).
My Fight for Birth Control, 1931, New York: Farrar
& Rinehart
An Autobiography. New York, NY: Cooper Square
Press. 1938. ISBN 0-8154-1015-8.
Fight for Birth Control, 1916, New York[127] (The
Library of Congress)
Birth Control A Parents Problem or Womens?" The
Birth Control Review, Mar. 1919, 67.
Periodicals
The Woman Rebel Seven issues published monthly
from March 1914 to August 1914. Sanger was publisher and editor.
Birth Control Review Published monthly from
February 1917 to 1940. Sanger was Editor until
1929, when she resigned from the ABCL.[128] Not
to be confused with Birth Control News, published
by the London-based Society for Constructive Birth
Control and Racial Progress.

Family Limitation Originally published 1914 as a

16-page pamphlet; also published in several later Collections and anthologies
editions. Online (1917, 6th edition, Michigan State
University); Online (1920 English edition, Bakunin
Sanger, Margaret, The Selected Papers of Margaret
Press, revised by author from 9th American ediSanger, Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, 19001928,
tion);
Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, Peter Engelman
(eds), University of Illinois Press, 2003
What Every Girl Should Know Originally published
1916 by Max N. Maisel; 91 pages; also published in
several later editions. Online (1920 edition); Online
(1922 ed., Michigan State University)
The Case for Birth Control: A Supplementary Brief
and Statement of Facts May 1917, published to
provide information to the court in a legal proceeding. Online (Internet Archive)
Woman and the New Race, 1920, Truth Publishing,
foreword by Havelock Ellis. Online (Harvard University); Online (Project Gutenberg); Online (Internet Archive); Audio on Archive.org
Debate on Birth Control 1921, text of a debate between Sanger, Theodore Roosevelt, Winter Russell,
George Bernard Shaw, Robert L. Wolf, and Emma
Sargent Russell. Published as issue 208 of Little

Sanger, Margaret, The Selected Papers of Margaret

Sanger, Volume 2: Birth Control Comes of Age,
19281939, Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo, Peter
Engelman (eds), University of Illinois Press, 2007
Sanger, Margaret, The Selected Papers of Margaret
Sanger, Volume 3: The Politics of Planned Parenthood, 19391966, Esther Katz, Cathy Moran Hajo,
Peter Engelman (eds), University of Illinois Press,
2010
Works by Margaret Sanger at Project Gutenberg
The Margaret Sanger Papers at Smith College
The Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York
University

9
McElderry, Michael J. (1976). Margaret Sanger:
A Register of Her Papers in the Library of
Congress.
Manuscript Division, Library of
Congress. Archived from the original on March 29,
2009. Retrieved March 30, 2009.
Correspondence between Sanger and McCormick,
from The Pill documentary movie; supplementary
material, PBS, American Experience (producers).
online].
Speeches
Sanger, Margaret, The Morality of Birth Control
1921.
Sanger, Margaret, The Childrens Era 1925.

[5] Date of merger recorded as 1938 (not 1939) in: O'Conner,

Karen, Gender and Womens Leadership: A Reference
Handbook, p. 743. O'Conner cites Gordon (1976).
[6] In 1965, the case had struck down one of the remaining
contraception-related Comstock laws in Connecticut and
Massachusetts. However, Griswold only applied to marital relationships. A later case, Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972),
extended the Griswold holding to unmarried persons as
well.
[7] For example, in his book, Eugenics, Marriage and Birth
Control (Practical Eugenics), Robinson wrote: The best
thing would be to gently chloroform these [unt] children
or give them a dose of potassium cyanide.
[8] A typical pro-life publication critical of Sanger is: Franks,
Angela, Margaret Sangers Eugenic Legacy: The Control of
Female Fertility, McFarland, 2005.

Sanger, Margaret, Woman And The Future 1937.

See also
Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story

[1] Baker, Jean H. Margaret Sanger: a life of passion. p. 126.

