Margaret Sanger: biography of this birth control activist.

A summary of the life of Margaret Sanger, activist and promoter of Birth Control in the USA.

Margaret Sanger was a crucial American nurse in the fight for birth control. During her lifetime she founded several associations promoting the use of contraceptives and family planning.

Although her activism has been truly beneficial in terms of women's reproductive health, Sanger is a figure with its chiaroscuros, being related to racist and eugenic positions.

In the following we will talk about the life of this pioneer in family planning and, also, about her philosophy, through this biography of Margaret Sanger..

Brief biography of Margaret Sanger

The figure of Margaret Sanger is that of a strong advocate of contraceptive methods, both as a birth control measure and to prevent thousands of women from having to have clandestine abortions in the United States in the early twentieth century.

Despite legal persecution, Sanger continued her fight, gaining widespread recognition and founding associations such as the American Birth Control League, as well as overturning laws that she considered unconstitutional.She also overturned laws that considered it unprofessional to talk about family planning. Here we will learn about her life trajectory starting from her early years.

Childhood and youth

Margaret Sanger was born Margaret Louise Higgins on September 14, 1879 in Corning, New York.New York. She was the sixth of eleven children, her parents being Michael Hennessey Higgins, an Irish freethinking bricklayer, and Anne Purcell Higgins, a Catholic worker of Irish origin.

Although her father studied medicine and phrenology, he eventually chose to become a stonemason, carving angels, saints and tombstones in stone. Over time, the fervent Catholic would turn to the more radical atheism and activist in favor of women's suffrage and free public education, something that influenced young Margaret. The mother, Anne, was pregnant 18 times, having 11 live births during the 22 years before her death.

Given how large the family was, Margaret spent most of her youth helping out her younger siblings.. Thanks to the support of her two older sisters she was able to attend Claverack College and Hudson River Institute. In 1900 she enrolled at White Plains Hospital as a trainee nurse, a job she left two years later when she married architect William Sanger, thus becoming Margaret Sanger.

William was an anarchist and atheist more opposed to organized religion than Margaret's father. Despite suffering from a few bouts of tuberculosis, young Margaret gave birth to three children, enjoying a quiet life with her family in Westchester County, New York.

Activism and exile

But her working and intellectual life was not exactly quiet. She participated in numerous debates in radical circles and came into contact with the birth control movement, as well as the pro-choice movement.She also became acquainted with the free-love movement through Emma Goldman.

At the end of 1912 she experienced a sobering event: She witnessed the death of a woman who had attempted to have a clandestine abortion.. It was then that she began to dedicate herself to the diffusion of birth control and the defense that sex should not be simply a reproductive action.

Around this time, publication began in New York City of The Woman Rebel ("The Woman Rebel"), in which Sanger cried out against the evils of capitalism and religion. In this publication she advocated contraception and population control under the slogan "No gods and no masters". This magazine would be truly pioneering in its field and would be the one to coin the term "birth control".

Upon publication, Sanger began to be persecuted by the justice system, being accused of having violated the Comstock law, a law that prohibited the use of the term "birth control".a law that prohibited what was considered pornography, including any promotion of sexual health methods.

Fearing for her freedom, Sanger went into exile in Great Britain, at the same time that she published a booklet titled Family Limitationin which he lambasted the same law. That pamphlet would become a kind of gospel among American birth control advocates.

During her exile in Europe, Margaret Sanger would meet the leaders of the neo-Malthusian league and Havelock Hellis, a psychologist and eugenicist sexologist.a psychologist and eugenicist sexologist. In Great Britain she would have the opportunity to study the theories and techniques of birth control with Aletta Jacobs and Dr. Johan Rutgers.

Around the same time he founded the National Birth Control League, which in 1942 would adopt its current name: Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA).

Return to the United States

In 1915 he returned to the United States after the accusations against him were dropped. So, taking advantage of this, he embarked on a nationwide lecture tour, promoting birth control and attacking anti-pornography laws, which often infringed on people's sexual freedom.

To lobby, She tried to enlist the support of the American suffragettes, but the feminist movement gave her the support of the American suffragettes.But the feminist movement gave her a hard time for fear that, in case of supporting a movement as radical as Sanger's, women's suffrage would not be approved. After seeing that feminism did not give her clear support, she decided to take refuge in the neo-Malthusian and eugenics movements.

In 1916 she created in Brooklyn the first family planning clinic in the country.which would be closed down by the New York police and all its materials would end up confiscated. With the passage of time, she would go from a position in favor of sexual liberation to defending contraceptive methods as a purely medical method, with the aim of avoiding unwanted children and dead women in clandestine abortion clinics.

