Margaret Sanger: “The Prevention of Conception”

Margaret Higgins was born into a working-class family on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York, the sixth of eleven children. Her father, a stonecutter, was an activist for woman suffrage and Socialism. Sanger was educated at St. Mary's School in Corning, New York, and then attended Claverack College in Claverack and the Hudson River Institute in Hudson. She left school in 1899, owing to the financial constraints of her family. After caring for her mother in her final illness, Sanger enrolled at the White Plains Hospital Nursing School. In 1902 she married the architect William Sanger, with whom she had three children. In 1912, having settled in New York City, Sanger started work in the slums of the Lower East Side, where she saw the devastating effects of unplanned pregnancies on mothers and their children. That year she began writing a column, “What Every Girl Should Know,” for the Socialist newspaper the New York Call, in which “Sexual Impulse” appeared in two parts.

Leading the movement to make birth control legal, safe, and accessible, Sanger devoted herself to educating the public about sexuality and a woman's need to be in control of her childbearing decisions. For Sanger, birth control was both a basic human right and the means for women to achieve sexual autonomy. In March 1914 she published the first issue of The Woman Rebel, featuring the article “The Prevention of Conception.” For this, she was indicted on federal charges of violating the Comstock Act of 1873, which prohibited distributing “obscene” literature and material (including contraceptive materials and information) through the mails. Many of Sanger's early documents served the dual purpose of educating her audience and attracting official suppression, which gave her the opportunity to make legal challenges and to create publicity for the cause. Sanger went to Europe rather than appearing in court to face charges. She returned to the United States in 1915 and continued her crusade by lecturing nationwide. On the eve of her trial in January of 1916 she addressed her supporters at the Hotel Brevoort in Manhattan, defending her methods in rallying support for birth control. The charges against her were eventually dismissed.

Later that year Sanger and her associates opened a birth control clinic in a poor New York City neighborhood, handing out contraceptive information and materials. This time she was arrested under state law and was sentenced to a month in prison. Upon her release she only intensified her activities. Sanger's article “Birth Control and Racial Betterment,” in which she discussed the controversial topic of eugenics as it related to birth control, was published in 1919 in the Birth Control Review, a monthly periodical she had started two years earlier. In 1921 she founded the American Birth Control League, a group that later became Planned Parenthood. Her continued advocacy of birth control won widespread public support for its legalization and brought about the creation of contraceptive clinics across the country, along with the development of new birth control methods. Sanger died on September 6, 1966, in Tucson, Arizona.