OCLC 705717104.

Anthony Comstock

[2] Katz 2000.

Mary Ware Dennett

[3] Cox 2004, p. 34.

Emma Goldman
Feminism

[4] Sanger, Margaret (1917). Family Limitation (PDF). p. 5.

Retrieved 2016-03-11.

History of women in the United States

[5] History of the Corning-Painted Post Area, p. 240

List of womens rights activists

[6] Sanger, Margaret, The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger,

Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, pp. 13.

Margaret Mead
Fania Mindell
Caroline Nelson
Reproductive rights
Upton Sinclair
Mabel Sine Wadsworth

8 References

Notes

[1] They became estranged in 1913, but the divorce was not
nalized until 1921.[1]
[2] The slogan No Gods, No Masters originated in a yer
distributed by the IWW in the 1912 Lawrence Textile
Strike.
[3] The rst issue of Birth Control Review was published in
February 1917.
[4] Caption at the bottom of this 1919 issue reads: Must She
Always Plead in Vain? 'You are a nursecan you tell me?
For the childrens sakehelp me!'"

[7] Margaret Sanger. Indels.org. Retrieved March 12,

2012.; Rosalind Rosenberg, Divided lives: American
women in the twentieth century, p. 82.
[8] Baker, p. 3, 11
[9] Cooper, James L.; Cooper, Sheila M. (1973). The Roots
of American Feminist Thought. Alvin and Bacon. p. 219.
ASIN B002VY8L0O.
[10] Sanger, Margaret. Autobiography (New York: Norton,
1938), p. 13; Katz, Esther, et al., eds, The Selected Papers
of Margaret Sanger, Vol. 1: The Woman Rebel 1900
1928 (Urbana: Illinois University Press, 2003), pp. 45.
[11] Chesler 1992.
[12] Chesler 1992, p. 65.
[13] Dietrich 2010; Engelman 2011, p. 32; Blanchard 1992,
p. 50; Coates 2008, p. 49
[14] Endres, Kathleen L., Womens Periodicals in the United
States: social and political issues, p. 448; Endres cites
Sanger, An Autobiography, pp. 9596. Endres cites
Kennedy, p. 19, as pointing out that some materials on
birth control were available in 1913.

10

[15] Lader (1955), pp. 4450.

Baker, pp. 4951.
Kennedy, pp. 1618.
[16] Viney, Wayne; King, D. A. (2003). A History of Psychology: Ideas and Context. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. ISBN
0-205-33582-9.
[17] Composite story: The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger,
Volume 1, p. 185. This source identies the source of
Sangers quote as: Birth Control, Library of Congress
collection of Sangers papers: microlm: reel 129: frame
12, April 1916.
[18] Streitmatter, Rodger (2001). Voices of Revolution: The
Dissident Press in America. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 169. ISBN 0-231-12249-7.
[19] Cox, p. 76.
[20] Margaret Sanger: Pioneer of the Future pp. 17880.
[21] Kennedy, pp. 1, 22.
[22] Sanger, Margaret, The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger,
Mineola, New York: Dover Printing Publications Inc.,
2004, pp. 111112.
[23] The term birth control was suggested in 1914 by a young
friend called Otto Bobstein Chesler, p. 97.
Katz, The selected papers of Margaret Sanger, Volume 1,
p. 70.
Galvin, Rachel. Margaret Sangers Deeds of Terrible
Virtue Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities, September/October 1998, Vol. 19/Number 5.
[24] Engelman, Peter C., Margaret Sanger, article in Encyclopedia of Leadership, Volume 4, George R. Goethals, et
al (eds), SAGE, 2004, p. 1382.
Engelman cites facsimile edited by Alex Baskin, Woman
Rebel, New York: Archives of Social History, 1976. Facsimile of original.
[25] Katz, Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger, Vol. 1.
[26] McCann 2010, pp. 75051.
[27] Douglas, Emily (1970). Margaret Sanger: Pioneer of the
Future. Canada: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. p. 57.
[28] Baker, p.268
[29] Baker, p. 178
[30] Chesler, p. 225
[31] Kennedy, p. 101
[32] Douglas, Emily (1970). Margaret Sanger: Pioneer of the
Future. Canada: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. p. 80.
[33] Haight, Anne Lyon (1935). Banned books: informal notes
on some books banned for various reasons at various times
and in various places. New York: R.R. Bowker Company.
p. 65.
[34] Anthony Comstock Dies in His Crusade. Reading Eagle. Reading, Pennsylvania. September 22, 1915. p. 6.