This is why she, along with her assistant Ethel Byrne, distributed contraceptive methods, for which they ended up being condemned. It was at this time that the publication of "Birth Control Review" began, which appeared briefly and then resurfaced with little continuity between 1920 and 1928.

In 1927 she was the main promoter of the first World Population Congress.In 1927 she was the main promoter of the first World Population Congress, and was already considered the main representative of the neo-Malthusian movement in the United States. From that congress, with the passage of time, the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) would emerge.

It was also his initiative the creation in 1931 of the Population Association of America, which received strong economic support from great patrons, among them the magnate F. Gamble, philanthropist and eugenicist. With his activism Sanger had managed to make the American society, totally opposed to any measure in favor of birth control, invest large amounts of money in favor of the design of new contraceptive methods.

Last decades and death

Her last decades were spent promoting the approval of laws for greater birth control, as well as helping in the legalization of abortion and the distribution of contraceptives in third world countries. Margaret Sanger died of congestive heart failure on September 6, 1966 in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of 86.at the age of 86.

Her thoughts as an activist

Originally, Sanger was influenced by the socialist and feminist theses of her father, Michael Hennessey Higgins.. The death of her mother caused her to rebel against the society in which she lived, especially because of its extremely female-centered vision of women as beings who must reproduce themselves. Sanger was an avowed socialist, firmly opposed to capitalism and the evils she attributed to it. This was reflected in her position on the main issues she dealt with in her activism.

Sexuality and abortion

Although she was quite radical, her view of sexuality was similar to that of the 19th century.. Sanger conceived sexuality as a weakness rather than a pleasure, that which was to blame for unwanted pregnancies due to a slip of the tongue. With birth control and from a health rather than feminist perspective, she sought to prevent hundreds of women from having to undergo clandestine abortions, dying in the process.

Although her activism helped to legalize abortion in the United States, it must be said that she was against it at first. It is said that she was not in favor of abortion more for fear that in the process the woman would die first than for moral reasons, although she is credited with having defended life at all costs. For her, contraceptive methods would be what would avoid this problem, which she came to consider a "tragedy of civilization".

Eugenics

One of the most controversial aspects of Margaren Sanger's figure is her vision of human development, which was loaded with his vision of human development charged with racism.. He is credited with saying that as one "descends" the ladder of human development, there is less sexual self-control. Apparently, she went so far as to say that Australian Aborigines were the "lowest species" in the "human family," only one rung higher than chimpanzees.

This is why she was a proponent of what has been called negative eugenics. This is the the political view that argues that the human species can be improved by social intervention.. Her proposals included a more restrictive immigration policy, free access to contraception, racial segregation and sterilization of the intellectually disabled.

In his 1917 article "Population Control and Women's Health" he explains that natural selection reigned without interference in the origins of mankind. The less fit individuals died young and the fittest survived and eventually reproduced. However, as civilization has progressed, the "weaker" ones have been supported by society, reaching adulthood and reproducing, having children with the same problems and perpetuating maladaptive traits.

Society, whether religiously motivated or out of humanism, has provided compassion, pity, tenderness and other elevated feelings that have protected the most vulnerable. This is why, she was so hostile to organized religions and charitable and benevolent institutions.blaming them for creating a "race of degenerates". In 1932, in her article "A Plan for Peace" she proposed the creation of laws to prevent the entry of certain foreigners with traits detrimental to the race.

But despite all these opinions, it seems that Sanger rejected direct active euthanasia, i.e., purging people considered inferior. She was opposed to the Nazi regime, and saw its mass extermination measures as true atrocities. She considered that this was not the way to control the birth rate, but that this control should come from the families themselves. He believed that if parents felt that their mentally weak children should not reproduce, then so be it, not the state. and should not be forced upon them by the state.

Bibliographical references:

• Hodgson, D., Watkins, S.C. (1997), "Feminists and Neo-Malthusians: Pasts and Present Alliances" Population and Development Review 23(3)
• Sanger, M. (1927): Proceedings of the World Population Conference, Geneva.
• Miller, J. A. (1996), "Betting with lives. Clarence Gamble and the Pathfinder International", published in Population Research Institute Review,
• Williams, D. y Williams, G. (1978), “Every Child a Wanted Child: Clarence James Gamble, M.D. And His Work in the Birth Control Movement”, publicado en Historical Publication, (4): Distributed by Harvard University Press.
• Sanger, M. (1919), “Birth control and racial betterment”, publicado en Birth Control Review, 3 (2): 11-12
• Valenza, C. (1985), “Was Margaret Sanger a racist?” publicado en Family Planning Perspectives, 17 (1): 44-46
• Jane Carey (2012) The Racial Imperatives of Sex: Birth Control and Eugenics in Britain, the United States andAustralia in the Interwar Years, Women’s History Review 21(5): 733-752.