Margaret Sanger (1879 - 1966)

Sun Sep 14, 1879

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Image: A studio portrait of Margaret Sanger, c. 1915 [time.com]

Margaret Sanger, born on this day in 1879, was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term “birth control”, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Sanger also worked with African-American leaders who saw a need for birth control in their communities. In 1930, she opened a clinic in Harlem, staffed with black doctors, by securing funding from the Julius Rosenwald Fund.

Sanger did not tolerate bigotry among her staff, nor would she tolerate any refusal to work within interracial projects. The clinic was publicized in the African-American press and churches, and it received approval from W.E.B. Du Bois. Sanger’s efforts were also later lauded by MLK Jr.

Although Sanger rejected racist bigotry, she did endorse the ableism of the then-popular eugenics movement, writing in 1921 that “the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective”.

“Birth control is the first important step woman must take toward the goal of her freedom. It is the first step she must take to be man’s equal. It is the first step they must both take toward human emancipation.”

- Margaret Sanger

  • @HellaGoonedEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    Although Sanger rejected racist bigotry…

    Gotta take a break from my regularly scheduled porn posting to add a note to that.

    Even in her most eugenics book, The Pivot of Civilization, Sanger did not tie fitness for reproduction to any particular ethnic group. It appears that Sanger was motivated by a genuine concern to improve the health of poor mothers she served rather than a desire to eliminate their stock. Danger believed that all their affiliations arose from their unrestrained fertility, not their genes or racial heritage. For this reason, I agree that Sanger’s reviews were distinct from those of her eugenecist colleagues. Sanger nevertheless promoted two of the most perverse tenets of eugenic thinking: that social problems are caused by reproduction of the socially disadvantaged and that their childbearing should therefore be deferred. In a society marked by racial hierarchy, these principles inevitably produced policies designed to reduce Black women’s fertility. The judgement of who is fit and who is unfit, of who should reproduce and who should not, incorporated the racist ideologies of the time. (p. 81, emphasis added).

    Roberts, D. (1997/2017). The Dark Side of Birth Control. In Killing the Black Body (pp. 59-103; twentieth anniversary ed.). Vintage Books.