REFERENCES

[35] Selected Papers, vol 1, p. 199.

Baker, p. 115.
[36] Margaret Sanger: Pioneer to the Future, p. 109.
[37] Engelman, p. 101.
[38] First woman in US given English dose. The Seattle Star.
January 27, 1917. p. 1. Retrieved November 16, 2014.
[39] Mrs. Byrne pardoned; pledged to obey law;". New York
Times. February 2, 1917. Retrieved November 16, 2014.
[40] Lepore, Jill (November 14, 2011). Birthright: Whats
next for Planned Parenthood?". New Yorker. Retrieved
November 13, 2011.
[41] Cox, p. 65.
[42] Engelman, pp. 1013.
[43] McCann, 2010, p. 751.
[44] Freedman, Estelle B., The essential feminist reader, Random House Digital, Inc., 2007, p. 211.
[45] Birth control: What it is, How it works, What it will do,
The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference, November 11, 12, 1921, pp. 2078.
The Birth Control Review, Vol. V, No. 12, December
1921, Margaret Sanger (ed.), p. 18.
Sanger, Pivot of Civilization, 2001 reprint edited by
Michael W. Perry, p. 409.
These principles were adopted at the rst meeting of the
ABCL in late 1921.
[46] Baker, p. 196.
[47] Baker, pp. 19697.
The Selected Papers, Vol 2, p. 54.
[48] Chesler, pp. 277, 293, 558.
Harr, John Ensor; Johnson, Peter J. (1988). The Rockefeller Century: Three Generations of Americas Greatest
Family. New York: Charles Scribners Sons. pp. 191,
46162.crucial, anonymous Rockefeller grants to the
Clinical Research Bureau and support for population control
[49] Chesler, Ellen Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the
Birth Control Movement in America, New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1992, p. 425.
[50] Katz, Esther; Sanger, Margaret, The Selected Papers of
Margaret Sanger Volume 1: The Woman Rebel, University
of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 430.
[51] Cohen, pp. 645.
[52] Baker, p. 275.
Kat, Shidzue, Facing Two Ways: the story of my life,
Stanford University Press, 1984, p. xxviii.
D'Itri, Patricia Ward, Cross Currents in the International
Womens Movement, 18481948, Popular Press, 1999, pp.
16367.
[53] Katz, Esther (ed.); Sanger, Margaret, The Selected Papers
of Margaret Sanger Volume 1: The Woman Rebel 1900
1928, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
2003, p. 421.

11

[54] Sanger, Margaret (1938). Margaret Sanger, An Autobiography. New York: W. W. Norton. pp. 361, 3667.
[55] McCann (1994), pp. 1778.
MSPP > About > Birth Control Organizations > Birth
Control Clinical Research Bureau. Nyu.edu. October
18, 2005. Retrieved October 7, 2009.
[56] Sanger, Margaret (1938). The Autobiography of Margaret
Sanger. W. W. Norton. p. 366. ISBN 0-486-43492-3.
[57] Baker, p. 161.
[58] ""Motherhood in Bondage, #6, Winter 1993/4. Margaret Sanger Papers Project. Retrieved April 9, 2011.
[59] The number of letters is reported as a quarter million,
over a million, or hundreds of thousands in various
sources
[60] 500 letters: Cohen, p. 65.
[61] Sanger, Margaret (2000). Motherhood in bondage.
Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press. ISBN 08142-0837-1.
[62] National Committee on Federal Legislation on Birth
Control. NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project
[63] Rose, Melody, Abortion: a documentary and reference
guide, ABC-CLIO, 2008, p. 29.
[64] "'Biographical Note', Smith College, Margaret Sangers
Papers. Asteria.vecolleges.edu. September 6, 1966.
Retrieved March 12, 2012.
[65] NYU Margaret Sanger Papers Project Birth Control
Council of America
[66] The Margaret Sanger Papers (2010). MSPP > About
> Birth Control Organizations > PPFA. nyu.edu. Retrieved October 17, 2011.
[67] Chesler, p. 393.
NYU
[68] Ford, Lynne E., Encyclopedia of Women and American
Politics, p. 406.
Esser-Stuart, Joan E., Margaret Higgins Sanger, in Encyclopedia of Social Welfare History in North America,
Herrick, John and Stuart, Paul (eds), SAGE, 2005, p. 323.
[69] Engelman, Peter, McCormick, Katharine Dexter, in Encyclopedia of Birth Control, Vern L. Bullough (ed.), ABCCLIO, 2001, pp. 1701.
Marc A. Fritz, Leon Spero, Clinical Gynecologic
Endocrinology and Infertility, Lippincott Williams &
Wilkins, 2010, pp. 959960.
[70] Baker, p. 307.
[71] Margaret Sanger obituary. Toledo Blade. September 6,
1966. Retrieved July 27, 2014.
[72] Sanger, Margaret, The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger,
Mineola, New York: Dover Publications Inc., 2004, p.
94.
[73] Cox, p. 55.

[74] Chesler, pp. 1314.

[75] Chesler
Kennedy, p. 127.
[76] Sanger, Margaret (December 29, 1912), What Every
Girl Should Know: Sexual Impulses Part II, New York
Call via The Margaret Sanger Papers Project
[77] Bronski, Michael (2011). A Queer History of the United
States. Beacon Press. p. 100.
[78] Sanger, Margaret, The Pivot of Civilization, Amherst, New
York: Humanity Books, 2003, p. 204.
[79] Margaret Sanger, What Every Girl Should Know: Sexual
Impulse Part I, December 22, 1912.
[80] Bronski, Michael, A Queer History of the United States,
Beacon Press, 2011.
Quotes from Sanger, What Every Girl should know: Sexual Impulses Part II, in New York Call, December 29,
1912; also in the subsequent book What Every Girl Should
Know, pp. 4048; reprinted in The Selected Papers of
Margaret Sanger, Volume 1, pp. 415 (quotes on p. 45).
[81] The Mike Wallace Interview, Guest: Margaret Sanger,
9/21/57.
[82] Baker, p. 200.
[83] Hajo, p. 85.
[84] http://www.duboishomesite.org/MSI%
20DuBoisFinalPlanningRepSM7.09.pdf
[85] NAACP History: W.E.B. Dubois. naacp.org. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
[86] Martin Luther King 's Speech in Honor of WEB Dubois
by Norman Markowitz. politicalaairs.net. Retrieved
March 11, 2016.
[87] Hajo, p. 85.
From Planned Parenthood: The Truth about Margaret
Sanger. Planned Parenthood Federation of America.:
In 1930, Sanger opened a family planning
clinic in Harlem that sought to enlist support
for contraceptive use and to bring the benets of family planning to women who were
denied access to their citys health and social
services. Staed by a black physician and a
black social worker, the clinic was endorsed
by The Amsterdam News (the powerful local
newspaper), the Abyssinian Baptist Church,
the Urban League, and the black communitys elder statesman, W. E. B. Du Bois.
[88] McCann (1994), pp. 1504. Bigotry: p. 153.
See also p. 45, The selected papers of Margaret Sanger,
Volume 1
[89] Planned Parenthood Federation of America (2004). The
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Upon Accepting the
Planned Parenthood Sanger Award. Retrieved 2016-0311.

12

REFERENCES

[90] Engelman, p. 175.

[106] Freedman, Estelle B. (2007). The Essential Feminist
Birth Control Federation of America Archived December
Reader. Modern Library. p. 211.
1, 2008, at the Wayback Machine., The Margaret Sanger
[107] Black, Edwin (September 2003) [2003]. The War Against
Papers Project
the Weak: Eugenics and Americas Campaign to Create a
Birth Control or Race Control? Sanger and the Negro
Master Race. New York City, NY: Four Walls Eight WinProject. Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter. Mardows. ISBN 1-56858-258-7., p. 251.
garet Sanger Papers Project (28). November 14, 2002.
Sangers quote from The Pivot of Civilization, p. 100.
Retrieved January 25, 2009.
[91] Smear n Fear, New York University, History Depart- [108] Sanger, Margaret (1921), The Eugenic Value of Birth
ment, Margaret Sanger Papers Project, 2010
Control Propaganda, Birth Control Review, The New
York Womens Publishing Company, 5 (10), p. 5 via
[92] Birth Control or Race Control? Sanger and the Negro
The Margaret Sanger Papers Project
Project. Margaret Sanger Papers Project Newsletter. Margaret Sanger Papers Project (28). November 14, 2002. [109] Sanger, A Plan For Peace, Birth Control Review, April
Retrieved January 25, 2009.
1932, p. 106. Online
[93] The Child Who Was Mother to a Woman from The New
[110] Choices of the Heart1995, starring Dana Delany and
Yorker, April 11, 1925, p. 11.
Henry Czerny, "'Choices of the Heart: The Margaret
Sanger Story (1995)'". IMDb (The Internet Movie
[94] Wood, Janice Ruth (2008), The Struggle for Free Speech
Database). March 8, 1995. Retrieved July 29, 2009.
in the United States, 18721915: Edward Bliss Foote, EdPortrait of a Rebel: The Remarkable Mrs. Sanger, TV
ward Bond Foote, and anti-Comstock operations, Psycholmovie, 1980, starring Bonnie Franklin as Sanger; IMDB
ogy Press, 2008, pp. 100102.
[95] Every Child a Wanted Child, Time, September 16, [111] NYU Sanger Papers Project web site. Nyu.edu. Febru1966, p. 96.
ary 7, 2007. Retrieved March 12, 2012.
[96] Kennedy, p. 149.

[112] Smith College collection web site.

Asteria.vecolleges.edu.
Retrieved
March
12,
2012.
[97] Melody, Michael Edward (1999), Teaching America about
sex: marriage guides and sex manuals from the late Vic[113] Friends of the Library Newsletter (PDF). Wellestorians to Dr. Ruth, NYU Press, 1999, p. 53 (citing
ley.edu. Retrieved March 12, 2012.
Halberstam, David, The Fifties, Villard. 1993, p. 285).
Davis, Tom, Sacred work: Planned Parenthood and its [114] Kayton, Bruce (2003). Radical Walking Tours of New
clergy alliances Rutgers University Press, 2005, p. 213
York City. New York: Seven Stories Press. p. 111. ISBN
(citing A Tradition of Choice, Planned Parenthood, 1991,
1-58322-554-4. Retrieved December 29, 2010.
p. 18).
[115] National Historic Landmark Program. Tps.cr.nps.gov.
[98] Kevles, Daniel J. (1985). In the Name of Eugenics: GenetSeptember 14, 1993. Retrieved March 12, 2012.
ics and the Uses of Human Heredity. University of California Press. pp. 9096. ISBN 0-520-05763-5.
[116] Rockefeller 3d Wins Sanger Award. New York Times.
[99] The Public Papers of Margaret Sanger: Web Edition.
nyu.edu. Retrieved March 11, 2016.

October 9, 1967. Archived from the original on November 6, 2012. Retrieved February 14, 2011.

[100] People & Events: Eugenics and Birth Control. PBS. [117] Place Settings. Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved on August
6, 2015.
Retrieved August 6, 2015.
[101] American Rhetoric: Margaret Sanger The Morality of [118] Michael E. Eidenmuller (February 13, 2009). Top 100
Birth Control. americanrhetoric.com. Retrieved August
Speeches of the 20th Century by Rank. American
8, 2015.
Rhetoric. Retrieved October 27, 2015.
[102] Porter, Nicole S.; Bothne Nancy; Leonard, Jason (Febru- [119] Margaret H Sanger Womens Political Communication
ary 1, 2008). Evans, Sophie J., ed. Public Policy Issues
Archives. Womenspeecharchive.org. Retrieved October
Research Trends. Nova Science. p. 126. ISBN 978-127, 2015.
60021-873-6.
[103] The Sanger-Hitler Equation, Margaret Sanger Papers
Project Newsletter, #32, Winter 2002/3. New York University Department of History

[120] PORTRAIT SEARCH: CAP Search Results / ObjectID

is 46729. National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 2016-0630.

[104] Sanger, Margaret (February 1919). Birth Control and [121] Lauren Hodges Twitter Instagram (2015-08-27).
National Portrait Gallery Won't Remove Bust Of
Racial Betterment. Birth Control Review. 3 (2): 1112.
Planned Parenthood Founder : The Two-Way. NPR.
Retrieved September 20, 2015.
Retrieved 2016-06-30.
[105] Franks, Angela (2005). Margaret Sangers Eugenic
Legacy: The Control of Female Fertility. p. 49. ISBN [122] Jill Lepore, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Vin978-0-7864-2011-7.
tage, 2015.

13

[123] Garner, Dwight (23 October 2014). Her Past Unchained:

'The Secret History of Wonder Woman,' by Jill Lepore.
New York Times.
[124] Marshall, Robert G.; Donovan, Chuck (October 1991).
Blessed Are the Barren: The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood. Fort Collins, CO: Ignatius Press. ISBN 978-089870-353-5.
[125] Minority Anti-Abortion Movement Gains Steam. NPR.
September 24, 2007. Retrieved January 17, 2009.
[126] Coates, p. 48.
Hoolihan, Christopher (2004), An Annotated Catalogue
of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American Popular
Medicine and Health Reform, Vol. 2 (MZ), University
Rochester Press, p. 299.
[127] The ght for birth control. Hdl.loc.gov. December 1,
1931. Retrieved August 8, 2015.
[128] ""Birth Control Review, Margaret Sanger Papers Project,
NYU. Nyu.edu. Retrieved March 12, 2012.

Bibliography

Cohen, Warren (2009), Proles in humanity the battle for peace, freedom, equality, and human rights,
Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littleeld, ISBN 978-07425-6702-3
Coigney, Virginia (1969), Margaret Sanger: rebel
with a cause, Doubleday
Cox, Vicki (2004), Margaret Sanger Rebel for
Womens Rights, New York: Infobase, ISBN 9781-4381-0759-2
Craig, Layne (2013), When Sex Changed Birth Control Politics and Literature between the World Wars,
City: Rutgers University Press, ISBN 978-0-81356212-4
Dietrich, Alicia (2010), What Every Girl Should
Know: The birth control movement in the 1910s,
Cultural Compass at the Harry Ransom Center External link in |work= (help)
Engelman, Peter (2011), A history of the birth control movement in America, Santa Barbara, Calif:
Praeger, ISBN 978-0-313-36509-6

Bagge, Peter (2013). Woman Rebel. The Margaret Sanger Story. Montreal: Drawn and Quarterly.
ISBN 978-1-77046-126-0.

Franks, Angela (2005), Margaret Sangers eugenic

legacy the control of female fertility, Jeerson, N.C:
McFarland, ISBN 978-0-7864-5404-4

Baker, Jean (2011), Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion, New York: Hill and Wang, ISBN 978-1-42996897-3

Freedman, Estelle (2007), The essential feminist

reader, New York: Modern Library, ISBN 978-08129-7460-7

Black, Edwin (2012), War against the weak : eugenics and Americas campaign to create a master
race, Washington, DC: Dialog Press, ISBN 978-0914153-29-0

Gordon, Linda (1976), Womans body, womans

right : a social history of birth control in America,
New York: Grossman, ISBN 978-0-670-77817-1

Blanchard, Margaret (1992), Revolutionary sparks

: freedom of expression in modern America, New
York: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19505436-1
Bronski, Michael (2011), A queer history of the
United States, Boston: Beacon Press, ISBN 978-08070-4439-1
Buchanan, Paul (2009), American Womens Rights
Movement: A Chronology of Events and of Opportunities from 1600 to 2008, Boston: Branden Books,
ISBN 978-0-8283-2160-0
Chesler, Ellen (1992), Woman of Valor: Margaret
Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America,
New York: Simon and Schuster, ISBN 978-1-41655369-4
Coates, Patricia (2008), Margaret Sanger and the
Origin of the Birth Control Movement, 19101930:
The Concept of Womens Sexual Autonomy, Lewiston, N.Y: Edwin Mellen Press, ISBN 978-0-77345099-8

Gray, Madeline (1979), Margaret Sanger : a biography of the champion of birth control, New York: R.
Marek, ISBN 978-0-399-90019-8
Hajo, Cathy (2010), Birth control on main street :
organizing clinics in the United States, 19161939,
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ISBN 978-0252-07725-8
Katz, Esther; Peter C. Engelman; Cathy Moran Hajo
(2002). the Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger: Vol.
1, The Woman Rebel. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press. ISBN 0-252-02737-X.
Hitchcock, Susan (2008), Roe V. Wade: Protecting
a Womans Right to Choose, New York: Chelsea,
ISBN 978-1-4381-0342-6
Katz, Esther (2000), Sanger, Margaret, American
National Biography Online, New York: Oxford University Press
Kennedy, David (1970), Birth Control in America:
The Career of Margaret Sanger, New Haven: Yale
University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-01495-2

14

10

Kevles, Daniel (1985), In the name of eugenics : genetics and the uses of human heredity, Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, ISBN
978-0-520-05763-0
Lader, Lawrence (1975), The Margaret Sanger story
and the ght for birth control, Westport, Conn:
Greenwood Press, ISBN 978-0-8371-7076-3

EXTERNAL LINKS

10 External links
Quotations related to Margaret Sanger at Wikiquote
Works by Margaret Sanger at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Margaret Sanger at Internet
Archive

Lader, Lawrence and Meltzer, Milton (1969), Margaret Sanger: pioneer of birth control, Crowell

Works by Margaret Sanger at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

McCann, Carole (1994), Birth control politics in the

United States, 19161945, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, ISBN 978-0-8014-8612-8

Margaret Sanger Papers at the Sophia Smith Collection

McCann, Carole (2010), Women as Leaders in

the Contraceptive Movement, in O'Connor, Karen,
Gender and Womens Leadership: A Reference
Handbook, Thousand Oaks: SAGE, pp. 749
762, doi:10.4135/9781412979344.n78, ISBN 9781-4522-6635-0
Reed, Miriam (2003), Margaret Sanger : her life in
her words, Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books, ISBN
978-1-56980-255-7
Rosenbaum, Judith (2011), The Call to Action:
Margaret Sanger, the Brownsville Jewish Women,
and Political Activism, in Kaplan, Marion; Moore,
Deborah, Gender and Jewish history, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, ISBN 978-0-253-22263-3
Rosenberg, Rosalind (2008), Divided lives : American women in the twentieth century, New York: Hill
and Wang, ISBN 978-0-8090-1631-0
Sanger, Margaret (1919), Birth Control and Racial
Betterment, Birth Control Review, The New York
Womens Publishing Company, 3 (2), pp. 1112
via The Margaret Sanger Papers Project
Sanger, Margaret (1922), The Pivot of Civilization,
New York: Brentanos, ISBN 978-0-8277-2004-6
Sanger, Margaret (1938), Autobiography of Margaret Sanger, City: Dover Publications, ISBN 9780-486-12083-6
Valenza, Charles (1985), Was Margaret Sanger a
Racist?", Family Planning Perspectives, Guttmacher
Institute, 17 (1): 4446, doi:10.2307/2135230,
JSTOR 2135230, PMID 3884362
Viney, Wayne; King, D. A. (2003), A history of psychology : ideas and context, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, ISBN 978-0-205-33582-4

9.1

Historiography

Sandi L. Dinger, Sanger, Margaret in Eleanor

B. Amico., ed., Readers Guide to Womens Studies
(1998) pp 5056

Interview conducted by Mike Wallace, September

21, 1957. Hosted at the Harry Ransom Center.

15

11
11.1

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Margaret Sanger Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger?oldid=741372480 Contributors: Mav, The Anome, KF, Stevertigo, Infrogmation, Paul Benjamin Austin, TakuyaMurata, Skysmith, Paul A, Ronz, Angela, Kragen, , LittleDan, JASpencer,
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Fici, Kylethefarmer, Bewarren1972 and Anonymous: 753

16

11

11.2

TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Images

File:17-23_West_16th_St.jpg Source:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/17-23_West_16th_St.jpg License:
GFDL Contributors: Own work Original artist: Beyond My Ken
File:1917_Edition_of_Family_Limitations.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/1917_Edition_of_
Family_Limitations.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Family Limitations book published in 1917 (scanned by The Sanger Papers
(a non-prot organization (501(c)3), hosted by New York University)) Original artist: Margaret Sanger
File:Birth_Control_Review_1919.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Birth_Control_Review_1919.
jpg License: Public domain Contributors: http://newmanrhetoric.blogspot.com/2010/10/margaret-sangers-morality-of-birth.html Original
artist: Margaret Sanger
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File:Margaret-Sanger-Square_NYC.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Margaret-Sanger-Square_
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File:P_vip.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/P_vip.svg License: PD Contributors: ? Original artist: ?
File:SangerAndSons.tiff Source:
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Public domain Contributors: Illustration from book Woman and the New Race, published 1920 Original artist: Unknown<a
href='//www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4233718'
title='wikidata:Q4233718'><img
alt='wikidata:Q4233718'
src='https:
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1.5x,
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File:WEB_DuBois_1918.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/WEB_DuBois_1918.jpg License: Public
domain Contributors: This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital
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This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information.

Original artist: Cornelius Marion (C.M.) Battey (18731927)[#cite_note-1 [1]]

File:Woman-power_emblem.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Woman-power_emblem.svg License:
Public domain Contributors: Made by myself, based on a character outline in the (PostScript Type 1) Fnord Hodge-Podge Discordian fonts
version 2 by toa267 (declared by them to be Public Domain). I chose the color to be kind of equally intermediate between red, pink, and
lavender (without being any one of the three...). Original artist: AnonMoos, toa267
File:Woman_And_The_New_Race.png Source:
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Race.png License: Public domain Contributors: This page was scanned by User:Swtpc6800 on an Epson Perfection 1240U at 300 dpi with
half-tone de-screening enabled and stored as TIFF. The image was cropped and touched up in Adobe Photo Elements 5.0. This copy saved
as a 150 dpi PNG. Original artist: Truth Publishing Company.

11.3

Content license

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